[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercada center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at marcus.org and for more conversations including videos transcripts and upcoming dates visit conversations withth tyler.com [Music] I take Ed loose's new book today's the
publication date The Retreat of Western liberalism to be fairly pessimistic about liberalism so I'd like partly maybe a bit out of character these days to defend a more optimistic perspective but having a taste for the esoteric I'd like to start with a question if we go back to the 1680s and James II takes the throne right and then William of Orange comes over from what we now call the
Netherlands and pushes him out was that a liberal development or an illiberal development yeah at the time it was very much a liberal development and of course we then get the Bill of Rights um we then get a a further restriction of the power of the monarchy that comes with this new Dutch monarchy William William am Mar um uh but in retrospect um you know given the fact
that this is very much the Protestant fundamentalist the battle of the bo the the the the victory of the orange forces William of in retrospect I think it's being celebrated in a pretty illiberal Manner and of course that's very gerain right now in Britain given that Theresa May is trying to form a government in which the um dup the STA unionists party are going to make up the difference between being
a minority government and a majority government so it depends which bit of History you're looking at it from is I guess my answer are you sure it's liberal though because James he's in office he issues some Toleration Acts that will allow Roman Catholics and Protestant de centers to hold office this is viewed as unacceptable foreign forces from what we now call the European Union invade your country and
depose him by force this leads eventually to a number of wars fought by the British arguably an age of Imperialism higher levels of Public Credit State Building yes larger markets uh but even to this day do we know how liberal a development that was so foreign forces I mean I guess you can describe the Stuarts that remember this is pre the act of Union sure um which is
1707 which is 20 almost 20 years after um James has deposed um the Stuarts are Scottish so they were then foreign hopefully they will forever remain not foreign but we don't know that at the moment um but you're right I mean you could argue that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 is the beginning of the the real foundations of Imperial Britain which is not exactly you know a term imperialism
you associate with liberalism I though would focus on habus Corpus um on the right to trial by jury and all the various things that came with the Glorious Revolution and with the Dutch um uh more evolved version of liberalism that existed in the Netherlands at that point having rebelled against um a Spanish um the Spanish Empire and having had their own Industrial Revolution and
their own Enlightenment way before the English one I think I would sort of minimize the foreign King taking over England bit and and stress the fact that this was a king that understood that the divine right of kings was over it was dead and the Stuarts didn't really understand that so how many years do you think we need now to judge whether a particular development is a liberal
development or an illiberal development so the much misquoted chow and Li thing about uh the French Revolution what do you think of it it's too early to tell people have always assumed he was talking about 1789 yes but he was actually asked this question in in 1968 and he thought it was referring um to the French protests on the Left Bank against the goal of 1968 and he was
right it was too early to tell um you need some time uh but some things you don't really need much time with I mean I don't think that um brexit is going to stand the test of time and I think I can you know argue that if you wish me to that judgment pretty confidently I don't think the election of trump uh is going to retrospectively be seen as a liberal moment in American history um in the
non-american definition of liberalism um and I don't if you recall George W Bush's second term when there was all kinds of sort of project ing Bush's um place in history and the analogy was made with Harry Truman that well Truman was really unpopular when he left office and so is Bush and you know they're both tough on National Security and so bush is going to look like Truman I think
that it was pretty easy real time to dispense with that argument let's say we take the British election that was just held so many people are calling it a mess chaos no good results but say I offered you a revisionist view how would you respond I would say it's the first real election where voting by class has essentially Fallen away so you even have Kensington and London going labor for
the first time since 1974 voting is now much more by age you have more female Representatives than ever before you have 15 Muslims elected seven of those being female uh more lgdp individuals and maybe the new liberalism is reflected by that kind of elevation and then on top of that the election definitely thwarted Scottish independence it probably helped a soft
border for Ireland we hope it's helping a soft brexit no Corbin no ukip wasn't it exactly the vote we needed and the most liberal outcome you could have imagined at least relative to all the initial constraints or not oh it was I mean I think this election was um a way better outcome than a thumping majority for Theresa May to negotiate hard brexit I always felt that the best possible
result um was a hung Parliament it's not quite hung enough to use a rather indelicate phrasing what is um it's and and that's why a lot of people who wouldn't dream of wanting somebody like Jeremy Corbin as prime minister voted labor because they knew it would maximize the chances of of of a hung Parliament so there are two things you identified that are very positive in
