From ancient Athens to the America of today, democracies have borne witness to the rise of grassroots populism. Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William Bennett Munro Professor of political science at Stanford University, discusses what it is to be a “populist” in this day and age – both in America and Europe – and whether Trump-brand populism, moving forward, is solely dependent on the former president’s participation.

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There are 4 comments.

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  1. Architectus Coolidge
    Architectus
    @Architectus

    Good grief.  After defining Populism as an unalterably bad thing, Mr. Moe seems to have developed a careful and well crafted definition of modern populism: “If I don’t like you, and you don’t agree with my politics, you are a populist.  If I do, even your authoritarian actions are really just well-intentioned democracy-saving good government in action”.  

    Pointless discussion (not your fault Bill), but it is difficult to have a valuable conversation when a person is driven largely by emotion and hate, rather than a scholarly approach to the topic.  He seems to believe that one can NEVER oppose government, and the only answer is a better government program to fix all problems that the citizens are agitated about. 

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  2. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    I thought the Hoover Institution was conservative. How did this guy get to be a Senior Fellow? He is a left-wing, Trump-hating, Democrat hack. The Republicans are the party of wealth???? This guy needs to extract his head from his nether parts. Not necessarily a pointless discussion. It reinforced my understanding of how completely the left is unaffected by from the real world.

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  3. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    I am happy to hear other voices, and I am certainly a person who would like President Trump to go away, but this guest was crazy biased, completely unable to step outside of his own political ideation, which is steeped with leftist tropes about… well… everything: white grievance, Democrats for the “little guy” in a good way (except Huey Long), a definition of “populist,” which was really the guest’s definition of “demagogue,” which was really tied to any people the guest doesn’t like.

    There were so many things to argue with here that I wanted the interviewer to challenge the guy on at least something.  

    You know what might be interesting?  A debate about whether Republicans were breaking norms in dangerous ways in the Trump Era or Democrats were breaking norms in dangerous ways in the Trump Era (and now) with this guy and John Yoo in conversation.

    I know where I’d bet my money for who would offer the better argument.

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  4. Quintus Sertorius Coolidge
    Quintus Sertorius
    @BillGollier

    I 100% agree with all the above posts….the guest can’t get past his own priors. This is one of the major problems with modern historical and political scholarship…..the left (for lack of a better word) never has to atone for its sins…only the right side of the political spectrum and if there ins anything bad then it is from the right. I am a history/politics teacher and have been fighting this battle for decades. 

    I so very much respect Bill Whalen and love this podcast but this was hard to get through!!

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