Susan McWilliams Barndt & the practice of fraternity

Center for Civil Society's YouTube Channel

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This week on Givers, doers and Thinkers.
We talk to Pomona Collegepolitical scientist, susan
McWilliams-Bart about theshockingly under-emphasized
concept of fraternity.
Our conversation takes place inthe context of the publication
of the 50th anniversary editionof her father, Wilson Carey
McWilliams' book the Idea ofFraternity in America.

(00:22):
We talk about why fraternity isnot much practiced or talked
about in America and about thegreat alternative tradition her
father articulated and stood for.
Let's go Welcome to Givers,doers and Thinkers a podcast on

(00:55):
philanthropy and civil society.
I'm Jeremy Beer and it's greatto have you with us.
We are recording on April 1st2025, and I'm pleased to have as
our guest political philosopherSusan McWilliams-Bart.
Professor of politics at PomonaCollege, author of the American
Road Trip and American PoliticalThought, and editor of A

(01:17):
Political Companion to JamesBaldwin and the Best Kind of
College an insider's guide toAmerica's small liberal arts
colleges.
Those are all worthy books.
I commend them to yourattention, but we're going to
chat mostly today about a bookwritten by Susan's father,
wilson Carey McWilliams, aninfluential political theorist
who taught for many years atRutgers University.

(01:38):
That book is called the Idea ofFraternity in America and it
was just brought out in 2023, bythe University of Notre Dame
Press.
In the special 50th anniversaryedition, which I have over my
shoulder right here, susanprovided an excellent and
substantial introduction to thebook.
So as we talk this season aboutAmerican history and how it's

(01:59):
been shaped by Americansassociating with one another to
pursue the common good or thegood life or both, I thought it
would be very timely to considerthe concept of fraternity,
which we don't hear a lot aboutin America anymore.
If we ever did I'm not sure weever did We'll ask Susan how are
you, susan?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I'm good, I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for having me on thepodcast, jeremy.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Thank you for joining us.
It was good to walk down memorylane with you prior to
recording about the LibertyFunds and Front Porch Republics
and other conferences we havebeen at with each other in the
past.
But let's talk about fraternity.
So usually, you know, peoplehear fraternity if they think
anything besides Greek life oncampuses.

(02:40):
They think of the FrenchRevolution, right, liberté,
égalité, fraternité.
We talk not so much about theAmerican experiment.
What are we talking about whenwe talk about fraternity, at
least in your father'sconception of the term?

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Well, I think my father chose the word fraternity
in part because of itsresonance with the French
Revolution and to draw attentionto the fact that in the
American political tradition wetalk a lot about liberty, we
talk a lot about equality, butwe almost never talk about
fraternity.
And I think that part of what hewas trying to get at in that

(03:16):
idea and title was to draw ourattention to what's missing in
American life and Americanpolitics at its very core.
What are the things that aresort of off the table in our
political discourse?
We talk a lot about rights, wetalk about freedoms, we talk a
lot about equality, we talk alot, sometimes we even talk

(03:40):
about justice, but we rarelytalk about fraternity.
And by fraternity my fatherreally meant the whole
constellation of humanrelationships that aren't
defined by biology, that aren'tdefined by us deriving mutual
private benefit from each otherlike relationships have gained,
but relationships from which wederive deep meaning.
Those can be friendship, thosecan be romantic relationships,

(04:05):
those can be all the kinds ofconnections that we might have
with other people to whom we'renot related but who we might
want to call brother or sister,where we have such a deep sense
of connection with them thatit's almost as if we're family
Is fraternity.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
how's it related to the concept of community?
Would that be?
That's the more American term,right, or solidarity, which is
more of an ecclesial term, likeI'd like you to talk about?
How are those things?
How are they different or thesame?