the larger neoclassical sense of liberalism here one is voter participation right we we can no longer make easy jokes about Millennials they did come out and vote this time they learned from the mistake of brexit of not voting of being uh complacent um and the SNP um being a really heavily cut back a lot of losses there in Scotland for Scottish nationalism which I also
see as a very positive development but this is one of those elections that could change over time our perception of it could change is will this result in a soft brexit isn't soft brexit an oxymoron I mean the idea now that the same Pro remain Pro business pro Prosperity option is that Britain remains a part of the single European market but not of the EU and therefore
pays hundred billion divorce um costs um 100 billion Euro divorce costs has no say over future EU trade deals over EU regulation over movements of people over any EU policies um and yet pays for the privilege it's pretty hard to argue that's an improvement from the pre-brexit situation it's a loss of sovereignty not a gain of sovereignty and it's by for certain it's a serious
loss of economic Cloud those may all be bad outcomes but if you had to express your concern about British politics becoming illiberal or non-liberal or anti-liberal where where do you see that coming from right now or are we the only culprit we Americans no you're not the only culprit um so people asked um where ukip went in this election cuz upip ukip vanished which you could say but I
didn't say is the third sort of very positive event to come out from last Thursday and the reason why I didn't say it is because the conservative party has essentially become ukip it is taken up some really um base low anti-migrant politics which they tried Theresa May tried and failed to um sort of whip up enthusiasm with in the last few days of the campaign but they covered all the
ground that ukip occupied um so Richard hofstader the the the rightly um celebrated American political scientist said third parties are like bees they sting and then they die ukip has stung brexit happened and the conservative party has now basically occupied UK Kip's ground there's just no way you can describe that as a positive development whether we're hung up on the word
liberal uh or not but say we judge the liberalism of a country or Society in terms of levels rather than rates of changes so the percentage of foreign born in the United Kingdom today especially London But Not only would be remarkably High by really any previous standards 1066 for that matter uh so there's a movement back but it seems that gain has been captured permanently right it's not that
foreigners will on mass be driven out some people from the EU may be sent back home but even that seems to be in more doubt now so isn't it just a slight Retreat of liberalism after it won far greater gains than we might have rationally expected it it could be and I hope it is and and I'm certainly open to the prospect it might be and you know I argued to to some degree well
successfully with my Publishers who wanted my book to be called the collapse of Western liberalism I said no no this this should be the retreat and Retreat implies the possibility of regrouping I don't think there's a collaps going on here I do think there is a severe structural challenge to the way we conduct democracy liberal democracy in in the west particularly in the english-
speaking West um the outcome of the immigration sort of aspect of brexit uh I think is one of those things that's going to be very very hard to predict because Theresa May or whoever replaces her uh Brit British is ital British politics is italianized there's going to be another general election maybe by the time this podcast is released maybe by the time this podcast the dead woman walking will will
actually be dead um but the uh the idea that a conservative prime minister could remain leader of their party whilst keeping freedom of movement um is pretty hard to imagine now the party shifted very very much to an anti-immigrant position um but the idea that anybody can survive and get reelected and generate growth by leaving the single Market is also pretty hard to imagine so
Britain's between a rock and a hard place there's there's really no good outcomes here given the landslides of macron in Finland the true fins are splintering the five-star party in Italy had weak local results no one thinks Germany's going crazy why does this move away from liberalism seem to be so anglo-american what do you attribute that to well I mean I I would dispute
your premise to some degree I mean I think the macron victory is is a a very very positive moment but um you know if you were going to ask me overrated underrated you know macron would be in the overrated category right now um the uh first um time the national front the fral candidate Marine Le Pen's father Je Marie Le Pen got through to the second
round was in 2002 and it was a crisis of France it was a drama of the Republic How could a fascist get through to to being one of the last two and Jac Shirak LED you know what was essentially a funeral March no campaigning between round one of the election and round two and everybody put the famous cloth pegs on their nose Socialist Communist they voted for the gist they voted for sherak
and he got 8 2% of the vote um and as I say it was an existential moment in French democracy so Marine Leen gets through to the second round as expected wins a third of the vote 11 million votes as opposed to 5 million and it's it's a kind of normal event um so I I would dispute the fact that nothing's changed I think you know in September hopefully Merkel or Martin Schulz will
be um elected in the German elections um but the afd is going to breach the 5% um limit um below which you cannot achieve representation under the German system and this will be the first time in German history since 194 since its basic law was promulgated in 1949 that the far right has achieved representation and then of course there's Austria um where um a modern Neo-Nazi a postmodern
