Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. What do I have to
Speaker 1: do it? Shot my death?
Speaker 2: Tonight cover immigrations for the New Yorkers because your book
Speaker 2: at Everyone Who Has Gone is here? The United States
Speaker 2: and Central America and the making of a crisis. Please,
Speaker 2: welcome to the program, Donathan Blitzer.
Speaker 3: Sorry, thank you.
Speaker 1: For joining me.
Speaker 2: First things first, what are you doing to me? I
Speaker 2: have a family, I have a life. This is a
Speaker 2: very long book.
Speaker 1: You don't have to read the notes. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to read the whole No, that son of a bitch.
Speaker 2: What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the
Speaker 2: immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through
Speaker 2: multiple administrations. In your mind, what has us trapped in
Speaker 2: this sort of Sissophisian nightmare?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean for years and years we've watched kind
Speaker 3: of in this loop. As politicians in Washington say, we
Speaker 3: can't pass comprehensive immigration reform because of the situation.
Speaker 1: Of the border.
Speaker 3: And yet the situation of the border is in a
Speaker 3: state of chaos because we have not passed comprehensive immigration
Speaker 3: reform and as a result, the asylum system at the
Speaker 3: southern border has borne the brunt of the otherwise failing system,
Speaker 3: And so we're stuck in this loop where lawmakers in
Speaker 3: Washington point to the border to justify their inaction, and
Speaker 3: the border is in the state of chaos that it
Speaker 3: is because of an action in Washington, Right.
Speaker 2: I almost never hear politicians talking about how many people
Speaker 2: can you absorb? I mean, when you tell me there's
Speaker 2: going to be two million people coming through the southern
Speaker 2: border and they are just you know, being kind of
Speaker 2: logged and released, that sounds utterly chaotic in a recipe
Speaker 2: for disaster. But how many people can this country absorb?
Speaker 2: What do we need for economic growth? What is about
Speaker 2: or I feel like we never talk about that. We
Speaker 2: just react to images of chaos.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, we can't talk about one aspect of the
Speaker 3: immigration system without view of the other. And so you know,
Speaker 3: if we're only ever talking about the southern border, we're
Speaker 3: missing the entire kind of picture that we need to
Speaker 3: better understand. But just as an example, you know right now,
Speaker 3: the and you don't take my word for it, I.
Speaker 2: Mean that you're you should you should don't You're the
Speaker 2: only one until you read the footnotes.
Speaker 3: You know, the the chairman of the Federal reserve. You know,
Speaker 3: economists across the country, everyone is pointing to the fact that,
Speaker 3: you know, immigrant labor has essentially kept this country's economy
Speaker 3: afloat following the COVID years, and so you know, this
Speaker 3: is the engine of growth.
Speaker 1: The population is getting.
Speaker 2: Immigrant labor can be more easily exploited, is paid less,
Speaker 2: starts to depress wages for a lot of other people.
Speaker 1: Is that not accurate? I don't. I don't think it is.
Speaker 3: I think it's a much somewhat accurate, reasonably accurate.
Speaker 1: Well, until there.
Speaker 3: Are ways of absorbing an immigrant labor force legally into
Speaker 3: the country, there are always going to be opportunities for
Speaker 3: employers to exploit the undocumented and in the process to
Speaker 3: drive down working wages. And so the idea is there
Speaker 3: needs to be a thoroughgoing reform of the system. And
Speaker 3: the problem is, of course that in Washington that's been
Speaker 3: done on arrival now for decades, and so we're kind
Speaker 3: of in this doom loop where the border is the
Speaker 3: symbol of everything. But obviously in a kind of common
Speaker 3: sensical way. The only way to approach this broader problem.
Speaker 1: Is to deal with every aspect of the system.
Speaker 2: This is where you drop us like a little drop
Speaker 2: US unshine. And you say, but here's the good.
Speaker 1: News, Yeah, go go, what's in here?
Speaker 3: I would say the good news is that from a
Speaker 3: policy perspective, at least doing some of the things to
Speaker 3: relieve pressure at the southern border are no great mystery
Speaker 3: to lawmakers. I mean, the problem, of course is the politics,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't require any great feat of the imagination.