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, I you know, I thought a lot about why my
father chose the word fraternityas opposed to community and
again, I think it's becausecommunity is a word that gets
tossed around in Americanpolitics and life.
A lot People use it casually.
People use it in advertising,right?
People use it on the internetall the time.
Community means this wholeunwieldy range of things that

(05:01):
Americans use sometimes whenthey're shopping or to indicate
that they're fans of the samesports team.
And my father, I think, reallywanted to suggest that even the
way that Americans think aboutcommunity misses something about
what's really important to usas human beings, like the kinds

(05:23):
of relationships we really wantto have.
And I think he didn't use theword community and I think he
did use the word fraternity tosuggest that even in those
places in American life where wethink we're connected to other
people, we're often missing afeeling of a deeper kind of
connection.
That's a really important thingfor human beings to have and to

(05:43):
see.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
It's funny because from my I'm just going to go in
any direction.
You're suggesting all sorts ofthings here, to me From my
Burkean perspective.
right, I can't.
I think French Revolution to meis always filtered through
Burke.
It's just, I can't take it anyother way.
And it's like there's arallying cry of fraternity, and

(06:06):
then there's this wiping theslate clean of all these bonds
and relationships and historyand traditions through the
actions of the radicalrevolutionaries.
How did your father, or do you,kind of, square that circle?
Are we separating somewhat theidea of fraternity from its sort
of, from the revolution, theactual historical revolution?

(06:29):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Absolutely.
I don't think Dad was in anyway a fan of the French
Revolution, especially the kindsof effects that you talk about.
I think when he was thinkingabout fraternity he was also
really thinking about ancientGreek, Judeo-Christian ideas or

(06:52):
like deep kinship thattranscends biology.
So he talks about fraternity inthis book, even though I think
he does gesture at the FrenchRevolution.
He's really trying to thinkabout a much more ancient
anthropological kind ofdefinition yeah, well one.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
It's funny that, um, I like how you're describing
this.
I was just reading um, a, uh, abiography of black elk this is
just yesterday, literally and um, one of the things that lakas.
They would use the wordsbrother, sister, uncle, nephew
in non-biological ways toindicate this sort of deep sense

(07:32):
of kinship or connection tosomeone, and I think it's.
It may be it's diagnostic tothink that that's something
that's this sort of marginalaspect of American life is
present in the and I'm sure notjust Lakota's.
I'm sure this was somethingthat a number of Native peoples
did, but it's not something wewould do in America.
There's a sort of flight fromthat deep connection.

(07:54):
Is that fair to say?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, the only place where I think you do see it
consistently in Americanpolitical life is in
African-American community whereyou'll hear people refer to
each other as brother and sisteroften.
That, I think to my father, isactually a sign that we see that
kind of language in thesecommunities that have always

(08:18):
been martialized in Americanpolitics.
It's a sign of the marginalplace, of that kind of
aspiration in American politics.
And in fact one of the thingsthat my dad does in this book
which is super interestingbecause he wrote it 50 years ago
is he really puts Blackpolitical thought at the center
of American political life.
It says Black political thoughtcan really reveal to us some of

(08:42):
the things that are missing,that go sort of deeper.
From a kind of account ofracism, Dan was found as saying
that people who think thatracism is the big problem in
American politics are onlyreally scratching the surface of
what their understanding is.
That's about what's deeplywrong.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
In what sense would that be the case?

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, in part he thought that, like both racism
and other kinds of like I don'twant to call them superficial
phenomenon, but like evidentphenomenon often had a lot to do
with the failure to have a kindof language or a place for
fraternity in American politics.

(09:27):
After all, what we now callanti-Black racism has a lot to
do, of course, with the legacyof slavery.
And what is slavery?
But the idea that human beingscan treat each other as property
?
It's the absolute rejection ofa kind of principle as human
fraternity, which is to say,we're all brothers and sisters

(09:47):
under the skin.
And so my father thought thatthe legacy of slavery and racism
in the United States was oneway in which we saw a kind of
consistent failure in Americanpolitical life to value what
fraternity really means.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
All right, so we're going to come back to all this
in a second.
I'm going to take you back,though, to set the scene a
little bit for people.
Just intellectual history herein the context.
What's the intellectual contextfor this book?
Your father's writing itobviously in 1970.
Well, it's published in 73,right, that's right.