Neo-Nazi Norbert haer lost with 47% of the vote and we celebrated that as a Breaking of the populist wave I mean how low should our bar be to celebrate the health of liberal democracy that that that to me is too low so I dispute that that sort of premise of your question but there was a second half to your question which why Anglo American um that is that is a really good question I
mean I think part of it is that the middle classes have fared worse there are fewer supports for the middle classes um in in Britain and the United States and there elsewhere so the level of frustration um I think is higher it's a remarkable fact that there are more Prim AED males in work in France than there are in the United States in France of of all places um so that there there's a
male element to this too I think that the cynicism generated by the Iraq War the the um the the us-led but British supported Iraq war in 20 2003 the fact that France and Germany very much stood apart from it and I think correctly and that's a decision that sort of matures like a good wine it looks better and better over time um I think that that created a
poison in our politics that is missing in Germany and in France but I would most of all focus on something that a former French prime minister Leonel jpa said which is we want a market economy not a market society and I think that we have in in in the United States and to a large extent Britain I think we have commodified public life and we have commod commodified Society to a degree
that you just don't see in places like Germany and I think we should I think we have things to learn from parts of Continental Europe including how they treat their middle classes we we confuse ourselves in in in in the US and Britain as to what skilled me means we think if you've got a college degree you're skilled um I know lots of skilled people who don't have college degrees and I
know lots of people with college degrees including myself who are unskilled and I think that there is a better understanding particularly in the Nordic in Denmark uh and Germany of of the need to accommodate a diversity of of aspirations and aptitudes in the labor force and they invest in things that we consider just to be low skill Stepping Stones to to to either something better
or to failure and so we've got a lot more failures I think and they're a lot more frustrated but aren't we in a sense just ahead of them along the curve so if you look at top French companies and try to find any that postate 1975 in terms of origin very very difficult to do So eventually those sectors will fall away or those companies will shrink uh if you ask French people do they think their
children will have a fure future as good as what they've had you get some of the highest rates of no in the world if you look at Germany it's in some ways economically more positive but most of German industry is extremely vulnerable to Chinese manufacturing and just as Chinese manufacturing has done that to Italy Germany probably also is vulnerable has poor native demographics
has barely had real wage growth since 2000 uh has now a higher rate of people at work but is it the case this is happening first to the Anglo country simply because they're more open and the future comes here first it used to come to California first Sometimes I joke it comes to Israel and Singapore first because those are small fairly open places where a small impact spreads
quite rapidly uh is that a possible hypothesis it it's it's it may be a probable hypothesis and and hence my pessimism about the future of liberal democracy on the continent so um I I would I would accept that France you know has probably going going to go through some restructuring um that is going to cause a lot of political nashing of teeth and maon macron's program you know is a sort of soft
thatcherism maybe maybe you call it blism I don't know what you call it but M Cron's you know the rubber's going to hit the road quite soon he's got a majority of um or Marsh has a majority in the French assembly and a lot of these people have never served in politics before that was part of the appeal but it's a very thin it's a wide but thin Coalition that has been
assembled by a very skillful young man and I now really do feel old because you know he's like at least a decade younger than me um uh by promising all things to all people very clever politics not a you know not necessarily a good program for governing France has a politics of anti-politics of people who don't vote and of people who protest by bringing politics to a halt and I think we're
going to see that tested so I don't necessarily disagree with the premise of that I think France and Germany are going to be subjected to um a lot of harsh winds as as they already are but it'll they'll get harsher as China grows and others grow and the the proposition you know of whether their democracies are better equipped to cope with this will be put to the test I do think though that there
are some things they know that we don't I mean Denmark for example has an employer um government program where everybody can train at anything they like for two weeks a year um and most most Danish employees Avail of that and they train in stuff and so the labor market turnover in Denmark is way higher than it is in the rest of Europe because people don't feel wedded to one skill
they feel much more confident in a gig economy to move around and be more flexible and change jobs so there are you know I don't want to generalize too grossly about which democracies are doing badly which are doing well what's important is what unites us um and that is a pretty profound existential challenge to how we how we do business if you like what's the most
plausible scenarios through which Trump Andor brexit work out for the better I'm not saying you have to agree with it but if you had to say the most plausible scenarios um so Trump working out for the better um I would say is the system showing that it works the madonian system showing that it works now I wouldn't wish impeachment on anybody but the system has to hold Trump to account
