October 30, 2024 • 39 mins
This week, Roger welcomes Dr. Joshua Mitchell, a professor of political theory at Georgetown University. They discuss the perils of identity politics, the meaning of the material, blank and spiritual economies, and the need for a return to competence and community engagement. Dr. Mitchell also shares firsthand insight on the state of higher education and the ever-growing fear of free and open dialog among students.
Dr. Joshua Mitchell is one of the world’s leading experts on Alexis de Tocqueville and has written widely on a range of subjects, most recently on identity politics. He has also authored several books, his most recent one being, “American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time.”
Dr. Mitchell has also taught several courses in political philosophy at TFAS programs, both in the U.S. and Prague.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
Today I'm your host, roger Ream.
Today I'm very excited towelcome Dr Joshua Mitchell.
Dr Mitchell is a professor ofpolitical theory at Georgetown
(00:22):
University and has taughtseveral courses in political
philosophy at TFAS programs bothin the US and at our
international program in Prague.
Joshua Mitchell has writtenwidely on a range of subjects,
most recently on identitypolitics.
Dr Mitchell is one of theworld's leading experts on
(00:43):
Alexis de Tocqueville and hasapplied the wisdom of
Tocqueville and other greatthinkers to many of the problems
of today.
Josh is the author of severalbooks, his most recent one being
American Awakening IdentityPolitics and Other Afflictions
of Our Time.
His previous book, tocquevillein Arabia, has just been
(01:05):
re-released by Encounter Bookswith a new introduction.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Good to see you, roger.
I want to discuss the insightscontained in your most recent
book, american Awakening, butI'd like to first begin with
your previous book, tocquevillein Arabia Dilemmas in a
Democratic Age, which youpublished in 2013, and now, I
(01:27):
understand, is coming out againthrough Encounter Books with a
new introduction, which I'mlooking forward to reading.
The themes in both books reallytie together and they focus on
identity, how a democratic manhas become disconnected in a
world of unbounded freedom, theconcepts of debt and guilt,
redemption, innocence.
So let me begin by asking justa general question about the
(01:51):
origins of your thoughts onthese themes.
Did they start the day you satdown in graduate school with a
copy of Tocqueville's Democracyin America?
Or do you trace them more toyour experiences in Qatar and
Iraq and at GeorgetownUniversity and more contemporary
events taking place?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's a great question .
My father was Foreign Serviceand we grew up in the Middle
East and I say that with alittle caution it was really my
formative years until I wasabout seven.
And then I come back to theUnited States and I realize,
even though I'm obviously anEnglish, native English speaker,
I realize there's somethingdeep here that's different than
the Middle East.
And obviously, a native Englishspeaker, I realized there's
something deep here that'sdifferent than the Middle East
and I think it took me decadesto formulate it, but it was this
(02:28):
Christian underpinning.
So I've always had atheological interest and in
graduate school I was admittedboth to Divinity School and the
Political Science Department andchose the Political Science
Department only because I hadgreater freedom but I kept
taking religion courses.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing I would say isI finished up my graduate
program and with greatembarrassment I say I had never
read Tocqueville's Democracy inAmerica, and I was asked to
(02:52):
teach a course the followingsemester at the place where I
had finished up, the Universityof Chicago, and I thought, okay,
better read this book,democracy in America.
And I read the author'sintroduction, which was 11 pages
long, and it took me three anda half hours I thought, no, I'm
going to really pay attention tothis.
And I closed that book and Ithought to myself well, you're
now going to spend the rest ofyour life with this book.
That was 1989.
(03:13):
And so he's been my constantcompanion.
And then I would add just verybriefly I became deeply troubled
by what was happening in theacademic field of political
science, political theory ingeneral, that the great authors
of the 20th century andpolitical theory had come out of
World War II and they weretrying to understand the world.
(03:33):
And what was happening by thetime the late 80s and 90s rolled
around in the academic worldwas that people were losing
track of the world and gettinginvolved in secondary and
tertiary literature, gettingcompletely lost in this and
forgetting that we have a worldout there to explain.
And I became so discouragedthat I had an opportunity to go
and be on Georgetown School ofForeign Service startup team in
(03:53):
Qatar in 2005.
And I left, roger.
