Rebel: The Fight Against Modern Oligarchy

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to this episode of Conversations with
Great Thinkers.
Our guest today is theHonorable Douglas Carswell, the
President and CEO of theMississippi Center for Public
Policy.
Public policy.
Mr Carswell was a member of theBritish Parliament for 12 years
and one of the intellectualdriving forces behind Vote Leave
, the official campaign that wonthe 2016 Brexit vote in Britain

(00:35):
.
Re-elected every time he stoodfor Parliament to secure the
Brexit vote in 2014, hetriggered a special
parliamentary election and wonwith one of the largest swings
in any election in Britishhistory.
Douglas is the author of fivebooks, including the one we'll
discuss today, titled Rebel howto Overthrow the Emerging

(00:57):
Oligarchy.
Douglas, welcome to our podcast, Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thank you so much for having me and thank you for
having read my book.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Thanks, Thank you so much for having me and thank you
for having read my book.
Oh, it's a wonderful book.
I want to encourage everyonewho hears this to take advantage
of it, because it's not onlyrelevant to the time it was
written, but really relevant towhat is.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I think happening today.
Can you tell us what motivatedyou to write Rebel in 2017.
Yeah, I believe that freedomand liberty are the defining
characteristics that allowhumans to thrive and prosper,
and I noticed, as someone withan interest in history, that you
know for most of human history,until the foundation of the

(01:46):
American Republic, life waspretty grim for most people.
People would remain poor andpeople would have the same
impoverished standard of livingthat their parents and
grandparents andgreat-grandparents had.
And really only in the pastcouple of hundred years only
really since 1776, has it becomethe norm for people to become

(02:07):
more prosperous in more parts ofthe globe.
And this interests me.
Why is it that the default hasbeen poverty and why are we
getting rich and prosperous?
And the more I looked into this, the more I realized that
actually, freedom and libertyand a society that prospers it's
very rare, very exceptional andvery, very fragile.

(02:30):
Just because we're used to itin the West today, just because
most of your listeners are usedto constant improvements in
living standards, it doesn'tmean it's not precious and, if
we're not careful, fleeting.
And I started to notice thatactually, throughout history,
there have been other occasions,other republics the Roman

(02:51):
Republic, the Venetian Republic,the Dutch Republic, where
progress was made and it waspossible to think that you were
living in a world where progressand liberty and the upward
elevation of the human conditionwas the norm.
But progress was snuffed out inthe Roman Republic, the
Venetian Republic, the DutchRepublic and I fear, if we're

(03:14):
not careful, it could be snuffedout in the American Republic.
And I wanted to write a bookthat drew attention to this.
Really, we need to be aware ofwhat is precious in order to be
able to defend it and safeguardit and pass it on to our
children and grandchildren andtheir children not yet born.

(03:36):
And I wanted to really write abook that went beyond just
politics, that looked a littlebit about history and philosophy
, some of the ideas that I thinkshould underline and sustain
our political beliefs.
So yeah, the product was rebeland how to fend off the emerging

(04:01):
oligarchy, because I thinkoligarchy really is the danger.
We really do risk seeing therepublic founded 250 years ago
almost being snuffed out by theemergence of parasitic elites.
It's a real, real danger.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I, for one, absolutely loved the historical
arguments that you used in orderto support your contentions in
the book, and I think anyone whoreads it will benefit from your
knowledge and understanding ofhistory immensely.
You just talked about oligarchsa moment ago, but you also talk
about populists in your book,and can you tell us a little bit

(04:40):
about the tension betweenoligarchs and populists and your
view on what threat theypresent to the liberal order
that you've just described?