(10:25):
What's the context for him?
We have the new left happeningnow, the kind of post hippie era
.
Maybe you're still in that era.
How does this all relate towhat was happening at that time?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
So my father was a graduate student at Berkeley in
the 1960s.
Most people have a sense ofwhat Berkeley looked like in the
1960s but my father was atBerkeley in the early 1960s.
Most people think that thebeginning of the new left starts
with Mario Savio and the freespeech movement, but before

(10:57):
there was the free speechmovement at Berkeley there was a
group called Slate and myfather was one of the founding
members of Slate.
Slate and my father was one ofthe founding members of Slate
and Slate was an early new leftpolitical activist group that
was mostly focused on gettingincreased student voice in
university governance.
They were also reallyinterested in questions of

(11:19):
racial equality on campus and inthe area and that was the new
left.
When the new left was reallydriven by a kind of communal
ethos like it was aboutparticipation in governance.
It was about bringing peopletogether.
I started writing fraternity ashis dissertation in that context

(11:42):
, dissertation in that contextand I think you can really see
that kind of early 60s energyinfused in the book.
He starts the book by sayingsomething like Americans,
especially young Americans,cannot see their country in the
land around them and it's a verykind of early 60s Berkeley
critique.
What happened over the courseof the next decade, which

(12:04):
everybody who knows the story ofthe 1960s knows, is that that
early communal energy of the1960s started to dissipate into
a more hedonistic,individualistic, do what feels
good ethos, and my fatherwatched that disintegration with
some amount of despair.

(12:25):
Even the group that he hadfounded disbanded because they
decided that there was no way toimprove the system by working
for within the system, right itwas another example of, you know
, like dropping out of thesystem entirely, of the system
entirely.
By the time he wrote the bookversion of Idea of Fraternity in

(12:45):
America, my father was boththinking about the underlying
sense that Americans areyearning for kinds of community
and human connection that arevery hard to find in American
politics, and I think he wasalso musing about how that early
communal energy in the 1960shad really fallen apart.

(13:08):
And even the very, very communalexperience.
Experiments of that era oftensell prey to a kind of like
individual.
You know, all these communesfell over, basically yeah, and I
think he was.
I think's that the context ofthis book is him trying to think
about where that problem inamerican life comes from.

(13:30):
And what he says is is that theproblems that people were
feeling so clearly and sopublicly in the 1960s in
berkeley and places like thatare not problems that have to do
with, let's say, post-war lifeand they're not problems that
have to do with recenttechnology.
They're problems that go all theway back to the constitutional

(13:53):
framing of the United States andare kind of sewn into the
fabric of American life.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Which is why this is a great discussion to have,
since we're kind of tying thisloosely to America 250 this
season, and this is sort of theradical I want to in a good
sense sort of nature of yourfather's contribution is like
hey, this is not a falling awayfrom the pristine, perfectly
framed um founding uh, I'm goingto put the way I know you know

(14:20):
he used the term framers, notfounders, which I appreciate.
Um, it's not a falling awaycaused by German progressives
infiltrating our intellectuallife in the late 1800s, early
1900s.
It is sewn into the from thebeginning.
Yeah, talk about what wentwrong.
What, in your father's view, oryour view, did the framers and

(14:41):
maybe you can talk about why hecalls them the framers, because
these things are tied togetherwhat went wrong?

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well, my father thought that there was.
I think my father understood theconstitutional framing and I'll
say parenthetically, he calledthe constitutional framers
framers as opposed to founders,because he thought that a lot of
people have a claim to beAmerican founders and that
Americans have a claim to beAmerican founders, that
Americans have a claim to beAmerican founders, that somebody

(15:09):
like WEB Du Bois has a claim tobe an American founder, that
anyone who's helping to reallyshape the American nation
whether or not they were thereat the moment the Constitution
was signed has a claim to be akind of founder or father of the
country.
But he thought that at the timeof the constitutional framing

(15:29):
the framers made in some ways akind of devil's bargain.
They put together a system thatfavors the individual, favors
natural right, favors freedomand favors governments on a
really vast scale, and I thinkmost americans know the reasons

(15:51):
why.
That was an appealing thing todo, right, um, it created power,
it created stability, uh, forthe nation, um, it allowed for
the like gigantic nation thatthe united states is today to
come into play.
But the cost of that my fatherthought was that the Kramers

(16:13):
really set up a system that madeforming relationships very
difficult, that made havingstable communities very
difficult and in that sense,made some parts of our human
life that are very elemental tous very difficult.
And one of the things that Ithink about when I think about

(16:34):
the constitutional framing andthen I think was on dad's mind
as well, is that very early onin the federalist papers, when
James Madison is talking aboutyou know basically the whole bit
about what they're doing.
He says two things, One ofwhich is that he says when James
Madison is talking about, youknow basically the whole bit
about what they're doing.
He says two things, One ofwhich is that he says look, the
real problem that we're gonnahave to face is the problem of
section, because factions candestabilize governance and so

(16:57):
we're gonna make a, you know, anation so big that it's hard for
factions to form.
That makes a lot of sense as akind of political theory.
But it's also possible to thinkthat faction is another word
for like group of people whobelieve in something and come
together to act in service totheir beliefs.