I wanted to step intoadministration, get back on the
ground, build something, and Irealized within three months of
being there that Tocqueville'squestion, which is, what is the
transition from the aristocraticage to the democratic age look
like, was being played out rightin front of me in Qatar, and I
(04:14):
was deeply dissatisfied with thelanguage of Islamic
fundamentalism, which is the waywe had named it since 2001.
I thought, no, that's notenough.
We need to come up with acomprehensive framework to
understand this.
And I concluded then and herewe are, almost 12 years later
Roger and I have the same viewthat Tocqueville understood that
there's a wrestling match goingon around the world, this
movement from what he called thearistocratic past to the
(04:36):
democratic present, and I seethis in young people all around
the globe no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I thought it best to start with you kind of
describing those two economiesand then we'll move more into
the important themes that youbring out in that book.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Let me add there's a third one too.
So part of what I'm deeplyconcerned about, roger, is that
I don't think the leftunderstands what it's doing.
It's deeply involved inidentity politics but I don't
think there's a reallyself-conscious understanding
what's happening.
The right wants to understandwhat's happening.
As I say there and elsewhere,the twin understandings of debt,
(05:42):
the two economies, as I callthem, that conservatives
understand are, let's call it,the free market economy, the
economy of payment, and theother economy is the one in
which we have a debt and apayment, so to speak, to our
fathers, and that's tradition.
And I think the conservativemovement has been held together
tenuously by those twotraditions let's call it the
(06:04):
free market tradition and thetraditionalists, and oftentimes
in tension now, but they bandedtogether because of the twin
threat of progressivism andcommunism abroad.
I mean, there was unanimity andI think that's split apart a
little bit now.
But my point in AmericanAwakening is that there is a
third economy.
It's what I call the spiritualeconomy.
It's invisible.
(06:24):
The Bible has it throughout.
So Judas, for example, is thetreasurer for the apostles and
he's concerned about payingmoney, gathering money to have a
revolution.
He's a social justice warrior,by the way and when the oil is
poured out on Jesus, judas isthinking dollars and cents and
Christ says you know, the poorwill always be with us.
(06:45):
This is important.
There's another economy.
Here is what he's announcing,and Judas doesn't understand
this, which is why he betrayshim.
So there in the story of thebaby in the manger.
There's so many instances in theBible where there's a deeper
understanding of a spiritualeconomy, and that's the
foundation of Christianityunderstanding of a spiritual
(07:06):
economy, and that's thefoundation of Christianity.
And my argument is thatidentity politics taps into this
deep understanding of debt, aspiritual debt Christians would
call it original sin, and thatwould then have to be resolved
in your relationship to God.
And then Protestants andCatholics are going to disagree
about the place of the church inthat reconciliation.
But my argument is the churcheshave failed us, and what's
(07:28):
happened is this deeper need tothink in terms of spiritual debt
has now spilled out into thepublic and it's taken the form
of identity politics.
And my view is a healthyeconomy, a healthy working
economy, a free market, can onlytranspire if we've relegated
this spiritual economy to thechurches.
(07:48):
And when it spills out, thenpeople say goofy things about
what we're supposed to do in theworld.
So AOC and the left will saywell, of course we have to spend
$50 trillion to clean upAmerica, to clean up the
environment, to be pure, becausethe whole green economy is,
it's a theological concept ofpurity versus dirty fossil fuels
(08:10):
.
So unless we're able to getright where the spiritual
economy belongs and what it cando, it spills out into the
political scene.
And that's really the greatdebate now, because the left
says we don't care about cost,we have no concern about cost
because the real economy is notthe moneyed economy of debt and
borrowing.
The real economy is the economyof spiritual cleanliness.
(08:30):
And so that's the titanicbattle we're involved in.
The way I put it in the book iswe have two ways forward.
We can either do what I callthe politics of innocence and
transgression, which is thispolitics of spiritual debt, or
we can do what I call thepolitics of competence, and the
American regime is based on that, adam Smith is based on that,
(08:51):
tocqueville's based on that, andthat's really the titanic
choice we have in front of us.
And if we don't return to thepolitics of competence which has
all sorts of implications foraffirmative action and DEI, you
know those.
If we don't return to that,we're doomed, because nature is
only going to put up with this,or history is only going to put
up with this, or providence isonly going to put up with this
for so long, because if youdon't have competence, you're
(09:12):
going to have foreign powersthat are going to overrun you,
and that's the final threat here.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You make an interesting distinction in your
writing about this identitypolitics and contrast it with
progressivism.