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Well, oligarchy is the rule by the few, a few
powerful people that emerge.
I mean, what you've hadhistorically is being in the
hands of a few.
Occasionally you would get asociety that would emerge,
usually by accident.
In the hands of a few.
Occasionally you would get asociety that would emerge,
usually by accident, in the caseof the Roman Republic and the
Venetian Republic, or, almostuniquely, by design, in the case

(05:13):
of the American Republic, wherepower was dispersed and the
powerful were constrained andwherever this happened it led to
a huge flowering of humaninnovation and creativity and
output per person.
But that was always threatenedby unchecked oligarchy and the

(05:36):
emergence of a powerful fewalways risked provoking a sort
of populist mob reaction tooligarchy.
But the danger is and you seethis very clearly, I think, in
the case of the Roman Republicthat when oligarchy begins to
emerge and you get a populistbacklash, often populism can

(05:57):
unwittingly play straight intothe hands of the emerging
oligarchy.
Many of our listeners may notbe as familiar with Roman
history as they might be, but inthe Roman, the late Roman
Republic I don't mean the empirethe late Roman Republic
political and economic powerbecame concentrated in the hands
of a very small number ofpeople.

(06:18):
This led to a sort of populistbacklash under the Grouchy
Brothers and in response to thissort of populist,
anti-oligarchy movement, theybegan to create the trappings of
a welfare system.
They began to create welfaredependency.
They began to create handoutsand sort of Lyndon Johnson style

(06:40):
federal poverty alleviationprograms.
You might say Johnson-stylefederal poverty alleviation
programs, you might say.
And actually, far fromdissipating the oligarchy, it
actually fueled it.
And I fear that you may, in21st century America, see
something similar If you get asort of populist backlash that

(07:01):
undermines the free market.
Classical liberal when I sayclassical liberal I don't mean
liberal in the sense ofprogressive, but the classical
liberal order you almost alwaysget this symbiotic relationship
between the mob and the powerfulelite and what they eventually
end up doing is creating a sortof a new Caesar.

(07:23):
And it always ends badly.
It always destroys the virtuousrepublic.
And I think the foundingfathers were very aware of this.
I mean, we know that they hadread their Roman history.
We know that they understoodand examined in minutiae the
institutions.
You know Polybius, the Greekhistorian.

(07:44):
His work had been recentlyrediscovered and translated, and
so the founding generation haddiscovered the architecture of
the Roman Republic in greatdetail and understood the
virtues of having the separationof powers, the dispersal of
power, a series of competingmagistrates, and this is why I
think the founding fatherstalked about.

(08:05):
You know, we have a republic,if we can keep it because they
understood that it's actuallyvery difficult to disperse power
on a long-term basis.
And you know, the genius of theAmerican system is that 240
years later, it has endured.
The founders saw the populistbacklash and the tyrants and the

(08:26):
Caesars coming and it's enduredremarkably well.
But it will only endure if weunderstand how precious it is
and if we revere it as much asthe founding generation did.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
I realize that you wrote this book, or at least it
was published, in 2017.
I'm not sure how long it tookyou to write it, but some of the
terms that I think the bookreferences include liberal
democracy and classicalliberalism.
Do you make a distinctionbetween those concepts?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
For the purposes of an American audience.
When I talk about classicalliberalism, liberal in America
has often come to denote theopposite of what a Briton would
mean when they talked aboutliberal A liberal order, you
know from the Latin libra free.
A liberal in the classicalsense is someone who doesn't

(09:26):
believe in having a bossy NancyPelosi type elite telling us how
to live our lives and taxing usand regulating us.
Sadly, there's this confusedterminology.
When I talk about classicalliberalism, I mean free market,
I mean laissez-faire, I mean anunguided, self-ordering economic

(09:46):
and political system, liberaldemocracy.
Well, I mean I use that as ashorthand for the Western norm
since at least 1945, theAnglo-American norm since
probably at least the early1800s no-transcript, democratic,

(10:11):
lightly governed, not anarchicobviously, but has some sort of
constitution so that the peoplewith power are accountable for
how they use the power and thereare checks and balances on what
they can do with it.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
I think we've given the listeners a pretty good
summary of some of the majorthemes of rebel.
Looking back, do you thinkrebel has predicted the key
trends that we've seen inBritain and America over the
past eight years?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
I'm afraid to say I think it has been a little bit
more prophetic than I wanted itto be.
I mean, through much of thebook I express my concern about
the corruption of capitalism.
I expressed concern with whatyou would today, I think, call
woke capitalism.
I think, yes, the bookpreempted this idea that in a