um I believe there are good signs in the last few weeks and months of the system doing that um you know the the the appointment of mulah um the courts blocking the Muslim ban again repeatedly um the media is doing a pretty good job of fiting out stuff um and Congress well we'll see we'll see but it's sort of limbering up perhaps to do a good job so I think the American system proving it
works might be a net plus over time brexit uh the the by far the best outcome is that the British do what our wise and uh um and now by now more successful neighbors the Irish have done twice which is twice lost a referendum on Europe um on mastri and on on and on Lisbon um and twice said okay so now we're going to ask you again having thought about it and it was a bit like
round one of the French election and round two there's a cooling off period second round the turnout shoots up and the Irish having thought about it but we need a second referendum in Britain you cannot determine a country's future like this with 52% of the vote but then there is a sense of we're going to keep on voting till we get this right and at least Pro brexit people will say well
you're opposing liberalism to democracy there was a decisive result not by a landslide but it was clear and after the result it didn't seem very regretted and people still see seem to take some form of brexit for granted it's not really being challenged openly except by a small number of Elites so is your vision of liberalism something that ultimately comes before
democracy um I think it um historically comes before democracy still does I don't necessarily think it trumps I think the two actually go together um but could I just could I just sort of briefly say on the on the brexit argument here is an example of Il liberalism when people say look could we have a second referendum um as three judges um um said well they
didn't quite say that as three judges um suggested that Parliament should have a say in this after all Britain is based on the sovereignty of Parliament that is if we're going to take back our sovereignty Parliament should have a say um enemies of the people the three judges faces were put on the front of not just tabloids but what we call broad sheets in Britain supposedly more
serious newspapers enemies of the people um and the kind of demagoguery um that has gone on for anybody who's raised that debate has chilled um the whole um ability to have a rational discussion about what the tradeoffs are here so granted if there were a second referendum and the remainers lost it um that would be a high risk to call such a referendum and it might well be the case that British
people get really annoyed at being asked twice and the pro brexit you know margin goes up but I think people should be given a chance to think about you know to to to to cool off and think about what's at stake here because all the evidence shows that there was a really poor debate leading up to to last Summer's brexit and the electorate you know as famously Googled EU uh on a
scale never seen before the following day what is the EU we have a pretty good idea what liberalism looks like for agricultural societies also for manufacturing societies but say the big political issues of the future maybe the present were something like the environment the internet intellectual property law privacy immigration terrorism and dementia right not so implausible with those as the major
issues do we even know what liberalism looks like just to say people back in even the 1930s probably hardly ever debated gay marriage if at all look uh if if you were to ask me one of my favorite liberal thinkers um would be Edmund Burke and Edmund Burke who is normally thought of as a conservative thinker but I see no contradiction I'm not using liberalism in the American
sense of liberalism um developed the idea during the time of the French Revolution of the superiority of representative democracy remember we had the Jacobin saying now we need an instant electric democracy and nothing in between the people and the decisions you are describing decisions here very complex ethically legally so societally and internationally very complex
decisions that you cannot decide by pleite and I don't care whether you can do it online and make it easier it makes no difference these are questions where you need to be able to delegate authority to your representatives who you can fire at the next opportunity to develop the skills um as full-time political representatives to make these judgments and if you don't like those
judgments you throw them out but I don't think the answer is either what you might be implying because you could go two one of two ways pleiter you know robespier kind of democracy on the one hand um or um Singapore you know basically non-democracy and a rule of experts on the other I don't see anything better than representative democracy I proposed to Mark Kama a few days ago over lunch
that we simply give everything to the House of Lords for about five years and then go back to the Constitution we have now in the middle of these we always have a segment overrated versus underrated uh you're from England of course you've moved to the United States so I'm going to ask you about a number of other Brits who've done the same and you tell me if you think they're
overrated or underrated Stanley Kubrick you call him a Brit well do I call you a Brit I don't know oh see sorry others who've done this got got it yeah um you know I think he's rated pretty well highly he deserves to be rated highly but you you're really going to um uh Space Odyssey 2001 okay John Lennon move to New York overrated why it's a lot of people who don't know
much about lenon sort of worship him as the best Beetle and he's the best Beetle cuz he died youngest um I think uh um I think lenon was a bit of a jerk frankly although you know he's he was a great Lyricist but I don't really have You Have you listened to I am the warus recently does that make any sense to you it's brawling as they say Alfred Hitchcock overrated why um because I think his movies were a lot
