WEBVTT - Fareed Zakaria Explains Why Today Is Just Like the 1920s 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:16.000 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to the City 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:21.919 of London, the City of the City of London, Please 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:22.960 mind the gap. 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:32.440 Between the and the financial heart of the country, the city, 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:33.200 the city. 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:39.080 Welcome to in the city, the clear of the doors. 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.800 I'm Allegra Stratton. It's that time of year. Streets around 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.600 the Square mile are quieter as people are off on 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:50.680 holiday breaks. Of course, essential packing for any holiday is 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:53.520 a good book. So we're bringing you a summer reading 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:58.040 list prepared by the Votonomics team. That's me alongside Bloomberg 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.440 Opinions Adrian Wooldridge and the head of Government and Economics, 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:05.559 Stephanie Flanders. We've each interviewed an author whose nonfiction work 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.399 we felt was relevant and informative on the state of 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.080 politics and economics right now. And this week it's a 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.480 conversation between Asia and Wildridge and Foraried Zakaria on his 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:20.280 new book Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash from sixteen 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:21.400 hundred to the present. 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:33.320 Welcome to Voterenomics, where politics and markets Collide. I'm Adrian Wooldridge. 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.720 For my summer reading selection, I've chosen the latest release 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:41.280 from Fared Zacharia, Age of Revolutions. Freed, of course, hosts 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:46.120 CNN's flagship international affairs show for Reed Zakaria GPS. He 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.800 writes a weekly column for The Washington Post, and he 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:51.320 is the author of the Future of Freedom, The Post 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.880 American World, and Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.480 But as I said, this conversation focuses on Age of Revolutions, 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:02.040 Progress and Backlash from sixteen hundred to the present. This 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.920 is really a fascinating book about the rise of the 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.880 liberal order and the possible collapse of that liberal order. 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.040 For Reid, you have a record of taking on really 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.920 big themes, the future of Freedom, the post American World, 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.480 but this is your biggest theme yet, the Age of Revolutions, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:25.519 Progress and Backlash from sixteen hundred to the present. Tell 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:27.440 us a bit about your argument. What was it that 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:29.959 inspired this book and what is the main thesis. 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.519 That's a wonderful question, Adrian. What inspired the book, or 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.680 at least triggered the book was that about ten years 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.120 ago I started to notice something that I thought was 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.440 very unusual, which was the rise of the Tea Party. 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.359 And the reason I thought it was unusual was it 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:50.080 was a kind of grassroots insurgency that was taking over 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:56.440 or upending the most hierarchical of the political parties in 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.359 America and one of the most hierarchical in the Western world. 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.400 If you think of the Republican Party, the old saying 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.519 about presidential nominations used to be that the Democrats have 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:10.160 to fall in love, but Republicans fall in line. And 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:13.000 if you think about, you know, the Democrats nominating John 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:18.360 Kennedy and Clinton and Obama, you understand that, whereas the 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.160 Republicans would nominate you know, Nixon and then Nixon and 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:26.240 then Nixon and then Bush and another Bush. You know, 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:30.320 it was very hierarchical. Stud your turn. And here the 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:36.800 Tea Party was upending that bottom up and was animated 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.360 by issues that were not the traditional Republican issues, not 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.800 about economics, cutting budgets, all that stuff. It was all 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:50.240 cultural immigration, Obama as a black president. And it made 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:53.760 me just begin to think about how politics was changing. 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:56.480 And I read a speech by Tony Blair in which 0:03:56.480 --> 0:04:00.000 he talked about how the old division of left versus 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.400 right on the basis of economics, you know, kind of 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.240 the size of the state, was giving way to a 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.560 politics based on your attitude towards a world that was 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:15.760 open versus closed, you know, globalization, immigration, technology, even and 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.359 that's where it all began. And then in order to 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.760 you know, I found myself asking, if we're going through 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.320 this kind of period of enormous change which is producing 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:29.480 a backlash, when did this begin? When have we seen 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:33.240 this before? And I thought about the Industrial Revolution, but 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:36.320 then that took me back further and I ended up, 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.520 as you know, starting with the Dutch in the seventeenth century. 