(11:08):
free market system where youhave a capitalist order, where
the people who manage companiesare not the same as the people
who own them, you get all sortsof problems.
I think it did foresee somethings.
I think the book got a coupleof things wrong and I probably
would make some changes if I waswriting it now, if I was doing

(11:30):
a sort of third or fourthedition now.
I'd make some changes.
But I think, broadly, the booktalks about problems that were
regarded as fairly marginal adecade ago and, I'm afraid to
say, have become a lot morepressing.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
One of the analogies that I've heard recently in this
country is that we've gonepretty far to the left.
We have two wheels off the roadand in order to get back to the
center at least a little rightof center we've got to
overcorrect.
We've really got to pull thewheel pretty hard to the right.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
And.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I'm wondering.
I know you've already touchedon the dangers of reactionary
populism, but do you have anythoughts about what we're seeing
at the present time?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Well, one of the things I think I get wrong in
the book is you.
If you read the book, youprobably it probably comes
across that I was a bit of aTrump skeptic.
Um, and I would actually say inmy defense that Trump first
term would rather sort ofindicate that skepticism a lot
of anger, a lot of energy, notmuch output.

(12:35):
Trump second term I know we'reonly a few weeks into it, but I
fundamentally changed my view ofTrump.
It could be because of theinfluence of Elon Musk, I
suspect.
Actually it's partly that,partly because Trump, having
lost his first term, had fouryears to figure out how to

(12:55):
actually deconstruct theadministrative state, how to
actually address woke capitalism, how to really deal with some
of the problems that he wasfrustrated with in his first
term.
And I see Trump much more as asolution to these problems than
a sort of ineffective backlash,a populist backlash.
I actually think so far it'searly days, but so far I think

(13:19):
Trump with his executive ordersperhaps shows how executive fiat
can actually address some ofthese problems in a way that I
simply didn't envisage, and Idon't think he envisaged all
those you know eight years agoor whenever it was.
So I certainly changed my viewon that.
My general tendency is toalways favor democratic action.

(13:41):
When you've got judges who areusing judicial power to subvert
the will of the electedofficials, when you're seeing
the intransigence of theadministrative state
intransigence of theadministrative state my
assumption is always thatactually we should use
democratic means to deal withthese extra executive

(14:02):
institutions.
But I've slightly changed myview.
I think maybe actually Trumpshows that maybe we do need to
sometimes use the odd executiveorder.
Perhaps Musk is right.
Perhaps we are going to have tosee some judges drummed out of
office.
Perhaps we've got to stopplaying by the Queensbury rules.

(14:23):
America, over the past 30 years,has, in a way, faced a sort of
a revolutionary upheaval, arevolution that was imposed on
it without the consent of thepeople.
Under the first two Obamaadministrations and I would say
under the third Obamaadministration, where they
basically ruled through um,through, through sleepy Joe

(14:44):
Biden they imposed anextraordinarily leftist agenda.
A leftist agenda that told usthat a man could become a woman,
that told us that we neededtransgender admirals in the Navy
.
That not just an assault onAmerica's biological laws, but
an assault on America's history.
Statues were torn down byMarxist mobs.

(15:06):
We were told that our country'shistory I should say your
country's history was started in1619 rather than 1776.
They also tried to subvert theConstitution.
They talked about packing theSupreme Court, creating new
states in order to get aninbuilt majority in the Senate.
We've had this sort of leftistrevolution and I think what

(15:28):
we're seeing in Trump is a sortof not a revolution, but a
restoration, actually maybe arevolution in the literal sense,
a revolving of the wheel, areturning of America back to
what you would call normalcy.
I think the intensity of thesort of leftist ideological

(15:49):
assault on American norms overthe past 15, 20 years, we've
overlooked it.
But Trump, I think, suddenlymakes us realize quite what
nonsense we put up with, and Ithink he shows us what we might
do to correct it.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
You know, you've opened a really interesting area
of discussion that you touchedon in your book, and that is
that the danger of populistmovements, as I understand it,
is that they could potentiallyundermine institutions that
governments depend on.
It's probably trite, butthere's the question of do you

(16:26):
dynamite the garden to get theweeds out?
And so what's the balance?
We've made you the president'sadvisor today.
He needs to get your advice.
What do you think in thisregard?