Speaker 2: This is not a complexity beyond the imagination of human beings, correct,
Speaker 2: And we don't have to restabilize areas we destabilized to
Speaker 2: really get a handle on it. It's about fixing the
Speaker 2: system of influx.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, you know, overall, the only way
Speaker 3: to kind of deal with migration trends in the world
Speaker 3: is to understand the forces in a global context, and
Speaker 3: that means that the United States has to be more
Speaker 3: mindful of the consequences of it's foreign policy. It has
Speaker 3: to work with partners in the region.
Speaker 2: You know, all very real locked out when you said
Speaker 2: you said something about mindful foreign policy, and yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: I just started thinking about you too.
Speaker 1: In the sphere, I don't know what's going on, but
Speaker 1: I will say this.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the ways, you know, Reforming the
Speaker 3: asylum system specifically is a complex task, and I do
Speaker 3: think some hard decisions have to be made about kind
Speaker 3: of reckoning with the population of people showing up at
Speaker 3: the southern border and kind of understanding what the lim
Speaker 3: it's are of the asylum system as we know it.
Speaker 3: But before we get to a point of having to
Speaker 3: make these major sacrifices to a system that I think
Speaker 3: really should be a core part of American policy for
Speaker 3: ethical reasons and just for straight ahead policy reasons.
Speaker 1: Branding to say nothing else.
Speaker 3: There are things that could be done, basic things like
Speaker 3: sending more money to the government to hire more asylum officers,
Speaker 3: more immigration judges. These things sound boring, they sound wonky,
Speaker 3: and very specifically, Republicans in Congress are trying to block
Speaker 3: these very straight ahead basic measures from taking place, just
Speaker 3: basic funding measures, because they benefit from increased chaos at
Speaker 3: the southern border. So there are things that could be done,
Speaker 3: Bullets you have, there's no hope until after the election
Speaker 3: to even address any of it. I mean, it's pretty
Speaker 3: overwhelming to see right now Republicans in Congress basically say
Speaker 3: we're not going to touch this.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've said it explicitly.
Speaker 2: This is the greatest danger to America, you know, maybe ever,
Speaker 2: and we're not going to do anything because we think
Speaker 2: it's a great issue. I mean, that's truly devious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and well, and the plot of that playing out
Speaker 3: was the administration, the Biden administration went to Congress and said,
Speaker 3: we need more money to increase resources in the southern border.
Speaker 1: But they were slow on the uptick as well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and then there's plenty that the Bide administration could
Speaker 3: be faulted for. They go to Congress, they ask for
Speaker 3: money that doesn't work because Republicans say, no, no, no, we
Speaker 3: want to see further changes to the asylum system as
Speaker 3: we know it. The administration goes to the negotiating table,
Speaker 3: makes a series of compromises that Democrats were not comfortable.
Speaker 1: Making years ago.
Speaker 3: I mean, pretty significant changes just in their own orientation
Speaker 3: in this conversation, and they finally broke her this deal.
Speaker 3: I mean, this isn't just a Democratic effort. This is
Speaker 3: a bipartisan group in the Senate doing this. Before the
Speaker 3: terms of the deal are even announced. You have Mitch
Speaker 3: McConnell saying to his Senate members, listen, you know the
Speaker 3: politics of this. I think the phrase he used, as
Speaker 3: it was reported, was the politics have changed, and the
Speaker 3: politics having changed were Trump came out against this negotiation,
Speaker 3: and so it was very clear, I mean a very
Speaker 3: clear calculation was me that we benefit from this situation
Speaker 3: getting worse.
Speaker 2: It's so tough because you know, McConnell's usually so idealistic.
Speaker 1: It's just hard to see. I was shocked.
Speaker 2: It's shocking thing. Geez, self serving politics. That's not the
Speaker 2: guy I know. Everyone who is gone is here, Jonathan Blood.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna take you right, Pith, great, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 4: What about the dolls?
Speaker 1: Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Tonight a professor of government at Harvard University. He is
Speaker 2: the co author of two best selling books, How Democracies
Speaker 2: Die and Tyranny of the Minority. Please welcome to the program,
Speaker 2: Stephen Levitzky.
Speaker 1: Sorry, let's go. What are a bad boy? The book
Speaker 1: is called The Tyranny of the Minority.
Speaker 2: What is so you wrote How Democracies Die a recipe
Speaker 2: to kill our democracy? And now Tyranny the Minority. What
Speaker 2: is Tyranny the Minority about?