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.960 The basic argument of the book is that whenever you 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:47.679 have periods of enormous technological and economic change, it tends 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:52.360 to transform societies, and you also end up getting a 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.880 third revolution, which is a kind of identity revolution. People 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.880 change the way they think of themselves. So when the Dutch, 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.520 for the first became rich, they began to think of 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:06.520 themselves differently, not as part of the Habsburg Empire, not 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:12.640 as simply Christians, but as Protestants and essentially broke away 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:17.120 from the Habsburg Empire and created the Dutch Republic. And 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:22.680 then that identity revolution trans mophs into a political revolution. 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:27.000 And whenever you have this process that I just described, 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.360 there is almost always a backlash. And how you navigate 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:36.440 through this forward movement and backlash determines how successfully you 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:39.159 kind of make your way in the world. The Dutch 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.000 and the British, i argue, in the sixteenth seventeen eighteenth 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:47.400 centuries handled this largely well. The French in the French 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.400 Revolution handled it very badly. And those are in some 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:56.600 ways the two archetypal examples, one being evolutionary change of 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:02.240 bottom up, these trends of technology, economics to reshaping society 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.640 and politics adapting to it, versus the French, who decide 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:11.919 top down political elites are going to decree a revolution, 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.560 a transformation of society, and the whole thing explodes. 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:20.640 So the Dutch, followed by the British, presumably by the Americans, 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:24.680 of the good guys exactly, and the French not quite 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.400 so good. Is that because they go over the top, 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:30.280 and then you know, the revolution with all its blood, 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.080 leads to Napoleon. Is that the sequence of events. 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.800 Basically, the French get it all wrong in the sense 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:42.240 that France was not a society that was being transformed 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:45.800 bottom up by economics and technology at the time of 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:51.960 the French Revolution. France was a large, agrarian, centralized society. 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.960 It was not particularly urban, the merchants were not particularly dominant. 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.839 So all the forces of kind of modernization and change 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:05.480 that had been roiling or transforming the Netherlands in Britain 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:10.120 were absent in France. But the French politically, a certain 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:16.320 group of Frenchmen decide that they want to accelerate change 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.400 and to achieve not quite a merchant republic, but a 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:24.040 republic nonetheless, and they decree it from above. And what 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:26.559 it turns out is that France is still a very 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:32.160 old fashioned, traditional agrarian society and it doesn't take and 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:34.720 so the revolution goes, you know, it kind of goes 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:39.040 helter skelter in various ways. As you know, the story 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:41.520 of the French orb is so complicated. One of the 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:43.920 great challenges of the book was getting it down to 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.280 forty pages. But basically, the best way to think about 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.560 it is it fails on its own terms. This is 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:54.760 a revolution that begins with the execution of a monarch 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:59.120 and it ends with Napoleon crowning himself as monarch. So 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.000 on its own terms, it is unable to achieve the 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.080 political modernization it looks for. 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.720 But you have a great lineage of liberal societies starting 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.280 with the Netherlands, going to Britain and then going to 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:16.800 the United States with this sort of failed detour with France. 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.360 Can you tell us something about what that means for 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:24.800 the for the modern world. This is essentially North European 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.840 Anglo Saxon lineage of ideas. 