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Don't ever exercise federal power in a way that
would create a precedent for theleft to do to you and to
America what you would hate tosee done.
Don't, for example, havefederal fiat to correct what you

(17:07):
regard as progressive errors ata state level.
Don't use short-term federalfiat to impose on progressive
states and progressive citiesconservative policy.
Let them live with theconsequences of voting
progressive.
I'm pleasantly surprised.

(17:29):
I feared that when Trump got in, they might actually abandon
the idea of getting rid of theDepartment of Education and
instead start using theDepartment of Education to
impose a so-called conservativeeducation curriculum on states.
I think that would be adisaster.
What you would do is basicallyput in place the bureaucratic
architecture for the left tothen impose a leftist curriculum

(17:52):
and dogma on America.
So stick true to the foundingidea that we're a federal system
that ultimately, if Californiawants to vote for lunatic
progressives, make sure theylive with the consequences of
that.
Don't come riding to theirrescue in the belief that that
will save America and saveCalifornia.

(18:14):
What you are simply doing iscreating a precedent for an
eventual leftist administrationin DC to impose a progressive
agenda across the rest ofAmerica.
So stick true to the foundingidea that let 50 different
states or 13 different states,as it was back then, let
different states do their ownthing as much as possible.

(18:35):
If America stays true to that,the left can never ultimately
win, because however manyCalifornias there are, there
will always be a Texas or aTennessee or a Mississippi or a
Florida.
To show, as an example whatgood conservative government
looks like.
To show as an example what goodconservative government looks
like.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Let's turn the conversation in a slightly
different direction.
I know that in your book youanticipated some potential
solutions, and two of them thatcome to mind are
decentralization and technology.
Generally, you had someinteresting antidotes in your
book about how it impacted yourown election, but what do you

(19:21):
see generally in terms of?

Speaker 2 (19:22):
let's say contemporary society.
I think some of the things thatI predicted in the book have
really sort of come to pass.
The extent to which we all nowknow that when Elon Musk took
over Twitter and turned it intoX and got rid of the leftist
algorithms, he didn't just savefree speech on one platform,
because it meant that we coulddiscuss things and debate things
and talk about things andexpress views without being

(19:44):
censored unless, of course, youhave the misfortune to live in
Europe.
I would argue one of thereasons why Trump won was
because long-form podcasts, alittle bit like the one we're
doing now, allowed him and JDVance and all the rest of them
to talk to millions of peopledirectly, without being

(20:08):
interrupted by gotchainterviewers on CNN or even,
indeed, some of thesensationalist presenters on Fox
.
And I think that technologicalchange has shifted forever the
terms of political debate inAmerica.
It's democratized opinionforming and it has destroyed the
power of Ivy League East Coastelites to impose their agenda on

(20:31):
the rest of America.
That is a hugely, hugelysignificant change.
Technology, I think, will willpush the world in a more
libertarian direction.
I'm not sure I saw this at thetime of the book.
I was beginning to understandthe implications of Bitcoin and
the currency.
I think at some pointtechnology will disperse

(20:53):
financial power and it willdestroy the power of central
bankers.
So yeah, I mean I thinktechnology is transforming
politics in a way that the bookpredicted.
But I didn't.
I got the timeline wrong.
I thought it would happenearlier and be less significant
to change.
Actually, it's turned out totake a little longer than I
thought, but the consequences, Ithink, are far bigger than I

(21:14):
anticipated.
Sorry, I forgot the second partof your question.
That was the technology.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
We talked about technology, and then I asked
about decentralization.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, I mean this is really the key to maintaining a
free society Decentralization of.
You've got it hard baked intothe American system with
federalism, but technology anddecentralization, you know it
could transform things likeeducation.

(21:47):
Technology and decentralizationwould allow, instead of a state
having or a school boarddistrict having a common
approach to educating everychild, you know you could
decentralize control over eachchild's learning and curriculum
to that household.

