WEBVTT - Fareed Zakaria Explains Why Today Is Just Like the 1920s 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:14.320 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.720 Welcome to Voteronomics, where politics and markets collide. I'm made 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.040 from Woodridge. For my summer reading selection, I've chosen the 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:28.840 latest release from Fared Zacaria, Age of Revolutions. Freed, of course, 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:34.159 hosts CNN's flagship international affairs show, fored Zakaria GPS. He 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.000 writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and is 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.440 the author of the Future of Freedom, the Post American World, 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.360 and Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. But as 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:47.280 I said, this conversation focuses on Age of Revolutions, Progress 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.320 and backlash from sixteen hundred to the present. This is 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:53.400 really a fascinating book about the rise of the liberal 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.880 order and the possible collapse of that liberal order. For Reid, 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:00.960 you have a record of taking on read big themes, 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.759 the Future of Freedom, the post American World. But this 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:09.640 is your biggest theme yet, the Age of Revolutions, Progress 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.720 and Backlash from sixteen hundred to the present. Tell us 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:16.240 a bit about your argument. What was it that inspired 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:18.000 this book and what is the main thesis. 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.600 That's a wonderful question, Adrian, What inspired the book, or 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.760 at least triggered the book was that about ten years 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.160 ago I started to notice something that I thought was 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:30.520 very unusual, which was the rise of the Tea Party. 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.400 And the reason I thought it was unusual was it 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:38.160 was a kind of grassroots insurgency that was taking over 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:44.520 or upending, the most hierarchical of the political parties in 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.400 America and one of the most hierarchical in the Western world. 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.440 If you think of the Republican Party, the old saying 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:54.600 about presidential nominations used to be that the Democrats have 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:58.240 to fall in love, but Republicans fall in line. And 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.080 if you think about, you know, the Democrat nominating John 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:06.440 Kennedy and Clinton and Obama, you understand that, whereas the 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:10.240 Republicans would nominate you know, Nixon and then Nixon and 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.320 then Nixon and then Bush and another Bush. You know, 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.239 it was very hierarchical. You stud your turn. And here 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:23.680 the Tea Party was upending that bottom up and was 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:27.919 animated by issues that were not the traditional Republican issues, 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.640 not about economics, cutting budgets, all that stuff. It was 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:37.960 all cultural immigration, Obama as a black president. And it 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.840 made me just begin to think about how politics was changing. 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.519 And I read a speech by Tony Blair, in which 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:48.040 he talked about how the old division of left versus 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.440 right on the basis of economics, you know, kind of 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:53.280 the size of the state was giving way to a 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:57.640 politics based on your attitude towards a world that was 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:03.800 open versus closed, you know, globalization, immigration, technology, even and 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.440 that's where it all began. And then in order to 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:10.800 you know, I found myself asking, if we're going through 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.399 this kind of period of enormous change which is producing 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.560 a backlash, when did this begin? When have we seen 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.320 this before? And I thought about the Industrial Revolution, But 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.400 then that took me back further and I ended up, 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.600 as you know, starting with the Dutch in the seventeenth century. 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.040 The basic argument of the book is that whenever you 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.760 have periods of enormous technological and economic change, it tends 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:40.440 to transform societies and you also end up getting a 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:43.920 third revolution, which is a kind of identity revolution. People 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.520 change the way they think of themselves. So when the 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.160 Dutch for the first time became rich, they began to 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:54.080 think of themselves differently, not as part of the Habsburg Empire, 0:03:54.480 --> 0:04:00.360 not as simply Christians, but as Protestants, and essentially broke 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:04.280 away from the Habsburg Empire and created the Dutch Republic, 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:10.760 and then that identity revolution trans most into a political revolution. 