more formulaic um his his later movies were a lot more formulaic um it was a formula that worked but his genius his genius sort of faded much earlier than I'm struggling here cuz he's a brilliant Movie Maker sorry I'm really struggling but I thought I should say somebody's overrated it seems they're all over yeah Sir Anthony Hopkins thing is you you're you're you're throwing names at me who are all
really highly rated sure so I have to argue okay i' i' yeah I can't say he's underrated yeah I cannot know he's a very very good actor but um can I pass on that one wh aen wh mov here 19 39 right I think he's underrated because he's been forgotten yes I mean the I think he was one of the most br brilliant poets I think we should forgive we should judge him on his
poetry and forgive the fact that he wanted to get the hell out of Dodge in 1939 because he wasn't his contemporaries you know questioned why he was crossing the Atlantic at that particular moment um but his poetry is brilliant and and eternal and um I'd say he's been forgotten you've written one of my favorite books on India in spite of the Gods which I recommend to you all
if we think about the fate of liberalism in India right now there's an enormous effort going on to biometrically record people and have markers of their identity and possibly tie this into some notion of a universal guaranteed income or at least greater Reliance on cash transfers there will be much more Aid to people but also much more control of people under the Modi regime which has
pushed for both Aid and control in different ways and hasn't liberalized as much as many people had expected is India right now moving in a liberal Direction it would be hard to argue that it is um nendra Modi has been doing a lot of things under the radar in terms of chipping away the Indian secular nouvian secular constitution of India um and making it harder for minorities Muslims
Christians and others to um Express themselves freely um in terms of allowing farri groups associated with the S pariva which is the sort of broad name given to the hindutva movement of what of which the BJP is a branch the RSS is really the parent um allowing allowing groups the the really uh the most um the most vicious youth Wing the badang Dal and vhp um another very hard
right part of um the the hinda movement a lot more leeway legally to harass minorities and changing of the curriculum to rewrite it in a to make India Hindu and Hindu India and completely you know downplay the the extraordinary important Muslim um contribution to what is a syncretic culture and a riot of faiths and interactions and a glory of pluralism um is that overplaying political headlines
too much because the situation of women in India is headed toward long-term Improvement wealth is rising every year India's proven actually remarkably stable it's still quite Democratic albe it in a funny way with very disconnected sense of accountability and if it simply keeps in motion won't you get over the medium to long term say at least a third of India looking a bit like Malaysia
Gujarat having infrastructure being developed people having richer Freer more diverse lives not all of India but bear orisa they're still better off rural India moving more to cities which is the single biggest liberalizing development you could imagine in a life and thus political headlines aside India as a whole will be much more liberal 10 or 15 years from now or no am I looking
at the wrong indicators well I mean you know modi's a I think of him as a jackqueline height figure The Jackal figure the good part is that he is he's a fanatic he believes what he believes and he's therefore not in in politics for business he's not in it for corruption or personal enrichment and he doesn't tolerate people around him who are and that's an extraordinarily
refreshing and important change from the Congress government that that he booted out 3 years ago um so the Jackal is is not actually a sort of classic lasir liberal it's a China model of development he's a project executor he believes in infrastructure that's built and on time and that works and God knows India needs that um so if Modi if Jackal Modi succeeds it will be a positive
liberal event because more people will be lifted out of poverty fewer people will be illiterate and women as you say will be prime beneficiaries of this but remember remember he's also Dr Hyde um this guy is a fascist um and if things go wrong and Jackal can't deliver and he faces reelection two years from now and uh the possibility of losing a majority um he will he's a master B Nan of
whipping up Hindu sentiment and to override cast divisions that's always the key is how can you unite Hindus beyond what divides them um because in India you don't um you don't cast your vote you vote your cast China China had a Communist Revolution a cultural revolution going back earlier typing Rebellion at least on the surface partition aside India appears much more
stable than China over the long term at least that's the cliche is it true and if so why is India so apparently stable um I think India's diversity is a great stabilizing strength um the fact that it's got I think 18 official languages although they do add to that the fact that um it has got every religion Under the Sun the fact that as EP Thompson famously said there's not a thought
that's being thought in east or west that is not active in some Indian mind India's sheer plur pluralism is very stabilizing if you take a sort of 30,000 foot view if you're in the midst of it you think it's Anarchy but if you the the more the more altitude you get on this the more stabilizing it is it is a country that lets off steam regularly and that um and that's why I'm concerned
that Modi Modi doesn't celebrate that side of India and I think it's an important immensely valuable um Quality to India that gives it a huge advantage over China before we get to questions we have about three minutes left three questions about you you have about a minute of piece reach you were speech writer for Economist Larry Summers other than the obvious what particular skill