(22:07):
And you're beginning to seethis with school choice, the
personalization of learning.
But we need to decentralize somuch public policy.
The old model in the age ofmass production, everything
government, industry, everythingwas geared to providing at

(22:31):
scale one movie or one song orone type of fashion or one type
of food to an audience ofmillions.
What digital allows to happen islots of niches.
You see this with viewinghabits on streaming services.
You see it in all sorts ofareas of life.

(22:52):
You can cater to the niche, youcan cater to the individual.
So I think the decentralizationof public services is going to
be a huge theme.
We're starting to see it.
So I think the decentralizationof public services is going to
be a huge theme.
We're starting to see it.
I mean one of the reasons whythe school choice movement is
taking off and I think 12 statesnow have some form of universal
school choice.
It's, I think, unstoppable.

(23:12):
I think technology shifts ourcultural expectations so that
people will expect decentralizedniche services that cater to
their needs, rather than aone-size-fits-all solution
offered by a politician cateringto a majority of the ballot box
.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Perhaps it's a whole other discussion for another day
, but I'd be interested to getyour views on the role of AI in
facilitating education,particularly if it can be
customized for each student tohelp them with their specific
situation.
We don't have a great deal oftime left, but if I could impose

(23:50):
on you to maybe touch on onelast area of your book that I
found fascinating, we've talkedabout your knowledge of history,
but we really haven't talkedabout your views on free market
capitalism and economics.
And you go into quite a bit ofdetail about fractional banking
and some of the aspects of howour economy is managed at the
present time.
It may be unfair to ask you tosummarize some of those views in

(24:14):
the brief time we have left,but would you mind commenting on
some of those ideas?

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, I think the Achilles heel in American
capitalism, in Anglo-Americancapitalism, in Western
capitalism is a decision made inAugust 1971, the year that I
was born by Richard Nixon todecouple the dollar from any
connection to gold.
Now, often this is a footnote,often people don't really talk

(24:42):
about it.
Often it's presented as a sortof the end of a historical
oddity.
Actually, I think it's aprofoundly significant moment
with profound implications.
Up until 1971, the USgovernment couldn't just print
lots of dollars.
Every dollar they put intocirculation had to have some

(25:08):
gold in reserve and banks werenot able to work in this
symbiotic relationship with thegovernment to just conjure
credit out of nowhererelationship with the government
to just conjure credit out ofnowhere.
Since 1971, governments havebeen able to essentially print

(25:28):
money.
We've had much higher inflationsince 1971.
Often this is seen as oh well,it's a consequence of the oil
shocks, oh well, it's aconsequence of central bankers
making mistakes, it's aconsequence of breaking the link
with gold.
Even more alarming, I think, isthat banks have been able to
conjure up what they create,which is credit out of thin air,
and lend people, in effect,candy floss credit and do rather

(25:55):
well out of it themselves.
And when, of course, the candyfloss credit pile collapses,
which it intermittently does.
Having privatized the gains,can socialize the losses with
bank bailouts, and we've seenthis.
What it does is it number one,devalues the dollar.
The dollar has declinedprecipitously in value.

(26:17):
We've recently had a period ofsustained inflation in America.
Quite rightly, people say thisis a consequence of Joe Biden
and all the rest of it.
Yeah, it's partly that, butit's also systemic.
The reason why there are toomany dollars chasing too few
goods is because once you breakthe link with gold, central
bankers can create dollars outof nothing.

(26:37):
It debauches the currency.
It concentrates wealth in thehands of the people.
You get lots of venturecapitalists and what have you in
America?
Hedge funds whose basicbusiness model is to borrow vast
amounts of money very cheaply,which they can do off their
banker buddy friends, becausethey've got oodles of this

(27:00):
credit at low interest rates,and they then invest, using that
credit, in assets.
The value of the assetsincreases faster than the
interest rate on the loan andthey become very, very rich.
And we tend to think of them asfrightfully clever
entrepreneurs as they drivearound Miami in their Ferraris.
But no, they're not.