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:15.040 And whenever you have this process that I just described, 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:19.400 there is almost always a backlash. And how you navigate 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:24.520 through this forward movement and backlash determines how successfully you 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.200 kind of make your way in the world. The Dutch 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.080 and the British, I argue, in the sixteenth seventeen eighteenth 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:35.920 centuries handled this largely well. The French, in the French Revolution, 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.960 handled it very badly. And those are in some ways 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:45.640 the two archetypal examples, one being evolutionary change of bottom 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.520 up these trends of technology, economics to reshaping society and 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:55.560 politics adapting to it, versus the French, who decide top 0:04:55.640 --> 0:05:00.159 down political elites are going to decree a revolution in 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.600 a transformation of society, and the whole thing explodes. 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:08.040 So the Dutch, followed by the British, followed presumably by 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:12.080 the Americans, of the good guys exactly, and the French 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:14.920 not quite so good is that because they go over 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.720 the top, and then you know, the revolution with all 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:22.599 its blood leads to Napoleon. Is that the sequence of events. 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.839 Basically, the French get it all wrong in the sense 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:30.320 that France was not a society that was being transformed 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.839 bottom up by economics and technology. At the time of 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:40.039 the French Revolution. France was a large agrarian, centralized society. 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:45.000 It was not particularly urban, the merchants were not particularly dominant. 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.880 So all the forces of kind of modernization and change 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:53.560 that had been roiling or transforming the Netherlands in Britain 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:58.160 were absent in France. But the French politically, a certain 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:04.360 group of Frenchman decide that they want to accelerate change 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.479 and to achieve not quite a merchant republic, but a 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:12.160 republic nonetheless, and they decreate it from above. And what 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:14.600 it turns out is that France is still a very 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:20.200 old fashioned, traditional agrarian society and it doesn't take and 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:22.800 so the revolution goes, you know, it kind of goes 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.040 helter skelter in various ways. As you know, the story 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:29.599 of the French orpwe is so complicated. One of the 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.000 great challenges of the book was getting it down to 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:35.320 forty pages. But basically, the best way to think about 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.600 it is it fails on its own terms. This is 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:42.839 a revolution that begins with the execution of a monarch 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:47.160 and it ends with Napoleon crowning himself as monarch. So 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.080 on its own terms, it is unable to achieve the 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.120 political modernization it looks for. 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.799 But you have a great lineage of liberal societies starting 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.760 with the Netherlands, going to Britain and then going to 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.880 the United States with this sort of failed detour with France. 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.479 Can you tell us something about what that means for 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.840 the for the modern world. This is essentially North European 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.920 Anglo Saxon lineage of ideas. 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:20.760 Yeah, it's actually fascinating when you think about how unusual 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.680 or narrow or serendipitous this path is. You know, you 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:28.360 have this, this extraordinary breakout in the Netherlands. This is 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:34.120 the first country to really redefine national power by using 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.080 not agriculture and extraction. That was the old way. The 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.160 only way people countries knew how to get rich was 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.960 you know, your agriculture, which basically produced about the same 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:50.520 level of wealth per capita for thousands of years, or 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.280 you could go into another country stealer's goal. Those are 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.400 the two way and that and the Dutch basically find 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:01.280 that they use innovation, they use tech chnological innovation, they 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:05.160 use financial innovation. Crucially important to Holland's rise is the 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.040 invention of the joint stock company, the invention of the 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.920 Amsterdam stock Market, first grade multinational company in the world, 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:16.360 the Dutch East Indies Company, and all these things propel 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:19.880 the Netherlands to become the richest country in Europe, which 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:22.720 means the richest country in the world. And that part 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.640 of the practices are, you know, an emphasis on an 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:30.920 egalitarian political and social structure, a republic rather than a monarchy, 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.000 a merchants having an enormous say, political parties for the 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.400 first time rather than a court being the locusts of 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:42.280 political influence. Tolerance because you discover that tapping human talent 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.679 wherever it is becomes