does a good speech riter need um thing is about speech writer there's no such thing as a generic speech writer that you are speech writer to A or B and if Larry's a you need to know Larry very well I don't think being a speech writer to Steve nin would be uh any help to being speech wrer to Larry Summers you've got to know the individual your writing speeches for and Larry um you
know whatever his uh robust personality um might be you learn more from writing speeches for him in 3 months than you do in you know one year um as a student it's an extraordinary intensive learning process second about you you're famous columnist for the financial times you had a particular path to the top that path would probably be hard to replicate
today if you're giving someone advice today who wants to be the next dead loose what advice do you give them other than the obvious um I would say do other things than journalism don't start out being a journalist I would say the same for politics too not that I'm have any credibility on that subject I'd say do other stuff acquire real skills and experience in completely unrelated Fields last
question about you what still surprises you the most about the United States the ability to reinvent itself even though there is a complacent class um and I I accept your thesis it is the ability to keep changing um and there is that protean quality to America which might have slowed but it's still way more in evidence here than in places that never had it more in evidence here
than in the United Kingdom yeah because that seems like a more different country to me over the last 30 years than the United States we seem like a somewhat linear development of the Reagan years whereas in terms of immigrants and connection to Europe and that may be changing but the UK seems radically different compared to my first visit in 1979 well food is is certainly better
but i' argue that ref something I'd argue the food is better here too and I I wouldn't dare argue with you about food um uh so I don't know I think that's a pretty subjective line and the UK has changed a lot um that's that's right I think can I argue can I prove to you America Has Changed more I don't know I mean I think in 2002 if somebody had told you that gay marriage would be legal that um
marijuana recreationally would be legal in X number of states um and that you'd have a black president asking something I didn't agree with for uh transgender bathroom rights in an election year you would have um you would have probably scoffed at at any such change being possible I'm not saying all that change was positive but I certainly think marriage equality is and the speed with
which that happened is is remarkable Ed loose thank you very [Applause] much we'll take questions at the two mics please line up uh these are not speeches if you start giving a speech I will cut you off first I'll start with a question from the iPad Ed who is the one columnist you'd like to fight physically I don't know you it's a career ending to give an honest answer
to that and you'd hate me for giving a dishonest one so I'm not going to answer okay first question here uh the regimes in Poland and hungry do you see them as an outlier that will be contained or something that's the Forerunner of more to come that's a very good question look I I think if you know we'd had this situation with Hungary um 20 years ago um or even or even 15 years ago um
America's involvement in Europe um um under the radar behind the scenes in chiving Europe to take steps it needs to to take um would have been far earlier and far more effective um today we are suffering I think from an absence of leadership of the liberal International order and countries like Hungary and Poland um are able to move extraordinarily you know after having
really craved to join the EU to be European to be Western extraordinarily moving towards putinism or some form of putinism and I think America's absence is really important so I'm not particularly optimistic on that score because I think America is going to continue to be absent on these questions and I think we underestimate the degree to which America has been an exceptional
power and that this 70 years since 1945 has been what Bob Kagan calls an unnatural period in human history um and it's been it's it's been a success broadly um of an era of no Mass Wars and moving towards democracy because there's been a hegemon consciously pushing in that direction that's a role America is no longer playing I I hope it plays it again but until it does I fear you're going to see
Poland and Hungary moving further in the direction they've been moving next question um we we've talked about the um illiberalism on the right I think brexit and president Trump and all those sorts of things ukip um but what about the liberalism on the left I think that the final nail in the coffin of blism came last Thursday when Jeremy Corbin who is an unrepentant Marxist picked up
30 seats um in that election and melan Shaw in France and Bernie Sanders here in the United States I mean the the the farle is really on a role um something of a role in in the Western World could you speak to the far- left's illiberalism yeah and I think it's a very good question and I think it's an often overlooked one look I think the left if you're if you're a Democrat
looking at a candidate for 2020 there is essentially a debate going on in the party between a sort of MRA Wing W wing and a corista wing and these are the two sort of left responses we're seeing in Europe um uh Lefty liberalism and anti-americanism to which European left liberalism is very closely aligned uh is very serious very real um Mel Shaw might have lost but you know he got almost a
fifth of the vote as you mentioned um and I think that the further away we get from 2008 which is very much associated with the new left the Third Way left of Blair and and Gordon Brown and others the further away we get from that um the the the more we're going to see populist leftwing um movements mushrooming um everywhere so I I would consider this isn't just a right-wing populist moment