Because, as you point out, theproblem today in the left isn't
progressivism, becauseprogressivism in some sense is
ruled by elites.
It pays some lip service tocompetence of a kind.
But you point out that it's notthat the left wants the experts
(09:38):
to rule, they want theinnocents to rule.
I think is the way you put it.
You make a strong statementthere.
You say the left does not wantto strengthen America, it wishes
to destroy it.
Could you expand on thatthought process there?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So the way I characterize America is in terms
of three phases.
The first phase, which is theone Tocqueville and the founders
were thinking about, was aregime of citizen competence,
decentralized government insofaras that's possible.
You count on citizens to becomecompetent through their
mediating institutions, whichthe state has little control
over.
In the late 1800s, late 1880sor so, you get Woodrow Wilson
(10:14):
and others beginning to say well, it's too complicated,
democracy is too complicated.
We need to have experts runningthe regime.
And so that moves us into thesecond phase of American history
, which is progressivism.
Expert competence it's stillcompetence.
We should be clear about this.
It's a belief that you need tohave competence, but it says the
argument is that citizensaren't up to it, so we're going
to have experts, and I don'tlike that.
(10:36):
But it's at least acontinuation of the idea that
you have to have competence.
And what I've noticed in thepast 20 years in higher
education is that we're nottraining experts anymore.
To get through higher educationyou have to demonstrate that
you are going to abide by thispolitics of innocence and
transgression, or the shorthandis identity politics.
(10:58):
Identity politics is concernedwith one thing it's concerned
with establishing purity andstain and purging the stain.
So critical race theory, forexample, and DEI are really
about calling out what they callwhite privilege.
To do this, you have to go backcenturies.
I mean, marxism called out theoppressors, but it had nothing
(11:21):
to do with their past.
It had to do simply with whatclass they're in right now.
Identity politics needs to do adeep dive on your history, and
mine everybody's history, toshow that, in fact, that there's
a group of people who areirredeemably stained.
This is deeply theological, andthe problem with irredeemable
stain is there's no way out.
And so what identity politicswish to do?
Since these people can't bebrought back into the fold, they
(11:51):
have to be canceled.
This is how we get the languageof cancellation.
It tries to purge and uses themedical model.
So there's toxic masculinitythis is a medical model or a
psychological model.
Heteronormativity, homophobia,islamophobia these are claims
about sickness and health, notabout ideas that one should talk
about, but literally aboutwho's pure, who's poisoned, how
we clean up the social body.
(12:11):
So this is very, very dangerous.
It's a continuation of Marxism,and this is why I say to my
colleagues everywhere we can'tthink of it quite as Marxism.
But what it does like Marxismis it identifies a group that
has to be purged.
What it does like Marxism is itidentifies a group that has to
be purged.
And I say to my students and tomy colleagues that I'm very
(12:31):
worried that we're in the veryearly innings of a new kind of
thing.
It's not Marxism, but it's likeMarxism in that it wishes to
purge.
This could go on for 100 yearsand we have to remember that the
death toll with Marxism was 100million people and we haven't
really begun to see the fullimplications of purgation.
And just to carry this furtherand I do say this in the book,
as you know, I think the fullimplications of identity
(12:52):
politics is transhumanism,because the problem is the human
being is stained just by virtueof having, say, a carbon
footprint or by desiring toreproduce.
I mean, all this produces atoxin on the earth.
If carbon is a poison, which isdeeply dubious from a
biological standpoint, then theonly implication is that we have
(13:12):
to move beyond the human form,because humanity itself is
poisoned and there's a movementwithin identity politics doing
that.
So identity politics is thisattempt to think only in terms
of purity and stain.
I characterize it as a greatawakening unto purity and stain,
without God and withoutforgiveness.
So we're involved in thebiggest religious movement we've
had, I'd say, since the 1820s,but there's no reconciliation,
(13:35):
there's no forgiveness, there'sno atonement.
It's incredibly dangerous,roger.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
To take that a little further in your book you talk
about these incomplete religionsthat have replaced Christianity
, and I think you sayTocqueville predicted this
development in his writings andwe look now to man for
redemption instead of to God.
Is that the correctunderstanding of that?
And what are these incompletereligions?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Roger, I can't remember honestly, if I may have
used the term in passing inAmerican Awakening, but I will
say in the several years sincethen I've thought a lot more
about this term.