important. So the Dutch, you know, 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.840 are much more tolerant towards Jews, much more tolerant towards 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:54.760 Protestants and Catholics than any other place in Europe. That 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:59.440 model moves to England, which had many similar characteristics, also 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.760 very decent centralized part of Europe. Both of these places 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.160 were the farthest provinces of the Roman Empire and were 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.559 therefore the least centrally governed from Rome, and so they 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.920 had developed a kind of autonomy as a result, and 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:19.600 it is in this cocoon, the Netherlands, in Britain and England, 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:25.640 really that ideas about individual liberty, individual rights, private property, 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.959 the idea of the dignity of the individual and his 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:33.640 or her and really his ability to pursue a life 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:40.280 that he wants freed from monarchical tyranny, church dogma. All 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:44.839 these ideas sort of take root in this area. And 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.640 then I would argue, because of the inherent virtue of 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:54.520 these ideas, or certainly the technical superiority of these ideas, 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:58.880 Britain becomes the most powerful country since Rome, and it 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:03.480 colonizes parts of the world and globalizes these ideas. So 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:05.920 a crucial part of that is that Britain ended up 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:10.839 colonizing North America, which became the next superpower. But also 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.360 important is the fact that Britain spread these ideas to 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:20.120 all over the world, from India to South Africa to Australia. 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.720 They developed a kind of a broad universe of liberal ideas. 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.480 But I think crucial to the spreading of them was 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.320 the fact that then Britain passes the mantle to the 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.280 United States. So if you think about it for two 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:36.000 and a half centuries. Now we have lived in a 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:39.560 world in which the dominant power has been one that 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.320 adopted these very peculiar ideas that grew out of a 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:47.000 tiny part of northwestern Europe. 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:52.240 Now this is a very weak liberal interpretation of human history. 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:54.920 And let me say that I completely agree with it. 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.160 But let me put on my woke cat for a 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.679 moment and saying that what you're doing is celebrating the 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:07.360 triumph of capitalist imperialism, That these are countries that grew 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:12.760 rich partly by colonialism, partly by slavery, partly by exploiting 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.720 what they would have regarded as lesser breeds. You're an Indian, 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:21.720 but you're celebrating that the power of this liberal imperialism. 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.880 How do you respond to them? To the critique which 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:28.600 is very dominant in America American higher education. 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:32.520 Now it's a very fair critique, and it's a fair argument. 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.880 It's worth noting that the original opposition to Whig history 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.760 came actually from the right, not from the left. There 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:45.200 was a much more traditional kind of deep historical school 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.600 of thought in Britain in other places which said this 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:52.720 whole idea that there is any progress in history is 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.760 the fallacy. The Whigs think that things have gotten better, 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.400 and this is nonsense. Where the history is cyclical, you know, 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.080 morally we have degenerated. This used to be the argument 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.480 against Whig history, and when Herbert Butterfield writes his his 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:11.319 essay on wik history, that's what he's defending himself against. Today, 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.080 You're absolutely right, the critique comes from the left. And 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.000 look what I would say is, there's no question I'm 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:23.240 celebrating capitalism and democracy and individual liberty and individual rights 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.559 because I do believe they are in they are fundamentally 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.959 superior to everything that came before them in terms of 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.720 political organization, from the point of view of the rights 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.960 of individuals, which I hold very dear, and everything that 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:41.920 has come after in terms of challengers, whether it's been fascism, communism, 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:46.640 Islamic fundamentalism, whatever else you may look at. I regard, 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:52.199 you know, the social democracy as a variant of of liberalism. 