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.679 Yeah, it's actually fascinating when you think about how unusual 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.640 or narrow or serendipitous this path is. You know, you 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:40.440 have this extraordinary breakout in the Netherlands. This is the 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:46.679 first country to really redefine national power by using not 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.600 agriculture and extraction. That was the old way. The only 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.880 way people countries knew how to get rich was you know, 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.520 your agriculture, which basically produced about the same level of 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:02.840 wealth per capita for thousands of years, or you could 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.800 go into another country stealer's goal. Those are the two way, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.680 and the Dutch basically find that they use innovation, They 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:15.800 use technological innovation, they use financial innovation. Crucially important to 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:18.960 Holland's rise is the invention of the joint stock company, 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.840 the invention of the Amsterdam stock market, first grade multinational 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:26.360 company in the world, the Dutch East Indies Company, and 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:30.800 all these things propel the Netherlands to become the richest 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.480 country in Europe, which means the richest country in the world. 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.760 And that part of the practices are, you know, an 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:41.319 emphasis on an egalitarian political and social structure, a republic 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:45.560 rather than a monarchy, a merchants having an enormous say, 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:48.280 political parties for the first time rather than a court 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:52.400 being the locus of political influence. Tolerance because you discover 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.240 that tapping human talent wherever it is becomes important. So 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.480 the Dutch, you know, are a much more tolerant word, Jews, 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:04.840 much more tolerant towards Protestants and Catholics than any other 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:09.680 place in Europe. That model moves to England, which had 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:14.160 many similar characteristics, also a very decentralized part of Europe. 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.520 Both of these places were the farthest provinces of the 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.640 Roman Empire and were therefore the least centrally governed from Rome, 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:24.640 and so they had developed a kind of autonomy as 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:30.359 a result. And it is in this cocoon the Netherlands, 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.880 in Britain and England really that ideas about individual liberty, 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:39.480 individual rights, private property, the idea of the dignity of 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:43.559 the individual and his or her and really his ability 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:49.080 to pursue a life that he wants freed from monarchical tyranny, 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:55.640 church dogma. All these ideas sort of take root in 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.320 this area. And then I would argue, because of the 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:05.640 inherent virtue of these ideas, or certainly the technical superiority 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.520 of these ideas, Britain becomes the most powerful country since Rome, 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:14.320 and it colonizes large parts of the world and globalizes 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:16.920 these ideas. So a crucial part of that is that 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:21.840 Britain ended up colonizing North America, which became the next superpower. 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:25.400 But also important is the fact that Britain spread these 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:30.000 ideas to all over the world, from India to South 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:34.280 Africa to Australia. They developed a kind of a broad 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.520 universe of liberal ideas. But I think crucial to the 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.040 spreading of them was the fact that then Britain passes 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.400 the mantle to the United States. So if you think 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.120 about it, for two and a half centuries now we 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.040 have lived in a world in which the dominant power 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.520 has been one that adopted these very peculiar ideas that 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:59.199 grew out of a tiny part of northwestern Europe. 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:04.160 This is a very weak liberal interpretation of human history 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:06.840 and let me say that I completely agree with it, 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.120 but let me put on my woke cat for a 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.600 moment and saying that what you're doing is celebrating the 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:19.280 triumph of capitalist imperialism, That these are countries that grew 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:24.680 rich partly by colonialism, partly by slavery, partly by exploiting 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.679 what they would have regarded as lesser breeds. You're an Indian, 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:33.679 but you're celebrating that the power of this liberal imperialism. 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:36.600 How do you respond to the to the woe critique 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:40.520 which is very dominant in America American higher education. 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:44.480 Now it's a very fair critique and it's a fair argument. 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:48.720 It's worth noting that the original opposition to Whig history 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:51.679 came actually from the right, not from the left. There 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:57.160 was a much more traditional kind of deep historical school 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:01.040 of thought in Britain in other places, which this whole 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:05.839 idea that there is any progress in history is the fallacy. 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:09.439 The Whigs think that things have gotten better, and this 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:13.040 is nonsense. Well, history is cyclical, you know, morally, we 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:17.040 have degenerated. This used to be the argument against Whig history. 