(17:18):
Faction is another word foridentity, group or community.
Behind the constitution, itassumes that communities of
people are a problem forpolitics, not something like
that.
Communities of people aresomething that's good for
politics or constituent ofpolitics, right exactly and the

(17:41):
other thing that madison says,um and he says this right before
this whole fiction, um onfaction is he says you know
what's going to make the unitedstates great?
Roads are going to make theunited states great.
We're going to have so manyroads.
Know what's going to make theUnited States great?
Roads are going to make theUnited States great.
We're going to have so manyroads and people are going to be
able to move around all thetime.
It's going to facilitatecommerce.
It's going to facilitaterepresentation across this vast

(18:02):
expanse.
Again, we understand why Madisonthought that was an appealing
vision.
Right, it works.
It does allow people to gatherin Washington DC and from all
these vast different places.
But again, the cost of that isto set up a nation in which
people are moving around all thetime and in that, in its own

(18:23):
way, it makes communities harder, it makes relationships harder,
it breaks up families and everyAmerican knows how
geographically vast the scopesof our lives are.
So, ultimately, in these waysand others, dad thought that for
all of the good things that theConstitution did, it came at a

(18:43):
kind of human cost and that thehuman cost I think my dad
thought was so profound thatit's always a kind of
destabilizing, dangerous likeforce in the background as
American politics, that theconstitution has set up a system
that creates, in some ways,unhappy conditions of life for

(19:05):
people, and Americans don'treally understand what it is
that's making them unhappy,because it's so baked into the
system.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Living in this giant mobile, individualistic,
privately oriented,anti-communal country that we
don't sometimes even have thelanguage to understand what it
is that's making us unhappy.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right and one of his, I guess, really well put.
One of his goals, then, is whathe does in this book and
throughout his whole career isto retrieve what he calls an
alternative tradition inAmerican thought and life.
Right Of people he sees as sortof who did understand something
of what was going on.
But what dynamic had been putinto place or was in place that,

(19:54):
um um liberated people and alsocreated a certain level of of
restlessness and unhappiness atthe same time?
Um talk about that alternativetradition.
I do wish I had a bet.
I do wish you had a better namefor this alternative tradition.
I'll say I, I do too.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Well my father thought that throughout American
well, I mean, I guess thebottom line is, my father
thought that whatever theconstitution says and whatever
the language of our politics is,people want to love and be
loved by other people.
Right, we want to be incommunities with other people.
And I think my father thoughtthat that always shows through

(20:35):
in American politics, even ifit's subterranean, even if it's
at the upturns, even as it's onthe margins.
And my father thought thatthere is again what he called
the alternative tradition inAmerica of people who saw the
need for fraternity, who managedto find ways to both articulate

(20:56):
and sometimes to enact a kindof alternative space or vision
within American politics.
He thought the Puritans were anearly example of a group that
had tried to do this, thoughultimately they sort of failed
on that, had tried to do this,though ultimately they, you know
, they sort of failed on thatcount.
He thought that a lot ofwriters like Hawthorne and

(21:19):
Melville and Twain really sawthat problem in American
politics.
He and, as I indicated before,one of the things that I think
is super cool about hisargument- is that he saw a
fraternal tradition or analternative tradition emerging
really consistently in thewritings of immigrants, in

(21:43):
African-American politicalthought and literature and in
religious like in differentreligious groups writing and
literature and tradition, and soa lot of what he does in this
book is just try to find theseresources, Because one of the
things I want to be clear aboutis that, even though my dad had

(22:04):
a kind of foundational critiqueof the American constitution, he
loved the United States.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
He's not anti-American.
We should make that clear.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
He's not anti-American at all, and I
think that the spirit of thebook is really saying like any
regime right, every regime hasits weak points and its
frailties.
The American regime and theAmerican constitutional order
has weaknesses and frailtiesthat we feel really bone deep.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
But the american political tradition also has
resources within it um that canhelp us mitigate against those
weaknesses and frailties what'skind of different about what he
says, too, is is is to make thissuper clear for people is that
the weakness and frailty isexactly what we think of as a
strength, and that all is that,we're told, is in the liberal

(22:52):
individualism, to use the termthat you use in your
introduction.
I don't know, does he use thosewords in the?