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.760 On the imperialism part, it's a it's a harder one, 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.560 it's it's entire It's absolutely true that part and parcel 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:04.199 of this process was the exploitation of people who were 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.680 considered second class citizens, lesser breeds and such. I would 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.520 argue that was not inherent in the project. I don't 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:15.160 think you can make the case that Britain only gained 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.760 its strength from colonies, so that they did help. You 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:20.640 can look at I mean, I go through this as 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:24.360 you know in the book Japan had you know, is 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.360 a good contrast because they both had textile industries. Japan 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.880 had no colonies, Britain had colonies. You know, it's it's 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.240 not it's not easy to make the case in my 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:38.480 view that Britain only advanced because of the because of 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:42.760 the colonies. And much more importantly, what you can see 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.200 the power of these ideas by the fact that it 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:51.880 is these ideas that caused Europe to decolonize. And it 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.959 is only in Europe that you begin you got the 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.400 anti slavery movement. There's slavery all over the world, but 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.800 what caused Europe to be come the locusts classics of 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:05.440 anti slavery. It was these liberal ideas. So I think 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.439 there's something to it, and it's it's probably worth always 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:15.480 remembering that the rise of these liberalism and industrialization did 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:20.440 come along with an enormous exploitation of other countries. You know, 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:22.840 as as somebody who grew up in India. I'm well 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:25.760 aware of it, and you know, we lived it. I 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.960 mean I saw it more from my father's generation. But 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:32.880 my father was very attracted to British ideas of liberalism 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:35.400 and in his case, kind of Fabian socialism as well, 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:40.640 but always also aware that for Britain they came coupled 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:45.280 with a certain kind of pretty unvarnished racism. There was 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.800 the reality that Britain was, in a sense the tutor 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:52.720 for so much of the Indian kind of political elite, 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:56.360 and yet the same political elite were jailed by the 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.200 British and in trials that were not free and fair. 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.920 They walk past clubs and buildings which said which had 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:07.120 signs which said dogs and Indians not allowed. You know, 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.920 my father once pointed out a couple of places where 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.000 there used to be that sign. So that is the 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:17.040 mixed legacy of the Enlightenment, and you can't get away 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:19.480 from it. But I think it was a historical fact, 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:21.120 not a logical fact. 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.640 But when Kipling says take up the white man's burden, 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:28.560 he's talking to the United States, and this mixed legacy 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.400 is even stronger in the United States, I think than Britain, 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:33.920 because it has the institution of slavery, and it has 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:38.160 the institutions of Jim Crow, right, you know, and voting 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.000 discrimination and things like that right up to the nineteen sixties. 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.520 It does seem to be extraordinary that you can have 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:50.320 liberal values and those very very anti liberal values coexisting 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:53.960 within this global hegemon, which is the United States. How 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:54.960 can we explain that? 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.320 Yeah, it's a very good point, and I think it's 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.720 a point that tells us something about the present as well, 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:06.760 which is tribalism and tribal affiliation is one of the 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:12.200 deepest social organizing factors of life. The ability to think 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.640 about your tribe as separate, distinct better than the other 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:21.720 tribe is the oldest form of politics, really, and what 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.080 you see with liberalism is that it is not able 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:30.840 to completely overcome that, and that it rests uneasily alongside 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:36.040 that reality. And in the American case, think of Jefferson 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:40.280 as such an interesting example, right, because of course he's 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.960 a slaver owner, but as so many of the biography's 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:47.640 point out, he was tortured by this. Yeah, quite not 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.920 so tortured that he freed his own flags, but you know, 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:54.320 it was tortured by it, and ultimately what gets rid 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:58.600 of slavery is the you know, those same liberal ideals, 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:02.240 as a Lincoln points out that we're in the Declaration, 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.679 you know that were that were in there and in 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.919 a sense have to be have to triumph over the 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.720 tribalism that says white sou superior to blacks. And then 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:17.159 what makes Jim Crow disappear is again those same ideals. 