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Steve Hayward sits down with Jonathan Rauch of the Atlantic Monthly and Brookings Institution to discuss Jon's latest ebook, Political Realism, and also the parlous state of free speech on college campuses. Jon offers the counter-intuitive thesis that decades of political reform have made our government worse! Then since Jon was visiting Steve at Berkeley, the conversation pivots to the problem of free speech on campus, which Jon reminding the left that free speech offers the greatest protection to minorities and unpopular causes, and if the left rubbishes free speech on campus they'll regret it.

Host:
Steve Hayward
Guest:
JRJonathan Rauch

Discussion (3)

  • Leslie Watkins@LeslieWatkins
    Revolutionary-era historian and writer Mercy Otis Warren asserted that "true liberty" can only be "the expression of a virtuous citizenry" and cannot "be managed or maintained through merely institutional manipulation." Virtue in the eighteenth-century sense was more like what we today would call civic virtue, individual citizens conducting themselves morally in relationship to society. So, though I'm worried by the chaos surrounding the presidency of Donald Trump, and the obvious emotional failings of the man himself, I am much more afraid of current attempts by his most vehement critics to topple him through "merely institutional manipulation" precisely because what these folks see as virtue I see as the will to power in the name of acting on behalf of the common good. Any benefits to be had from the destruction of Trump will be trammeled by their indefatigable attempts to initiate yet more absolutist political reforms, all of which will result in unintended negative consequences of the kind Jonathan Rauch has described so well. And one reason will be the loss of civic virtue within the whirlwind of reform.
  • Brian Clendinen@BrianClendinen

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    Revolutionary-era historian and writer Mercy Otis Warren asserted that “true liberty” can only be “the expression of a virtuous citizenry” and cannot “be managed or maintained through merely institutional manipulation.” Virtue in the eighteenth-century sense was more like what we today would call civic virtue, individual citizens conducting themselves morally in relationship to society. So, though I’m worried by the chaos surrounding the presidency of Donald Trump, and the obvious emotional failings of the man himself, I am much more afraid of current attempts by his most vehement critics to topple him through “merely institutional manipulation” precisely because what these folks see as virtue I see as the will to power in the name of acting on behalf of the common good. Any benefits to be had from the destruction of Trump will be trammeled by their indefatigable attempts to initiate yet more absolutist political reforms, all of which will result in unintended negative consequences of the kind Jonathan Rauch has described so well. And one reason will be the loss of civic virtue within the whirlwind of reform.

    I am with you. The morality of Congress goes in the same direction as the morality of the nation and more importantly their voters. So to claim making it harder to build power bases because bribery is way harder now without looking at how moral the average elected official is now verses 40 years ago is missing the point.