Speaker 2 (22:57):
He has a sound of liberalism and individualism
yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, so we think of those as as strengths in many
ways, but he, early on, and nowit's everybody talks about those
as weaknesses, but this is 50years ago, from a
non-anti-American perspective,calling those out, well, no,
that's exactly what is astrength is exactly the source
of our weaknesses as well.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good rule in politics
and maybe in human life, rightthat?
the blessings are one in thesame.
I think my father reallyappreciated I mean, he was a
liberal arts professor.
Professors are, you know,beneficiaries of the liberal
order?
Maybe no more than you knowmore than anybody else and being
able to speak and say what theythink without regard, for you

(23:45):
know what their parents thoughtor said or what people in power
think or say.
So he understood the values ofliberalism but really thought
that the liberal orders come ata kind of human cost that we
should be aware of also, that wecan live better lives as
individuals and that we can bebetter parents and better family

(24:07):
members, that we can be bettercommunity members and live in
healthier, more stablecommunities.
He was not without hope forAmerican politics, even though
this book at times has a kind oftone of despair about it.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Well, what are the wellsprings by which the
alternative tradition you callit the fraternal tradition just
now, which I like very much?
What are the wellsprings bywhich it's refreshed, even today
, According to Hamer?
What would you think?

Speaker 2 (24:35):
He found signs of the alternative tradition all the
time.
Like many similar thinkers whohave a kind of critique of
liberalism, he thought thatreligion always had a role to
play in directing our attention,in the company of other people,
to higher order goods.
I think he also thought thatreligious congregations were a

(24:58):
way of bringing people togetherin relationship, deep
relationships oriented aroundbig questions and morality and
ways that were good for people'slives.
But he also saw signs of thealternative tradition and
wellsprings of hope in sort ofordinary associations.

(25:22):
Much like Tocqueville, who Iknow you like to mention from
this podcast, my dad was a bigbeliever in local association,
in civic associations, in dinnerparties and in parties and
barbecues and the ordinary waysin which people come together.

(25:44):
One of the things also that youdon't see as much in this book
but you see in his later writingis that he was always on the
lookout for signs about thelonging for fraternity in
American politics and so nearthe end of his life he was very
charmed by the emergence of theHarry Potter book series and we
I mean we forget it now, butHarry Potter wasn't supposed to

(26:06):
be a super successful book,right Like it was sort of
reluctantly published and ittook off Right, like it was sort
of reluctantly published and ittook off.
And my father took one look atthat, at that series, and said
here's a story about some kidswho come together in friendship
and stick with each otheragainst terrible odds and
terrible threats to defeat.

(26:28):
You know, an enemy who'steaching is like mastery and,
and you know, in some ways akind of impersonal technology.
And he saw just in thereadership of harry potter a
kind of wellspring for hope andhe thought that a whole
generation of american childrenwould grow up, maybe even not

(26:48):
consciously but on some level,understanding that life is
better when you are with friendsand where you put your trust in
them, maybe to the point ofbeing willing to stake your
lives on their actions.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
You know that's that's.
I'm glad we got to get HarryPotter into this.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Okay, one thing you write is myfather took it as axiomatic
that as human beings, we alllong to be recognized by and
live in relation with others.
And my question to you is isthat longing the reason why we

(27:28):
have such intense identitypolitics today?
That it's this?
It's like there's such anunfulfilled longing in our
families or institutions,genuine we don't really have
genuine communities in some in athick sense anymore.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Would that be the case?
Absolutely.
I mean, I teach at, you know, aselective liberal arts college,
and so, like I've been watching, I've sort of been deep in the
identity politics space on thecampus left for a good while now
, and part of what you know Ithink you see both up close and
in the big picture is so muchAmericans, particularly young