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.240 You know, Martin Luther King talks about how the Declaration 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:25.080 of Independence was a promisory note to blacks, in other words, saying, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.800 you know, we are using those same ideas to break 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:34.560 through the irrational tribalism that has kept us down. And 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:38.760 even now, you know, we see that the return to 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.600 tribalism is very easy. And whether you look in the 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.480 United States, whether you look in Europe, you see that 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.560 it doesn't take a lot to get us back to 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:50.119 a kind of tribal way of thinking. 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.160 Now, I'm quite convinced by your wig interpretation of history. 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.320 I share it quite strongly. I'm less convinced by this 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:02.240 notion of the open versus the closed, which is something 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.439 that Tony Blair embraced and you embraces in this book, 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:11.199 that liberals are essentially open to the world, open to change, 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:17.320 open to immigration, open to globalization, and nonliberals, conservatives, reactionaries, 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:19.600 whatever you want to call them, are much more closed. 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.240 And let me say why, I'm a bit skeptical about this. 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.399 It strikes me that it's rather the victor's propaganda, and 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:31.400 that many liberals, though they claim to be open, are 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.920 actually very good at protecting themselves. They protect themselves through 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:40.560 educational credentials, through various sorts of certificates, licenses to operate. 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.679 For example, barristers in this country don't let solicitors go 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.560 into courts. If you go to university towns, they seem 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:51.040 to be well defended against change. And if you look 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.320 at the service sector, it's much much less globalized than 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.119 the manufacturing sector. If you look at immigration, openness to immigration, 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:02.440 the's so called disupposedly troglodite people who are opposed to 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.160 immigration actually a people who are badly affected by immigration. 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.960 They lose jobs, they see their wages decline, whereas most 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:13.600 liberals benefit from immigration. They get cheap servants, they get 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.000 cheap cheap services and things like that. Isn't this a 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.280 bit of a liberal illusion that they open. 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:24.399 Yeah, So let me first explain in the broadest sets 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:26.520 what I meant I mean by that, and in a 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:28.679 way you can see it in the transformation of the 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:33.600 Republican Party. The old model, the Republican Party was basically 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:37.879 a free market party, believed in low taxes, low regulation, 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:44.040 low tariffs, welcomed immigration. Ronald Reagan famously signed the eighty 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.119 six amnesty Bill, So it was, you know, it was 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:51.479 arrayed largely along the kind of free market orientation. And 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.040 what has happened to the Republican Party now it's essentially 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:59.760 almost entirely transformed itself. It is now largely skeptical of 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:02.879 In fact, it is the most protectionist major party, I 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.520 would argue in the Western world these days. It has 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:11.760 become much more uneasy about even things like fiscal conservatism. 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:17.760 You know, Trump was a big spender. The degree to 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.040 which it has completely try and reversed itself on immigration 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:27.119 is striking. So it's become a party more comfortable with 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:31.040 the idea of a society that's more closed, more protected, 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:35.560 more culturally chauvinistic, more nationalistic. Now, when you get to liberals, 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.240 you're right, they have a slightly more uneasy relationship. In general, 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:41.359 I would say they are more comfortable with the world 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:46.280 that's open and things like that. In theory, they are 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:50.320 in favor of meritocracy. You are right that they preach 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:55.160 more meritocracy than they practice, and that they quietly managed 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.680 to find some ways to protect themselves. But I recall 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:05.120 a wonderful book Meritocracy by ade Reinvolridge that basically concludes, 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.680 look for all its problems, there is no other solution, 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.520 and the answer to the problems of meritocracy is surely 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:17.359 more meritocracy. In other words, you're absolutely right that there 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:20.560 are places where they do this. But just as you know, 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:25.080 Martin Luther King used liberalism to push out the illiberal 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:29.200 features of life, I think one could effectively use liberalism. 