Speaker 5: Well, we wrote How Democracies Die many years ago, now
Speaker 5: before it seemed so imminent to some of the Americans
Speaker 5: that that democracy is in danger. We wanted to write
Speaker 5: a book that described for Americans what it looks like
Speaker 5: when a democracy gets into trouble. I studied Latin America.
Speaker 5: My cauthor, Daniel studies Europe and the interwar period. So
Speaker 5: we've we've seen democracies getting in trouble, We've seen democracies die,
Speaker 5: and we wanted to describe to Americans what this looked
Speaker 5: like so they would be worn. After we wrote the book,
Speaker 5: we got a lot of questions about what the hell
Speaker 5: do we do?
Speaker 4: How do we get out of this mess?
Speaker 5: And so the book is an effort, first of all
Speaker 5: to better understand how we got into this mess, but
Speaker 5: also to think a bit about how to get out.
Speaker 2: So how when you're talking about how we get into
Speaker 2: the mess, the Constitution is really our you know, touchstone,
Speaker 2: is that the document that actually got us into this mess.
Speaker 5: The Constitution, i should say, is a brilliant document.
Speaker 1: Is the world's don't heade sorry.
Speaker 4: It is the world's oldest written constitution.
Speaker 5: It's done us a lot of good, but it is
Speaker 5: also part of the problem.
Speaker 4: Today.
Speaker 5: We have a majority of Americans support democracy, a majority
Speaker 5: of Americans support the really interesting experiment with multi racial
Speaker 5: democracy that we are evolving into in the twenty first century.
Speaker 5: A majority of Americans every day since Donald Trump came
Speaker 5: down the Golden Escalator have opposed Trump. But we have
Speaker 5: a constitution that protects, that enables, and that empowers an
Speaker 5: authoritarian minority party.
Speaker 4: And that's problem.
Speaker 2: But isn't that the very nature of the Constitution was
Speaker 2: the contradiction. It's when it was being written, all men
Speaker 2: are created equal, black people are three fifths. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a mathematical equation that from the get go was absurd.
Speaker 4: It was absurd. Now, in some fairness to the founders.
Speaker 4: The elites across the.
Speaker 5: World were undemocratic in the eighteenth century, but over the
Speaker 5: course of two hundred plus years, democracies across the world
Speaker 5: have gone about fixing the original citizens.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that the Constitution was a balance between
Speaker 2: that ideal and the practicalities of well, how do we
Speaker 2: let the southern states who have less population not be
Speaker 2: steamrolled by a pure democracy?
Speaker 4: Right? It was a couple of things.
Speaker 5: First of all, it was a document created by people
Speaker 5: who feared democracy, who feared the majority rule.
Speaker 4: Because the majority rule didn't exist in the world.
Speaker 2: What did they think if it wasn't kings, what did
Speaker 2: they think it was going to be.
Speaker 4: They didn't know.
Speaker 5: They were completely new to There had never been a
Speaker 5: republic like this before.
Speaker 4: We'd never had an elected leader before.
Speaker 5: The electoral college was a third choice. It wasn't Madison's
Speaker 5: first choice. Madison designed a system that would have looked
Speaker 5: more like Europe's parliamentary democracies.
Speaker 4: That was shut down.
Speaker 5: A number of folks in the convention pushed for direct
Speaker 5: election of the president, which is what all other presidential
Speaker 5: democracies in the world today do.
Speaker 4: That got voted down, just out because the session.
Speaker 2: Not even for a unitary executive, didn't they push for
Speaker 2: the executive would be a panel, would be a group
Speaker 2: of individuals.
Speaker 5: There were, that was, that was one suggestion. But so
Speaker 5: they were, they were, they were scrambling, right, they did.
Speaker 5: They couldn't they couldn't reach a majority, and they didn't
Speaker 5: know how to elect a president.
Speaker 4: So the electoral college was an improvisation. It was an experiment.
Speaker 2: Was it an improvisation to bring a compromise to the
Speaker 2: southern states? Is that because then the north and smaller
Speaker 2: industrialized and the South and the smaller states. Right, look,
Speaker 2: so this was the compromise to bring the Union together.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a really tough problem, right.
Speaker 5: We had thirteen colonies that were and there was a
Speaker 5: fear that that they were apart, that there might be
Speaker 5: civil war, that there might be violence. The Articles of
Speaker 5: Confederation had failed miserably, and there was a real fear
Speaker 5: that if we didn't hang together, the Brits or the
Speaker 5: French would would come in and make things very difficult
Speaker 5: for us.