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.520 And when Herbert Butterfield writes his essay on wik history, 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:24.320 that's what he's defending himself against today. You're absolutely right, 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.640 the critique comes from the left. And look, what I 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:31.599 would say is, there's no question I'm celebrating capitalism and 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.880 democracy and individual liberty and individual rights because I do 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:41.040 believe they are fundamentally superior to everything that came before 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.880 them in terms of political organization, from the point of 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:46.840 view of the rights of individuals, which I hold very dear, 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.120 and everything that has come after in terms of challengers, 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:57.120 whether it's been fascism, communism, Islamic fundamentalism, whatever else you 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.719 may look at. I regard, you know, social democracy as 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:06.080 a variant of of of liberalism. On the imperialism part, 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.120 it's a it's a harder one, it's it's entire It's 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:13.960 absolutely true that part and parcel of this process was 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.920 the exploitation of people who were considered second class citizens, 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.360 so lesser breeds and such. I would argue that was 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.600 not inherent in the project. I don't think you can 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.040 make the case that Britain only gained its strength from 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.400 colonies so that they did help you can look at 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:32.920 I mean, I go through this as you know in 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:36.800 the book Japan had You know is a is a 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:40.520 good contrast because they both had textile industries. Japan had 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.920 no colonies, Britain had colonies. You know, it's it's not 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:46.560 it's not easy to make the case in my view 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:51.000 that Britain only advanced because of the because of the colonies. 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.880 And much more importantly what you you can see the 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.400 power of these ideas by the fact that it is 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:04.000 these ideas that caused Europe to decolonize. And it is 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:07.320 only in Europe that you begin you got the anti 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.600 slavery movement. There's slavery all over the world, but what 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:14.520 caused Europe to become the locust classic of anti slavery. 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.000 It was these liberal ideas. So I think there's something 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:23.160 to it, and it's probably worth always remembering that the 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:28.320 rise of these liberalism and industrialization did come along with 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.280 an enormous exploitation of other countries. You know, as as 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.440 somebody who grew up in India, I'm well aware of it, 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.480 and you know, we lived it. I mean I saw 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.680 it more from my father's generation. But my father was 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.160 very attracted to British ideas of liberalism and in his 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:49.440 case kind of Fabian socialism as well. But always also 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:53.480 aware that for Britain. They came coupled with a certain 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:58.080 kind of pretty unvarnished racism. There was the reality that 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:02.640 Britain was, in a sense the tutor for so much 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.920 of the Indian kind of political elite, and yet the 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.120 same political elite were jailed by the British and in 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.760 trials that were not free and fair. They walked past 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.960 clubs and buildings which said which had signs which said 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.840 dogs and Indians not allowed. You know. My father once 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.360 pointed out a couple of places where there used to 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:26.760 be that sign. So that is the mixed legacy of 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.400 the Enlightenment, and you can't get away from it. But 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:33.040 I think it was a historical fact, not a logical fact. 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.560 But when Kipling says take up the white man's burden, 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.480 he's talking to the United States. And this mixed legacy 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:43.360 is even stronger in the United States, I think than Britain, 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.880 because it has the institution of slavery, and it has 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:50.080 the institutions of Jim Crow right, you know, and voting 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:52.920 discrimination and things like that right up to the nineteen sixties. 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.480 It does seem to be extraordinary that you can have 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:02.240 liberal values and those very very anti liberal values coexisting 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.920 within this global hegemon, which is the United States. How 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:06.880 can we explain that? 