Free expression and political violence
In an episode on Antifa and neo-reaction, Bob Zadek interviews writer and filmmaker Anthony L. Fisher about the rise of Antifa and what Zadek describes as the counterproductive nature of political violence. Zadek frames the discussion around free speech in a liberal democracy and asks what distinguishes the Antifa anti-fascist movement from people who are simply anti-fascist. Fisher says he would describe himself as anti-fascist, and argues that a common straw man — that Antifa is short for anti-fascist action, so how could you be opposed to it — is absurd. He says you can be anti-fascist and still think that the group calling itself Antifa ultimately emboldens fascism, and that there is evidence their actions have led to crackdowns on peaceful protest, free expression, and marginalized groups they claim to speak for Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017).
Fisher discusses two incidents. The first was the day of Donald Trump’s election, when Richard Spencer — whom Fisher calls a neo-Nazi, though Spencer would call himself alt-right — was giving an interview to an Australian TV station in Washington, D.C. on the side of the road, and a young person dressed head to toe in black and a mask came up and sucker-punched him. Fisher says the video went viral mostly to universal acclaim, but that he recoiled, saying that when you resort to violence you make a martyr of the target, give the far-right ammunition to claim opposition is inherently violent, and lower the bar for acceptable violence. He notes that Spencer reappeared with his movement in Charlottesville marching with tiki torches, and calls it absurd to elevate Spencer’s movement to the German war machine of the 1930s and 1940s.
The second incident came from protests in Berkeley that preceded the murder of an anti-fascist protester in Charlottesville in August. Fisher says Antifa attempted to shut down a broad protest that included alt-right neo-Nazi types and other right-wing types; most counter-protesters were peaceful, but people dressed in Black Bloc — which he describes as a tactic, not a group, used to anonymize themselves from media coverage and law enforcement — came after people who ran afoul of them. He says you could no longer explain that you were a journalist or a bystander or a liberal who opposed violence as a matter of principle. He cites documentation in the Weekly Standard and says Taylor Lorenz, a journalist from The Hill, was attacked by Antifa. Fisher says that when you are a liberal — meaning somebody who believes in the principles of liberal democracy — and you wink at masked vigilantes who have self-declared themselves the arbiters of violence, you have already lost the argument.
Foreign policy and the example of liberal democracy
In an episode on foreign policy, Bob Zadek interviews Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute about his book Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy. Zadek introduces Preble as Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at Cato, a published author of several books including The Power Problem, John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap, and A Dangerous World, a former commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy who served aboard the USS Ticonderoga, and a holder of a PhD in history from Temple who writes at War on the Rocks On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019).
Preble says the Founders saw the ideal U.S. foreign policy as one in which Americans were encouraged to interact with others through trade, but where occasions for war would be rare. They put war powers in the hands of Congress, not the executive, because they believed decisions closer to the people would make war less likely. They limited the president’s power by maintaining a small navy and no permanent army, requiring an army to be raised to go to war. For the first hundred years or so, the United States fought relatively few wars; wars along the interior against Native American peoples and a few wars against Mexico were declared by Congress, forces were raised, objectives accomplished, and forces stood down. Preble says this allowed the United States to grow physically and to grow its influence mostly through its example, while restricting the power of the state.
Zadek asks about the accusation that opponents of military force are isolationists. Preble says the use of the term is deliberate and intended as a pejorative; it was first deployed against critics of U.S. imperialism at the turn of the 20th century and became in vogue after World War II, when the attitude of many Americans to avoid involvement in the war was cast as isolationism. Preble says that is fundamentally wrong, noting that the 1930s also featured restrictions on foreign trade and severe restrictions on immigration that tried to create a more isolated America. He says it is short-sighted to say the best way for the United States to interact with the world is by force, and that if American ideas are as good as we say, they should be embraced voluntarily rather than imposed. He argues that privileging the military instrument undermines America’s influence and creates more isolationism, and that there has been more resistance to American ideas of liberty and liberalism over the last 20 years because many people believe the United States is doing these things at the barrel of a gun.
Preble says the Founders believed the United States should be an example of republican democracy, personal freedom, and free trade, encouraging that behavior worldwide by example rather than at the point of a gun. He says that when the United States created a constitutional government where the people were the power and the government served the interests of the people, that was a fairly new concept, and that over the ensuing hundred and fifty years a number of countries wanted to emulate the United States because it grew prosperous and powerful and demonstrated by example that it delivered benefits to a greater number of people. He says American political ideas impacted the growth and spread of liberal democracy and republicanism — small-r republicanism, meaning representative government with certain delegated powers. He also says the United States eventually became an advocate of freer trade, seeing benefits both to prosperity and as an instrument of peace, because people who trade build up trust and are less likely to take things from one another by force. Zadek adds that it is a truism that people are less likely to kill their customers or suppliers.