(28:07):
Americans, really want to findspaces of belonging.
Young Americans really want tofind spaces of belonging.
And how often they'll talk,they'll use the word community
to mean their racial group ortheir, like, racial plus
socioeconomic group, and I thinkthat when you see that word
appear in that way, it showsthis underlying longing to

(28:29):
belong and to matter.
It also doesn't escape myattention, and I suspect my
father would say though this ismy thinking and not his that the
rise of identity politicshappened right in the moment
when two other things happen.
One is where we get the greatde-churching in American

(28:50):
politics, which is people stophaving especially young
Americans stop being raised witha sense of religious identity
or as members of religiouscongregation, and the internet
appears and both.
It's interesting that both ofthose things happen at the same
moment.
We get these calls for identitypolitics, and I think it's very

(29:10):
clear that identity politics isone of many ways in which you
see a kind of yearning forfraternity bubbling up to the
surface in a very problem, yeah,and he talks about how that
yearning doesn't always takehealthy directions.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And he talks, too, about how we are always seen to
be seeking community and yetdisappointed by the communities
that we find, which I found tobe a really arresting insight.
I've never seen that anywhereelse.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, he really thought that Americans like walk
community but we're real bad atit Because our language and our
habits like don't point us forcommunity.
We're so used to talking in thelanguage of right and interest
and that's used to talking inthe language of right and
interest and that's not likegood community building language
.
Sometimes I like to say to mystudents okay, give me a

(30:00):
political position that you have, but don't explain it in terms
of right, and it's very, veryhard for them or for most
Americans to do that.
But right language is veryindividual.
It's weird to say likesomething like you can't really
say well, people have a right tocommunity or a right to love
right.
Like that starts to sound evenpotentially pretty creepy.

(30:21):
Right we have.
So we don't have great languageto express our longing for
community and we also like usethe word, as I said before, in
so many ways because we want itso badly.
We attach it to things that aregoing to be dissatisfying.
So, like on my a lot ofcolleges, you'll hear people
talk about the campus community,and community is a super weird

(30:44):
word to think about a placewhere people are moving in and
moving out Everybody's therebecause they're paying or being
paid, and where everybody'sthere basically to advance their
private interests, and so eventhe things that we call
community or experience ascommunity, and it's true.
For most of my students, beingat a residential liberal arts

(31:05):
college is going to be one ofthe more communal feelings that
they have in their entire lives,but it's a pretty like thing
for a community, indeed, rightum it's for standards for
community are low and we take,you know, community wherever we
can get it, but most of theplaces where we're getting it,

(31:26):
uh, we actually don't get whatwe're looking for.
Um, probably in the contemporaryworld, and and this is why I
think being part of what's sogreat about this book right now
is, though it was written in1973, it seems even more on the
nose now, um in the internet age.
Um, but I think all the timeabout the fact that the more you

(31:47):
use social media, the thelonelier you report being, and
that's a really good example ofhow my father thought Americans
are always like creating andmaking these new forms of what
they think are being connectedor in community, but it actually
doesn't satisfy their realconnection or community.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
We have such a hard time giving up the language and
the habits of individualisticliberalism, right, it's very
hard to generate sort ofanything that seems to be sort
of a healthy pushback againstthat, so, which makes me wonder
what you think about.
So we have this time in the 60sand 70s when you get a lot of

(32:29):
pushback against liberalism fromthe left, and now you get it
very much so from the right.
You can give me one or bothkind of from the right reaction

(32:55):
against liberalism.
That has obviously a lot oftraction now.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Well, I don't think he would be surprised by it at
all.
Most of that element of youknow right-wing politics in the
United States is a lot less newthan people think.
It is right.
People think that because Trumphimself is relatively new, that
everything around Trump is alsonew, but it's not For decades.