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:10.280 Yeah, it's a very good point, and I think it's 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.680 a point that tells us something about the present as well, 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:18.679 which is tribalism and tribal affiliation is one of the 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:24.119 deepest social organizing factors of life. The ability to think 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.600 about your tribe as separate, distinct better than the other 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:33.680 tribe is the oldest form of politics, really, and what 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.040 you see with liberalism is that it is not able 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:42.800 to completely overcome that, and that it rests uneasily alongside 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:48.000 that reality. And in the American case, think of Jefferson 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.240 as such an interesting example, right, because of course he's 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:55.879 a slaver owner, but as so many of the biography's 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:59.560 point out, he was tortured by this. Yeah quite not 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.879 so to that he freed his own slaves, but you know, 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.080 he it was tortured by it. And ultimately what gets 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.760 rid of slavery is the you know, those same liberal 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:14.159 ideals as as Lincoln points out, that were in the Declaration, 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:17.639 you know that were that were in there and in 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.879 a sense have to be have to triumph over the 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.680 tribalism that says white soar superior to blacks. And then 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:29.080 what makes Jim Crow disappear is again those same ideals. 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:32.200 You know, Martin Luther King talks about how the Declaration 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:37.040 of Independence was a promisory note to blacks, in other words, saying, 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:40.040 you know, we we, we are using those same ideas 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:45.480 to break through the irrational tribalism that has kept us down. 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:50.560 And even now, you know, we see that the return 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:54.439 to tribalism is very easy. And whether you look in 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:57.200 the United States, whether you look in Europe, you see 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.400 that it doesn't take a lot to get us back 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:02.040 to a kind of tribal way of thinking. 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.080 Now, I'm quite convinced by your wig interpretation of history. 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.239 I share it quite strongly. I'm less convinced by this 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:14.159 notion of the open versus the closed, which is something 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:18.399 that Tony Blair embraced and you embraces in this book, 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:23.119 that liberals are essentially open to the world, open to change, 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:29.240 open to immigration, open to globalization, and nonliberals, conservatives' reactionaries, 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:31.560 whatever you want to call them, are much more closed. 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:35.200 And let me say why, I'm a bit skeptical about this. 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.360 It strikes me that it's rather the Victor's propaganda, and 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:43.320 that many liberals, though they claim to be open, are 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.880 actually very good at protecting themselves. They protect themselves through 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:52.480 educational credentials, through various sorts of certificates, licenses to operate. 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:55.600 For example, barristers in this country don't let solicitors go 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:58.480 into courts. If you go to university towns, they seem 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:03.000 to be well defended against che And if you look 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:06.240 at the service sector, it's much much less globalized than 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:10.040 the manufacturing sector. If you look at immigration, openness to immigration, 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:14.399 the so called disupposedly troglodyte people who are opposed to 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:18.080 immigration actually a people who are badly affected by immigration. 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:21.840 They lose jobs, they see their wages declined, whereas most 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.800 liberals benefit from immigration. They get cheap servants, they get cheap, 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.160 cheap services and things like that. Isn't this a bit 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:31.240 of a liberal illusion that they're open. 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:36.320 Yeah, So let me first explain in the broader sense 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:38.480 what I meant I mean by that, and in a 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:40.600 way you can see it in the transformation of the 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:45.520 Republican Party. The old model the Republican Party was basically 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:49.840 a free market party believed in low taxes, low regulation, 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:56.000 low tariffs, welcomed immigration. Ronald Reagan famously signed the eighty 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.040 six amnesty bill, So it was you know, it was 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:02.720 a raid largely along the kind of free market orientation. 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.280 And what has happened to the Republican Party now it's 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:11.560 essentially almost entirely transformed itself. It is now largely skeptical 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:14.760 of trade. In fact, it is the most protectionist major party, 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.240 I would argue in the Western world these days. It 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:23.760 has become much more uneasy about even things like fiscal conservatism. 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:29.679 You know, Trump was a big spender. The degree to 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:35.440 which it has completely try reversed itself on immigration is striking. 