So in Democracy in America,tocqueville tells us that man is
a religious animal and you cantry to erase it, it will never
go away.
So he writes that in 1840.
And then he never finishes hisgreat work on the French
(14:21):
Revolution called the Old Regimeand the French Revolution.
No-transcript.
(14:49):
And my argument is that we don'tmove from the Christian world
to the secular world.
This is a great mistake that Ithink conservatives need to
rectify.
Tocqueville's brilliant insightis that we move from the
Christian age to an age ofincomplete religions, because
the longing to work throughpurity and stain, the longing
for redemption, is in the humansoul, and so if Christianity
(15:14):
falters for one reason oranother, then what you're going
to have are incomplete religionsthat appear and make moral
claims.
So, for example, the FrenchRevolution was the first
incomplete religion.
Marxism, whose toll was 100million, was the second great
incomplete religion.
And my argument is that we areon the cusp of this third one,
(15:35):
identity politics, because theretoo you've got the Christian
category of irredeemable stain,you have the Christian category
of the scapegoat.
But what makes itextraordinarily dangerous is
that, whereas for the Christian,you admit that you have a stain
that's so deep within you thatGod himself has to come to the
(15:57):
rescue.
That's an incredible insightright there.
But all of us around the world,irrespective of our different
social standings and what wehave done and received at the
hands of other people, all of usbear this stain, and only the
divine redeemer can heal thesins of the world.
So the world can only be madepure through the divine act of
(16:18):
self-sacrifice.
But what we have with identitypolitics is the taking of this
I'll call it a verticalrelationship between a divine
and man and turns it on its side, makes it a horizontal
relationship in the followingform we, the defenders of
identity politics, have theaudacity to make declarations
about who is pure and who isstained, and you can establish
(16:41):
exactly what your moral standingis by going to look up your
intersectionality score.
So the prime transgressor, as Icall him in American Awakening,
is the white heterosexual male.
Let's add Christian.
The question of the Jews that'sa very interesting question
which October 7th has raised,and we can talk about that later
.
But you need a primetransgressor.
This is the key, because it'sonly through the prime
(17:05):
transgressor that everybody elsecan establish their relative
standing.
So, for example, this seeminglyinnocuous term people of color
is actually disgusting andrepulsive because it presumes
that there's an alliance betweenall groups who are not white.
Because they're not white,white is sustained and we, we
people of color, despite ourdifferences, have this one thing
(17:27):
in common that we are theinnocent victims.
It's deeply, deeply pernicious.
Let me carry on just for asecond.
The problem and there are manyproblems with this One no
peoples ever make advances ifthey keep blaming others for
their troubles Does not happen,and I work closely with Bob
Woodson, who says that the ideaof the innocent victim in black
America is probably the mostpernicious idea of all.
(17:49):
That's stopping black Americafrom moving on.
So we can talk about that too.
But the problem is, you've gotthis need to purge.
With Christianity, there's adivine scapegoat who takes away
the world.
But when you turn this verticalunderstanding on its side, then
you need to go out and identifypeople, and the first group
that's been identified we allknow this very well is the white
(18:10):
heterosexual male and all thathe has accomplished.
And so, to come back to yourearlier point, identity politics
is out for the destruction ofeverything that the prime
transgressor has brought about,and that would be the US
constitution, it would be freemarkets, it would be Republican
government, christianity, itwould be any number of these
things.
So the prime transgressor andall that he's responsible for
(18:31):
must be purged.
This is not a project ofconstruction.
The progressivists believe thatthey can make a better America.
The great book of theprogressives is called the
Promise of American Life.
They might've been wrong, butthat's what they believed.
So we have a big problem withidentity politics.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And they've had this whole concept of colonizers.
Lately has been a new conceptwhich places a lot of us in that
category of transgression.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And that's an incomplete religion too.
So the post-colonial literatureit draws on Marxism.
Maybe it's incomplete religion,2.3 or something, and identity
politics is 3.0.
But there's a great temptationto use these easygoing terms.
And when you have theseeasygoing terms, roger, it
doesn't matter that theconcertgoers were slaughtered
and raped, because if you're acolonizer, if you're an
(19:19):
oppressor, you deserve death.
We have to be very clear onthis.
There's no moral nuancewhatsoever within these
incomplete religions, which iswhy Stalin could just say yeah,
we're going to slaughter 40million Soviets.