Speaker 4: The whole project could be blown to bits.
Speaker 5: So these guys had to forge a compromise, and they
Speaker 5: made concessions that were imperfect in fact.
Speaker 4: George Washington, let me just say this.
Speaker 5: George Washington, just weeks after the Philadelphia Convention, wrote a
Speaker 5: letter to his nephew describing the Constitution as an imperfect
Speaker 5: document and saying that it would be up to future
Speaker 5: generations to improve upon it.
Speaker 2: But do you think it's strange then that a lot
Speaker 2: of the Constitution really is a practical matter, sort of
Speaker 2: a pragmatic document that is very much nuts and bolts
Speaker 2: of how do we do this mechanically logistically, and yet
Speaker 2: we infuse such almost religious dogs. We almost view the
Speaker 2: founders now in a kind of a fundamentalist way of
Speaker 2: it was spoken through them from God. It was they
Speaker 2: were absolutely sure this is scripture right.
Speaker 4: We didn't always see it that way for much of you.
Speaker 5: As history, Americans, both politicians and American citizens of all
Speaker 5: types have worked to make our system more democratic. The
Speaker 5: expansion of suffers, the reconstruction reforms, the progressive Euros.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes that was brought through violent upheaval. I mean, the
Speaker 2: Civil War is what brought that about Suffragette, even the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War when they lowered the voting age. If there
Speaker 2: hadn't have been the draft people had gone to Vietnam,
Speaker 2: I don't think you would have seen the expansion of
Speaker 2: voting to eighteen year olds.
Speaker 5: Constitutional reform is tough, it's costly, it takes work, but
Speaker 5: we've done it throughout our history. And it's really only
Speaker 5: the last fifty years only in our lifetimes that we've
Speaker 5: kind of stopped thinking about how to make our system
Speaker 5: more democratic. We stopped doing the work of improving our democracy.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, and this is a slightly different
Speaker 2: point than you know. Some maybe it's the design of
Speaker 2: the constitution that allows for rural states to have maybe
Speaker 2: an outsized influence, especially in the Senate, which is a
Speaker 2: relatively minoritarian body to begin with, one person can blue
Speaker 2: slip something that people can constantly stop things as one
Speaker 2: person and that person is always Rand Paul.
Speaker 1: Now, but.
Speaker 2: Is there also an issue that as the world changes
Speaker 2: so rapidly, is democracy foundationally an analog system and that
Speaker 2: in an increasingly digital and fast world it's unwieldy even
Speaker 2: in its best iteration. And is that what also gives
Speaker 2: a kind of shine to the idea of dictatorship or
Speaker 2: authoritarian principles where things can be mobilized more quickly, decisions
Speaker 2: can be made. You know, democracy is painstaking. It's a grind,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 4: And this is not the first time we've been around
Speaker 4: this band.
Speaker 5: Right in a century ago, whether it was the Russian
Speaker 5: Revolution or the rise of fascism, during a period of
Speaker 5: dramatic change, industrialization, the entry into the modern era, people
Speaker 5: looked around and said, yeah, Stalin, that works better, Hitler, Mussolini.
Speaker 1: The trans run on time.
Speaker 5: Turns out, in the long run there are costs to dictatorship,
Speaker 5: and that dictatorships don't They may shine for a while.
Speaker 4: But in the long run you don't much like the results.
Speaker 4: So we always have to be.
Speaker 5: We've got old institutions and we constantly have to be
Speaker 5: thinking about how to improve them. But the basic idea
Speaker 5: of electing our governments and electing our governments in a
Speaker 5: context in which we enjoy a wide range of individual liberties,
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 4: Think that's out data right.
Speaker 2: That stays no matter what the kids say on I'm
Speaker 2: gonna say Instagram.
Speaker 4: I think the kids are kids get a bad rap.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they are among our strongest defenders.
Speaker 1: Well, you teach them in college, so you see them.
Speaker 1: I see them. I find them to be fascinating.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's always that Millennias or later or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's I don't find that all the.
Speaker 4: Ones you're gonna save are emerging multiracially.
Speaker 1: Day better. Howbody's got to the charity of the minority.
Speaker 1: It's available right now. Steven Levitsky, thank you so much
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Speaker 2: Ye