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.639 So it's become a party more comfortable with the idea 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:44.520 of a society that's more closed, more protected, more culturally chauvinistic, 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.240 more nationalistic. Now when you get to liberals, you're right, 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.280 they have a slightly more uneasy relationship. In general, I 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:53.560 would say they are more comfortable with the world that's 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:58.359 open and things like that. In theory, they are in 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:02.680 favor of meritocracy. You are right that they preach more 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:07.199 meritocracy than they practice, and that they quietly managed to 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:11.000 find some ways to protect themselves. But I recall a 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:17.080 wonderful book on meritocracy by Adrian Wolridge that basically concludes, 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:21.600 look for all its problems, there is no other solution, 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.440 and the answer to the problems of meritocracy is surely 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.320 more meritocracy. In other words, you're absolutely right that there 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.320 are places where they do this. But just as you 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.439 know Martin Luther King used liberalism to push out the 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:41.200 illiberal features of life, I think one could effectively use liberalism. 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:43.400 And it is as you know, there is now pressure 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:48.000 on universities, for example, not to have legacy admissions in 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:50.840 that sense. Most people don't realize this, but Oxford and 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.560 Cambridge are much more meritocratic than Harvard and Yale. Oxford 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:58.159 and Cambridge just have a you know, essentially an entrance exam. 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:02.160 These professions, though they would argue they're trying to maintain 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:05.320 a certain kind of standards, but those standards again should 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:08.639 be more meritocratic. But I think that to me, the 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:13.719 question is is politics becoming more about these two poles? 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:19.320 Not so much our liberals always consistently open or consistently closed. 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:23.959 I think in all politics there's a certain amount of hypocrisy, 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:27.560 and all that what I would ask you is isn't 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:30.840 it fair to say that the old left right divide 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:34.320 has gone away largely because the two parties are relatively 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:37.240 close to one another. You can see this in Britain 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:40.120 where the Labor Party has come into Barn this seemingly 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:43.280 revolutionary election and said, oh, by the way, we're not 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:45.760 going to change anything that the Conservatives have done on 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:50.760 economic policy. The battleground is now immigration and so called 0:23:50.840 --> 0:23:54.280 wo woke ideology and assimilation and culture. 0:23:55.040 --> 0:23:57.919 I'm skeptical about it. I'm willing to be skeptical about it. 0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:00.160 Is when you talk about the rise of the rest 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:04.199 and the relative decline of America, which you do this 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:06.919 in this book towards the end. Is it true that 0:24:06.920 --> 0:24:08.840 we're seeing the rise of the rest and the relative 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:12.959 decline of America? Or is America pretty constant? You know, 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:17.120 twenty five percent of GDP in nineteen ninety, twenty five 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:20.440 percent of GDP now a big chunk of the most 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:24.080 highly valued companies in the world, Now American, Isn't it 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:28.040 really what we're seeing the decline of Europe, America maintaining 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:31.639 its position. The rest certainly rising, particularly India and obviously China. 0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:34.399 But really, isn't it a story of the decline of 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:37.040 this chunk of the West that is Europe that we're 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:37.800 seeing at the moment. 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:41.879 Yeah, it's a very good question because it's the answer 0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:44.840 is I think complicated, and I tried to explain it better. 0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:47.480 I think in my book The Post American World, which 0:24:47.520 --> 0:24:50.760 is the reason I talk about the decline of America 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:54.320 in a post American world, is that the most important 0:24:54.400 --> 0:24:57.920 shift that's taken place is the decline in American influence, 0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:02.359 not American power. Absolutely right. American heart power has stayed constant. 0:25:02.480 --> 0:25:05.399 In fact, you could argue on some levels Adrian as 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:09.160 I'm sure you would agree, American power has grown. American 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:12.760 technological dominance of the world is probably greater today than 0:25:12.800 --> 0:25:15.399 it's ever been. I looked it up to see what 0:25:15.560 --> 0:25:18.840 were the top top ten technology companies in nineteen eighty nine. 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:23.560 Only four were American, four were Japanese, and two were European. Today, 0:25:23.640 --> 0:25:26.280 ten out of ten out of ten are American. So 0:25:27.240 --> 0:25:30.720 American power has stayed at least constant, if not increased, 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:34.040 but American influence has declined. And what I mean by 0:25:34.080 --> 0:25:36.240 that is, and this is why the rise of the 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:41.000 rest becomes important. Take a country like Turkey. Forty years ago, 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:45.840 Turkey was a basket case economy with a military hunter 0:25:46.000 --> 0:25:50.880 that ruled it and was absolutely reliably pro American and 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:55.919 did whatever Washington told it to do. Today, the Turkish 0:25:56.000 --> 0:25:59.320 economy is about four times bigger, or maybe five times bigger, 0:25:59.359 --> 0:26:01.720 than it was four forty years ago. It has a 0:26:01.760 --> 0:26:06.040 stable political system with a very powerful, charismatic leader who 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:09.720 routinely tells the United States to go to hell when 0:26:09.720 --> 0:26:13.560 America asks said what to do. And that pattern recurs 0:26:13.600 --> 0:26:17.000