That's what we're supposed todo, because they're impure you
have commented in several places.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I know about the problems, that some of these
problems are on the alt-right aswell and you see it sometimes
on the right.
Could you comment on that?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
alt-right as well, and you see it sometimes on the
right.
Could you comment on that?
Yeah, so just a quick passagefrom Tocqueville that I love.
At the end of the author'sintroduction he says while the
parties have busied themselveswith tomorrow, I've tried to see
the whole of the future.
So what he sees is that in thisnew age, this new democratic
age, you're going to havesplinters on either side, and my
concern on the right is thatthere are very smart people on
(20:05):
the right who have their fingeron the pulse of identity
politics and they know whatneeds to be done.
And that's fantastic news,because I don't think we get
back to a kind of Tocquevillianliberal regime and I don't mean
that in the sense of leftism.
I don't think we get back to ituntil we can get rid of
identity politics.
But the alt-right option is onethat a lot of young I'll say
young men America, I think,maybe even more so in Europe are
(20:28):
very tempted by, and we have tounderstand what it is at a very
deep level.
You can talk about RichardSpencer and others and say
they're members of the alt-right, and no doubt there are people
who self-identify as alt-right,just as there are people on the
left, who identify themselves ascommunists and progressives,
and they're not.
We have to think deeply aboutwhat the alt-right is, and the
(20:50):
person who you would need tolook to is Nietzsche, who very
consciously set out this, whatwe'll call an alt-right
alternative, and I need toexplain how he thought this
through.
In his book called the Genealogyof Morals, in the second essay
I'll paraphrase he asked thefollowing question how can you
have a tomorrow?
(21:10):
Now he knows what the Christiananswer is.
The Christian answer is look,we're all stained, we're all
broken, we do terrible things,and if we had to bear this
weight eternally or for a longtime, we would get to the place
where we would be frightened todo anything for fear of its
consequences.
He wasn't defending this, buthe said the amazing thing about
(21:31):
Christianity was you're forgiven, there's atonement, there's
repentance, and so the whole ofhistory is bloodshed and
violence.
And yet we go on with hope thatall this can be put behind us
and we move toward a redeemedworld.
And Nietzsche said well, that'show the West was won, that's
how Europe prevailed in theworld.
They were no pure or any moreimpure than anyone else, but
(21:55):
they had this amazing way ofhaving a tomorrow.
And he thought that the currentmoment in Europe I'll get to
the alt-right in one second thecurrent moment in Europe
involved this haunting situationin which Christianity was
faltering and Europeans stillhad debt.
And so let me bring this up tothe 20th century.
All of a sudden, the legacy ofcolonialism, two world wars, the
(22:19):
Holocaust this is a lot ofweight to bear.
And if Christianity is there,you say praise God, you repent.
Who knows what kind of world wecould have had if Christianity
was intact, because Christianityis not for the faint of heart.
It starts from blood, violence,cain and Abel, but it says,
(22:40):
nevertheless there's a wayforward.
It's an amazing thing, but whatNietzsche saw was that
Christianity was faltering andthe weight of transgression was
weighing ever more heavily.
And in America, I would add, asthe churches are faltering
after World War II, we have TVpictures of young black kids
being hosed down in the South,and so we have the weight and
(23:01):
the guilt of slavery being shownto us, and yet the churches
can't do anything about it.
So what Nietzsche thought wouldhappen was that the West would
slowly die, and I think in thishe's pretty accurate how we
would be so terrified andfrightened by all that we had
done and all that we might do,and so we would just stop.
There would be no moreambitious space programs.
(23:23):
Why have we not gone back tothe moon?
After 50 years, we would notbelieve that free markets are
good things because, oh, youknow what about the poor people?
The cost is too high of takingany risk, and that, as you know,
is someone who teaches AdamSmith.
I mean, you cannot move forwardwithout there being collateral
damage and the belief that oncethat collateral damage happens,
(23:44):
there's a way to autocorrect.
It's not final.
That's the whole point aboutmarkets.
So he thought that we would getto the place where the West
would just shut down.
So he asked the question well,so how can you have it tomorrow?
And he said well, now there'sonly one way forward, and that
is to forget.
And what he means by this isthat you would look on all the
horrible things that yourhistory shows slavery,
(24:07):
colonialism, two world wars, theHolocaust and say we don't care
.
We just don't care.