(33:19):
I think conservative thinkershave been very articulate about
the costs to community and theinhospitability of the American
like of the United States toneighborhood, to family, to all

(33:45):
sorts of human relationshipsthat are not like exchange
relationships.
And so I think, like that piecehas been on the right for a
while.
But I also think, you see, inthe very idea of like the
movements themselves on theright, like people at least

(34:06):
people on the left love to callTrumpism a cult.
I don't know like whether ornot I think that's right.
I guess I think it's not rightbecause in Dad's sense it's a
kind of, again, desire to bepart of a group and an identity
right, a desire to have somesense of people out there who

(34:29):
are your people, who you're tiedto in this thing that's bigger
than yourself.
And so I think he would see,like what we call Trumpism
before that probably the TeaParty much as he sees like
identity politics on the left,as this, I think again faulty,
like expression of the desire tohave a real relational

(34:54):
grounding and sense of belongingthat has to do with politics.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
I think he had an appropriate ambivalence toward
what he called fraternities ofbattle.
There's a good and bad aboutthat, the bad being that it
requires a pretty strong senseof there being an enemy.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, well, he.
I mean, I'm going to redirect alittle bit, but to answer your
question.
You can redirect anytime, Susanyou know like today when we talk
about toxic masculinity a lot.
I think my father was worriedabout masculinity and men in the
united states in the 1970s.

(35:36):
I think he thought that thekinds of things we're talking
about the emphasis on like alike rugged, individual, right
uh, what's really a kind of like, if my students would say, like
male coded value, right, likecowboys are supposed to be
rugged and individualistic andnot relational and not dependent
on anybody.
And so I think my father'sthought that the kind of crisis

(35:59):
of fraternity hit menparticularly hard and that one
of the things that youconsistently see in American
politics is groups of men comingtogether in this longing for
fraternity, but in ways that aremisguided, in that they are
destructive.
He was thinking here aboutthings like gangs.

(36:19):
He was probably thinking hereabout things like certain kinds
of extra hedonistic collegefraternities.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I think that he I mean he says in the book right,
these are false forms offraternity, because any kind of
group that's oriented arounddestruction is eventually going
to involve some amount ofself-destruction, and it's also
going to mean that there are,you know, soldiers left on the
battlefield who the rest of youknow, the group is left to mourn

(36:52):
.
And so he did worry inparticular about the tendency of
American men to form likedestructive groups as a kind of
psychological response to thissociety that really sort of
doubly excluded or devaluedtheir potential as husbands and

(37:15):
brothers and fathers and sons.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
There's relational identity.
Yeah, all right.
Last question for me here, Ithink, susan, practically
speaking, how can people sort ofmitigate the worst aspects of
liberal individualism in theirlives, or how can they?
How can reflecting on or beingcommitted to fraternity help in

(37:38):
a practical way?

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Well, I mean, I think my dad, like I said, would
advise many of the things thatTocqueville would advise.
You know join community groups,start community groups, try to
know your neighbors, try not tomove too much, try to cultivate
relationships with other people.
Don't drop people the secondthey do something that you find

(38:04):
mildly distasteful.
But I also think you know,aside from that like level of
community engagement, you canthink internally about asking
yourself different kinds ofquestions when you're thinking
about what to do in your life.
And when I talk to my students,you know the question that they
always get is what you know,what do you want to do after

(38:25):
graduation?
And sometimes I say to themokay, that's a good question,
but maybe you should also askwith whom do you want to be
after graduation?
Is there a friend that you havethat's so good, a friend that
you know that even if you have abad day at work, your life's

(38:45):
going to be okay, if you cancome back to that roommate and
roll your eyes and tell somejokes.
And you know, have a beer or dowhatever else.
And you know, have a beer or dowhatever else.
I think we're taught when we'remaking life decisions in the
United States to really focusoften on the what as opposed to
the who and the with whom, and Ithink putting those questions
first in your own mind is a kindof small way of prioritizing

(39:09):
fraternity internally in acountry that devalues fraternity
so much externally.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
That's perfectly put.
We have to end there becausethat was so well done.
Thank you, that's great, greatadvice.
Thank you for this conversation.
Susan has already forewarned methat she has no social media
presence at all, except a smallone on LinkedIn.
So if you want to connect withher, you can connect with her on
LinkedIn, but mostly reallyencourage you, if this interests

(39:39):
you at all, to buy this book.
It's available from theUniversity of Notre Dame Press
and everywhere books are sold.
As they say, the Idea ofFraternity in America by Wilson
Carey McWilliams, and thank you,susan McWilliams-Bart, for your
time.
Thanks, jeremy.
Hey, thanks for joining us fortoday's podcast.
If you enjoyed it, we inviteyou to subscribe and or rate and

(40:02):
or review us on YouTube, apple,spotify or wherever you listen
to our podcasts.
Thanks a lot.