Federalism within a liberal democracy
In an episode asking whether California had declared itself a nation-state, Bob Zadek discusses federalism and the legacy of civil rights with Frank Buckley. Zadek says it is interesting that depending on the issue, progressives favor states’ rights — which he calls an ugly phrase with an ugly history going back to the Dixiecrats in 1948 and Strom Thurmond and that crowd — but that states’ rights simply means federalism. He notes that progressives support federalism in instances such as sanctuary cities, ignoring federal drug laws, and California establishing its own emission standards for automobiles. He says there are also many instances where conservatives and libertarians favor states’ rights, and asks what is preventing agreement from accelerating Did California Just Declare Itself a Nation-State? (2020).
Buckley says a big reason has to do with the success of the Civil Rights Revolution. He says it is not 1948, and more power to states like Alabama and Mississippi would not mean the Civil Rights Revolution would be undone there, partly because there are large numbers of African American voters in those communities. Zadek says there is also a Constitution standing in the way of regression. Buckley says he is contemplating a kind of federalism that would lighten the hand of the Bill of Rights as well, with different states going different ways on things like religious rights. He notes cases going up before the Supreme Court with respect to the so-called Blaine Amendment, which bans aid to parochial schools and which he says was frankly an anti-Catholic movement in large part. He says different states may go different ways on different things concerning the Bill of Rights, and that we could live with that because, when all is said and done, we are living in a liberal democracy where every state adheres to basic liberal values. There will be differences on some issues, but in general the Civil Rights Revolution has succeeded, and that has made federalism more attractive.
Victimhood and historical awareness
In an episode on the victim cult, Bob Zadek discusses victimhood as a political tactic. He says victimhood has changed from a condition or status — one can be the victim of a storm or a governmental action — to nothing other than a tactic, a political strategy to gain an economic or other tangible benefit. He says that if you have nothing else going for you, the tactic might be to persuade others that you are a victim, which puts you in a different status and gives you a claim to compensation you otherwise would not have Understanding the Victim Cult (2021).
Zadek says American college students, and even Donald Trump, appear in the book as examples of wrongly claiming victimhood, and he calls them examples of the milder side of the victim cult spectrum. He says the notion that a Yale, Harvard, or UCLA student is somehow a victim of anything shows a lack of historical awareness. He says he starts The Victim Cult with an introduction going through actual victims in history: those who fought in World War II and never came back, or who were maimed and came back psychologically or physically hobbled; women in history who lacked rights for much of human history; and males in history who had to fight wars or work in coal mines or were victims of industrial accidents because basic biology dictated that in much of human history women would be at home and men would be in the coal mines, industrial factories, and fighting wars. He says he has chapters on Rwanda and on Yasser Arafat’s attack on Jewish people and others around the world, and that there is no shortage of victims in human history. He says that for college students in a liberal democracy to talk about victimization and use words like microaggression shows an unfortunate lack of awareness in any depth about the actual tragedies and victimization in human history.
Zadek says this also reflects a conceit, and that when people make this claim of victimization — that your tribe beat up my tribe, therefore you owe me something — it is part of looking back and expecting history to be perfect. He says he almost titled one of the chapters in The Victim Cult “Everyone’s Ancestors are Bastards,” because if you go back far enough you will find that someone was unkind to my tribe, your tribe, or whoever, and vice versa. He says it is a mistake to think we can balance out the billions of human beings and the multiple hundreds of billions of decisions and events and acts in human history by compensation today, and that except for a tight cause-and-effect link, it is hubris to think we can sort through all that as if in a modern courtroom and pronounce guilt and innocence on you or me or my group or your group. He calls that an absurd view of history and says it is driving some of these victim cults.
Across episodes: no development
The excerpts show no development across episodes on the concept of liberal democracy: Fisher (2017) invokes it against political violence, Preble (2019) invokes it as an export of American example and trade, Buckley (2020) invokes it as the shared baseline that makes federalism attractive, and Zadek (2021) invokes it as the setting in which college students claim victimization.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not define liberal democracy as a term of political theory, nor do they trace its historical origins or its institutional forms beyond the specific contexts discussed. They do not state the outcome of any case, the text of any statute, or the date or title of any bill. They do not provide the full text of any sentence that breaks off mid-thought, and they do not cover episodes beyond the four excerpted here.