And that is a veryunderstandable position that a
lot of young men take, becausethey are told you have
irredeemable stain, there isnothing you can do to erase it,
and for that reason they saywe're taking Nietzsche's path,
(24:31):
we don't care, we will not takeupon ourselves any guilt
whatsoever.
And I have to tell you from myown position, which is the
Christian position I don't wantto get rid of guilt, but it
cannot be that we are put onthis earth to feel guilty and
die.
It cannot be that.
It must be and I believe it isthat we are going to be involved
(24:51):
in all sorts of transgressions,some greater, some less, and we
are given an opportunity everysingle day to atone for this,
repent and start anew.
But when you have a generationof young men who are told that
because they're white, they arepermanently toxic and must be
purged, I understand why they goto the Nietzschean alt-right
and it's a terrible way to go.
But the left with identitypolitics has brought this upon
(25:14):
itself.
That's what they don'tunderstand.
They have caused this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Well, let me ask you to comment on the state of
higher education in this country.
We saw of higher education inthis country.
We saw, you know, this pastacademic year, the rise of
anti-Semitism, the protest fromthe left, and our colleges and
universities are, you know,built these days around identity
(25:38):
politics.
You know we don't have torecite all the things that are
going on in the university.
You talk about, I've heard youtalk about, and I think it's in
your books as well this ritualof Passover, innocence signaling
.
I think you call it too.
Could you talk about that andwhat your thoughts are on the
university today?
I mean, there are a few, veryfew exceptions, but it's a sad
state of affairs.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, hillsdale, dallas, a few others, but almost
all of them have been captured.
So I don't use the term virtuesignaling, because virtue is of
Greek origin, but the categoryof innocence and victimhood is a
biblical category, and so weare deeply involved in the
biblical category of innocencesignaling, not virtue signaling,
but let's talk about what thatmeans.
(26:17):
So the Jewish Passover ritualis one in which God says paint
the blood of an innocent lamb onthe lintel of your door, ie
make it visible outside of thehome and death will pass you by.
And my argument is today, inAmerica, at a time when
competence is rapidly collapsingand we should do everything we
(26:38):
can to rebuild competencethrough our mediating
institutions, through ouruniversities, we're not
interested in competence.
We are practicing a variant ofthe Jewish Passover ritual every
single day, multiple times aday.
What we're looking for is a wayto avoid social death.
The term is cancellation, butwe need to think of this as a
theological phenomena.
(26:59):
People put Black Lives Mattersigns in their front yard, or
this office is green, orwhatever it happens to be
something on their door toindicate that social death or
cancellation should pass them by.
And what's so deeply perniciousabout this?
Let me just speak about thiswith respect to Black America is
that it does nothing.
It just allows you to be leftin peace so that you don't have
(27:24):
to do anything.
And there are problems.
There's ways to construct.
Bob Woodson tells me in the1950s, when this idea began to
circulate in black politicalculture, that maybe they could
(27:52):
take the standing of theinnocent victim.
A lot of black leaders saidunder no circumstances will we
do this.
So the category of the innocentvictim was one that was put
upon black Americans, and somewanted it, I suppose, but it was
a super imposition.
And what the left then did wasit said well, okay, black
America is the basis for thewhole idea of innocent
victimhood.
And then it added on top ofthis women's rights.
(28:15):
Women's rights is acontinuation of civil rights.
And then the argument as civilrights goes to women's rights,
so it goes to gay and lesbianrights and so now to transgender
rights, and so what's happenedis that black America has been
used, in my view, in order toget ahead.
Now, how do I see this on campusfor all these other groups to
(28:36):
get ahead?
It's very interesting, roger.
I have conservative blackstudents at Georgetown and they
are very circumspect because thesick and twisted thing about
identity politics in blackAmerica is that if you are black
American and you want to getahead in this crazy world in
which identity politics is thehall pass, you literally have to
say things like I don't knowwhat a woman is, and that ought
(28:59):
to sound familiar, right, theSupreme Court justice, the woman
who could not say what a womanis?
Because if you're going to getahead, you have to let all these
other groups piggyback on yourwound Feminism, gay and lesbian
rights and transgender rights.
And I will say right now that,hey, if you want to separate
those things, go ahead and talkabout them.
Great, but the violence donehere is to piggyback on the
(29:21):
wound of black America.
So to your larger question aboutuniversities.
Look my kids.
They are being taught thatthere's a certain way you have
to speak, certain way you haveto think, if not you're going to
be canceled.