although that's been the Principal manifestation of populism and I agree with you identification of that next question this past weekend there was a PL of site in Puerto Rico on state hood and 25% of the electorate showed up today yet again we have another election here in Virginia we have one every 6 months where probably 20% of the elector will show up is this apathy complacency
fatigue or some is there some illiberal mechanism that's holding the electric back I think um there is a cynicism about politics which incidentally um manifested itself in France last um Sunday round two the macr um on Marsh Landslide was 49% turnout which is a historic low for France we'll see this coming Sunday whether that that that that goes up uh I think there is a deep cynicism about
politics and I understand and about experts and establishment politics remember um you know in France it's also an anti-establishment thing going on I think there's a deep cynicism about it which is which is really quite understandable if you look at what the experts have brought us um they brought us the Iraq War um the experts very much msold how that would Fair they bought us 2008 the
experts were the last to see it coming um and I think Millennials who who until last Thursday in Britain have been turning out at lower rates in most democracies than other age groups have grown up with this cynicism and they feel it's normal now Tyler would say that's healthy because they're not actually angry they're just apathetic and if you've got
a choice between anger and apathy let's go for apathy but I think it's highly corrosive of liberal democracy there's a related question on the iPad is it I'm rewarding a bit is it the case that Elites have so used the Judiciary and administrative law in the case of the UK through the European Union that actually brexit and Trump are simply Democratic backlashes wanting to take back for
democracy powers that have been taken away from the Democratic will of the people and it had to get to the point of brexit and Trump for that actually to be reversed yeah so that would be your history will look back on this as a liberal moment scenario that this is a very violent sort of counter reaction to the growing internationalization of law to the uh increasingly widened field of
stuff that's off limits to democratic um decision- making which of course includes trade regulation International if you're in Europe it includes all these things and if this is simply a correction where we we reject Davos um we reject the sort of Elites run the world and decide all the big economic stuff and we we just stick with identity politics then this could be a
liberal moment I think it's a very good question I suspect though you don't just just have these little conniptions that then fade away there were consequences to these connetions and I I I I fear that trumpism is going to even if he lost in 2020 is going to leave a deeply disruptive Mark um in the pejorative sense of disruptive um mark on American democracy and on the reputation of
American democracy and American leadership around the world and as I've said before on brexit um we're about to sign up as the samean option to a world where foreigners decide our regulations our trade deals and our product standards and all except we don't have a say over it so you know if that's r go figure next question how does the multi-party system in Europe affect the retreat or
advancement of liberalism versus the basically two- party system we have here in the US um so the until last Thursday the Assumption was the British two-party system is disintegrating into a European model where we're just going to have permanent Coalition governments but last Thursday was the peak two-party moment um in almost 40 years the conservative party
got a higher share of the vote its higher share of the vote since 1983 when thata had her you know second big Landslide and the labor party had its highest share of the vote since 1983 um more than sorry sorry it had its highest share of the vote since 1997 when Blair came in so this is a two-party Peak the smaller parties have temporarily been pushed away the United
States you don't have two parties you have many parties under two umbrellas and you're a continent um so it's very hard to analogize the US with um with um with Europe but one thing I would say is your system is not designed to be parliamentary your system works better when each party is a coalition between different interests and the fact that each is becoming more and more monochromatic um more and more
disciplined and parliamentary is disastrous for this system this system doesn't work like that iPad question Russia is commonly considered the primary antagonist of liberalism what are the chances liberalism itself takes all in Russia in the next 20 years um perhaps pretty good I mean if you look anywhere around the world cities cities tend to vote for the internationalist option and Putin was so
complacent rightly so about his last presidential campaign in 2012 he allowed more than half of Moscow to vote to vote against him um so and of course Istanbul erdogan um strongly rejected erdogan's recent referendum um on strengthening his powers so Alex Alexi naali the leader currently of um opposition to Putin is doing something that Corbin managed to achieve last Thursday he's
getting young people out and being quite bold and protesting on quite some scale across Russia um and you you ought to draw Hope from that kind of of Courage from Millennials we're used to thinking of Millennials as slightly different so I wouldn't rule out uh Russia turning from um a bane of Western democracy to being something quite hopeful I think that's definitely
um a positive thing that's potentially going on now next question sure uh Neil Ferguson concluded his book uh the west and the rest with the idea that is the panity of Western democracies is to blame for the declin of Western ideas what do you think about that um so he was talking um about the over consumption and deficit spending I think partly right I don't really agree with that uh I don't agree