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:31.440 And it is as you know, there is now pressure 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:36.040 on universities, for example, not to have legacy admissions in 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.919 that sense. Most people don't realize this, but Oxford and 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:42.680 Cambridge are much more meritocratic than Harvard and Yale. Oxford 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.600 and Cambridge just have a you know, essentially an entrance 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.719 exam these professions, though they would argue they're trying to 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.000 maintain a certain kind of standards, but those standards again 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.320 should be more meritocratic. But I think that to me, 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:01.360 the question is is politics becoming more about these two 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:06.199 poles not so much? Are liberals always consistently open or 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:11.000 consistently closed. I think in all politics there's a certain 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:14.440 amount of hypocrisy and all that. What I would ask 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.760 you is, isn't it fair to say that the old 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:20.800 left right divide has gone away largely because the two 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:24.080 parties are relatively close to one another. You can see 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.119 this in Britain where the Labor Party has come in 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.800 to barn this seemingly revolutionary election and said, oh, by 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:32.639 the way, we're not going to change anything that the 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:36.600 Conservatives have done on economic policy. The battleground is now 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:42.320 immigration and so called woke woke ideology and assimilation and culture. 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:46.000 I'm skeptical about it. I'm willing to be skeptical about it. 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:48.040 Is when you talk about the rise of the rest 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:52.000 and the relative decline of America, which you do in 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.160 this book towards the end, is it true that we're 0:22:55.160 --> 0:22:57.320 seeing the rise of the rest and the relative decline 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:01.639 of America? Or is America pretty constant? You know, twenty 0:23:01.680 --> 0:23:05.480 five percent of GDP in nineteen ninety twenty five percent 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.800 of GDP now a big chunk of the most highly 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:12.520 valued companies in the world now American. Isn't it really 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:16.680 what we're seeing the decline of Europe, American maintaining its position, 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:20.720 the rest certainly rising, particularly India and obviously China. But really, 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:22.960 isn't it a story of the decline of this chunk 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:25.479 of the West that is Europe that we're saying at 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:25.879 the moment. 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:29.959 Yeah, it's a very good question, because it's The answer 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:32.480 is I think complicated, and I tried to explain it 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:35.200 better in I think in my book The Post American World, 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:38.359 Which is the reason I talk about the decline of 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:41.800 America in a post American world, is that the most 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.959 important shift that's taken place is the decline in American influence, 0:23:46.400 --> 0:23:49.760 not American power. You're absolutely right, American heart power has 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:53.320 stayed constant. In fact, you could argue on some levels, Adrian, 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:56.639 as I'm sure you would agree, American power has grown. 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:00.840 American technological dominance of the world is probably today than 0:24:00.880 --> 0:24:03.480 it's ever been. I looked it up to see what 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:06.920 were the top top ten technology companies in nineteen eighty nine. 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:11.600 Only four were American, four were Japanese, and two were European. Today, 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:14.320 ten out of ten out of ten are American. So 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:18.760 American power has stayed at least constant, if not increased, 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:22.080 but American influence has declined. And what I mean by 0:24:22.119 --> 0:24:24.320 that is and this is why the rise of the 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:29.000 rest becomes important. Take a country like Turkey. Forty years ago, 0:24:29.160 --> 0:24:33.960 Turkey was a basket case economy with a military junta 0:24:34.080 --> 0:24:38.920 that ruled it and was absolutely reliably pro American and 0:24:40.040 --> 0:24:44.000 did whatever Washington told it to do. Today, the Turkish 0:24:44.040 --> 0:24:47.080 economy is about four times bigger, or maybe five times 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:49.800 bigger than it was forty years ago. It has a 0:24:49.840 --> 0:24:54.120 stable political system with a very powerful, charismatic leader who 0:24:54.200 --> 0:24:57.760 routinely tells the United States to go to hell when 0:24:57.800 --> 0:25:02.199 America asks it what to do. That pattern recurs with India, 0:25:02.440 --> 0:25:06.919 because of course with China and with Russia, but with Indonesia, 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:10.800 with Vietnam, with Brazil. And that's what I was trying 0:25:10.840 --> 0:25:13.320 to get across, which was that the United States had 0:25:13.320 --> 0:25:17.800 a certain kind of extraordinary political influence after the end 0:25:17.840 --> 0:25:22.120 of the Cold War. It literally set the terms for 0:25:22.160 --> 0:25:26.439 the rest of the world. And that influences waning because 0:25:26.440 --> 0:25:29.760 you have a lot of uppity middle powers who are 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:31.960 willing to say, we're just going to do our own thing. 0:25:32.000 --> 0:25:34.080 And look at India and the way it's handling the 0:25:34.200 --> 0:25:38.800 Ukraine War. You know, it is happy to be courted 0:25:38.800 --> 0:25:43.320 by Washington and sometimes agrees with Washington when it serves 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:47.040 its own India's purposes, for example, the anti Chinese element 0:25:47.080 --> 0:25:50.200 to Indian policy. But at the same time, it happily 0:25:50.200 --> 0:25:54.080 buys oil from Russia, trades with Russia, consorts with Russia, 0:25:54.359 --> 0:25:57.240 buys weapons from Russia because that helps it on its 0:25:57.240 --> 0:26:00.879