(27:20):
Basically, they're playing asystem that is anti-capitalist,
that is not capitalism, that isa perversion of capitalism.
And at some point this is goingto come and bite us.
It very nearly took down thesystem in 2007, 2008.
I don't think we have escapedthe consequences of Nixon

(27:42):
breaking the link with gold, andat some point you are going to
get hyperinflation in Americaand at some point the government
living beyond its means isgoing to become a real problem
and it will lower the livingstandard of millions of ordinary
Americans.
And then I think we need to askourselves if the paper promises

(28:02):
of the Federal Reserve can nolonger be honored because of
inflation and possibly evendefault.
But I think Elon Musk may becutting spending to avoid that.
But at some point I think wewill need to find an alternative
monetary system.
I suspect that it could be aBitcoin system.

(28:26):
I suspect that Bitcoin willbecome the global financial
reserve, and I think, if handledproperly, that could be a very
good thing.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
As I was listening to your explanation.
It's not four square with whatyou were saying, but I couldn't
help thinking of Silicon ValleyBank as an example of some of
the things that you were talkingabout.
Maybe one last question beforewe wrap up here.
Can you tell us in your mind,and if you want to pause for a
moment to think about it, whatdo you think is the most urgent
lesson from Rebel that people in2025 should take to heart?

Speaker 2 (29:04):
um, I I think the thing I would want people who've
either read the book or notread the book and are thinking
about getting the book.
I think the most urgent thingis that there's nothing

(29:25):
inevitable in history.
Who used to have this amazingfree market, innovative system
that made them the envy of theworld and the technological
center of the universe, justbecause they've lost all that
and become a country in whichpeople are locked up for social

(29:49):
media posts?
Just because Europe has becomean open-air museum devoid of any
ingenuity or innovation?
There's nothing inevitable indecline.
There's nothing that saysAmerica has to morph from being
a republic to becoming an empire.
There's nothing that saysAmerica's best days have to be
behind us.

(30:10):
Actually, if you recognize thelessons from history, the
warning signs from history, andyou recognize how precious and
fragile the creation of thefounders is, if you realize how
sublime the model they puttogether in that courthouse in

(30:30):
Philadelphia in the summer of1787 truly is, then you can
correct the errors, you can seeoff the dangerous populist
solutions, you can face down theBernie Sanders, the latter-day
Gramskys, you can be wary of theidea that one strong man can

(30:51):
come along and solve all yourproblems and you can stay true
to that founding vision and youcan stay true to that founding
vision.
There's no reason why theAmerican Republic can't have
another 250 years.
I mean, the Roman Republicsurvived for 500 years.
The American Republic couldsurvive for equally long.

(31:13):
But it takes us to understandwhat is precious about the past
and be prepared to think beyondthe narrow tribal lines of I
vote blue or I vote red in orderto do something about it.
We're in uncharted territoryand I think we need to be

(31:34):
prepared to do things we'venever thought of doing.
These are fixable problems, butthey do require us to be
prepared to fix them, and thatis going to be a challenge, but
I hope people will be optimistic.
America's problems can be fixed.
America has come through worsesituations than we're in today,
but it does require us to makesure that the next generation of

(31:58):
Americans I was shocked to seea poll that said that only one
in five young Americans isextremely proud to be American.
Look, I've only been in yourcountry for four years and I am
extremely proud of America as anon-American citizen.
We need to make sure the nextgeneration appreciates America
the way I, as an immigrant,appreciate America and the way

(32:21):
that most Americans throughouthistory have appreciated America
.
What would it gain America ifwe had all these policy wins but
America lost her own soul bynot having the next generation
of young Americans revere whatit means to be American.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Douglas, I can only say that anyone who listens to
this podcast is going to wishthat if we have immigration into
this country, we get moreimmigrants, just like you.
Thank you for your reflectionson your book's original ideas
and assessing how they've agedand applying them to the current
political and economic dynamicsin Britain and America.

(33:00):
Is there anything you'd like tosay in closing with regard to
telling people where they canfind you and books that you've
written?
Anything else that you'd liketo share?

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Do please reach out to me.
I'm Douglas Carswell at theMississippi Center for Public
Policy.
You can Google our website oryou can find me on Twitter at
Douglas Carswell.
I focus mainly on free marketsin Mississippi and the southern
US, but I'm interested in anyonewho's interested in freedom

(33:29):
anywhere, so if you've got anythoughts or questions, please
don't hesitate to reach out.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Douglas, thank you Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Thank you so much.