with that at all I think when people talk about the massive American debt when we look at what 75% of GDP look at the publicly held that I don't think by historic standards that's remotely alarming uh I think in fact um we should have had more stimulus and had more counter cyclical fiscal policy in the last decade than we have had uh and I think the German answer and here's where
I you know I would criticize the German sedom manitar interest approach has actually been very very damaging to Europe particularly to the Club Med group of European countries so I'm not sure I agree with Neil Ferguson but you know he he changes his argument about once a year so I I'll either catch up with him or he'll catch up with me why do African Americans poll as being so
optimistic about the future of this country uh because they are getting um better off from a much lower base and Hispanics do too yes um they I think quite rationally see their children as being better off than they are um they they're coming from a much lower base they tend to be younger average age too um which affects that Outlook so I think it's as simple as that how much of the
decline of liberalism in the west do you attribute to the possible disappearance of an existential threat no Nazism no communism no cold war how much is that what's going on a lot of it a lot of it I think the last great foreign policy president um the United States had was Bush senior um I think he was a brilliant president who wound down the cold war with extraordinary finesse and
skill he did not go and dance on the Berlin Wall he did not go and beat his breast and claim credit for it can you imagine a president doing that today I think the I think the the Cold War kept um kept America honest as it were um and enabled this bipartisan support for America's as I say unnatural Global role of being the Hercules that sustains the liberal
International order so I think the cold Bo played a hugely important role and it's going to be very hard to reinvent it nor should we wish to is Pope Francis a liberal um in a way yes he is uh he is trying to push to the extent that he can for softer you know um uh ecclesiastical law on divorce on contraception on Rhythm methods and all that kind of stuff but you know although I'm not an
orangeman I'm not a Catholic and I'm tiptoeing through a Minefield already so I don't want to get too um I don't want to I don't want to be too um detailed in my commentary on on Catholic law I'm going to get something wrong next question the uh dysfunction of the US Congress first of all do you agree that it's it's becoming less and less functional secondly how do you relate
that to your your point in which you pointed to the commodification of politics and society and not just the economy uh and if so how do we go then from where we are to what you propose as a a system of government in which we trust in the delegation of authority to people whom we trust to to do the right thing who've presented div vision of the right thing that we somehow come to
share just on timing there are two more questions and we have like 3 minutes okay so you'll have to give a super abbreviated answer to that so my super abbreviated answer is Reed Manor Olsen which I'm sure you have um and um and we can talk more about that later Hilton penultimate question yes I'd like to push you to uh talk a little bit more about the retreat to something what are
they what are they moving towards uh and and in this regard I'm thinking of Tony juts uh argument that the they're moving uh towards some kind of certainty uh and away from the liberal institutions that that they perceive as having failed to satisfy their needs um so democracy in the last 15 20 years has actually been receding worldwide and including in Europe Poland
and Hungary are as one question identified wobbling but there are 25 fewer democracies today than there were in 2000 and I think the retreat of Western liberalism isn't uh just that uh we having our problems at home and the and having to relearn some of the lessons of what of what liberal democracy actually means but I think because our models are not performing well for the
broad-based uh electorates um that vote on um uh our governments um every few years so the model of Western liberalism and I just a very quick thing I know a quick answer 2008 was um described as a global recession it wasn't it was an Atlantic recession um China kept growing India um kept growing um and the relative attractiveness of the Chinese model therefore grew and I think I think
the retreat of Western liberalism is as a a model that delivers the goods to its people that's the ultimate measure is is a kind of economic determinist one that I would apply last question from me if there's more human talent in the world today than ever before and if liberalism is a good thing why should we be pessimistic well well we shouldn't and if you look at the world from a Global
Perspective there's never been a period where more people have been lifted out of poverty faster than today and and and we we should remember it's because of pax Americana it's because of the public goods supplied over the last 70 80 years that China is in a position and India to lift people out of poverty on this scale to cut child mortality illiteracy you know um Under Fire whatever it is
maternal deaths uh so globally this is an immensely positive moment and more brain power is being plugged into the system you know exponentially um o o over time but in the west we also have more Talent right in the west we have more talent but we have way more wasted Talent than we used to have there's a lot more Idol humans than they used to be and don't me don't look at the
unemployment rate you know this look at the labor force participation rate Ed loose thank you very much thank you very thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the [Music] show