We have a free speech policy atGeorgetown which is pretty
robust, but that's not where thecancellation is happening.
It's happening over socialmedia.
The Lord of the Flies junglethat the students are living in
(29:43):
is not on campus, it's in theirsocial media Instagram and
TikTok and all the rest.
So we have a horribleintellectual environment.
Roger, the day after the Hamasattacks on October 7th, I said
to my class of 30, I'd like tohear your views on what happened
.
You could hear a pin drop.
I have never seen, in my 35years of teaching, more fear of
(30:08):
speaking candidly, ever, neverbefore.
They are petrified to speak andthis is why, whatever you might
think of Kamala Harris, theregime that has been moving
forward in this direction since2010,.
Beginning of the second half ofthe Obama term I think that's
when it really started to happen.
It's a steamroller and it hasto be stopped or else there'll
(30:30):
be no free speech at university.
Quick story I was in Iraq fortwo years, as you know, as the
chancellor of the AmericanUniversity of Iraq and Kurdistan
, and my kids had gone through acivil war and a lot of them had
weapons, and I said to themlook, you have to leave your
(31:00):
AK-47s in the trunk of your carout in the parking lot.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The university is the only known institution in the
universe where we have to sitdown and have difficult
conversations and they got that.
My students in America don'tget that.
They're scared to death tospeak.
Wow, that's really something.
I will say that we caught uprecently with a student who was
in your class at TFAS, who's nowat Columbia University, and he
said your course continues tohave a great impact on him and I
know there are many more likehim.
I'll say his name was Adam.
You know talk about howprofound the experience was in
(31:22):
your class and I hope at TFASclasses you bring the students
out and they aren't shy abouttalking.
But I would guess you must hearfrom students from your classes
who maybe privately communicatewith you about how refreshing
it is to have a professor likeyou and have the conversations
that you have in your classes.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
They come to my office, roger, and close the
door and they say well, you know, I actually believe a lot of
things you have the courage orthe nerve to say, but I could
never say them in class.
The interesting thing that'shappened in the last two
semesters, though, which I haveto note.
I think a lot of students arestarting to wake up it's been
very interesting and evenstudents on the left.
(32:04):
So I teach a class calledConservatives and Radicals once
a year, and I say on the firstday I say, okay, here's the
story.
There will be no choreographedconversations about men and
women, about race worthless, Idon't want to hear about them.
We're going to have difficultconversations and you're going
to say things that you've neverdared to say and that are
probably going to beoverstepping and overstating
(32:24):
things, and then it's going tobe okay, because that's what a
university is for.
So I think students arerealizing that identity politics
is.
It's not defensible at all, butyou can say maybe one or two
sentences about it, and thenafter that you realize there's
no there there.
So certainly the students onthe right are hungry for a
(32:45):
language which allows them tounderstand what's happening, and
the way I put it to them isit's an incomplete religion, and
the only way you battle anincomplete religion is with a
complete religion, and so myview is it's only with the
awakening of Christianity anew.
And I have no idea how thathappens, but I think that's the
only antidote to this.
And on the left it's been veryinteresting too.
(33:07):
Some of my smartest students onthe left.
They come and close the doorand they say well, look, I
believe these things, but, boy,you depart one iota from the
orthodoxy and you're done.
And let me say one other thing.
What's been interesting for meto watch Roger is guys my age,
so late 60s, early 70s, formerDemocrats and I grew up in the
(33:28):
Democratic Party.
Really until Reagan I was astaunch Democrat.
But a lot of them are startingto speak up.
And for decades I would arguewith them and say you don't
understand.
What you fought for in the1960s is not what's happening
now.
And they say oh no, it's goingto be okay.
I think October 7th was awake-up call to a lot of guys on
the old left and they realizedwell, wait a second here.
(33:50):
We really don't want to chantthings like from the river to
the sea.
This is not the left.
So I think some of the old leftis waking up.
The guy I watch and no, Ihaven't spoken to him in a
couple of years is Joel Kotkin.
I mean, joel Kotkin, he's aDemocrat, a Brooklyn Democrat,
probably a few years older thanme, and it's been very
(34:13):
interesting to see his eyes open.
He realizes this is a deathcult.
I mean, he wouldn't dare put itthat way, but that's what we're
faced with is a culture ofdeath, and it's going to take a
lot to get it back, and in theuniversities it's going to be a
long haul.
I sometimes wonder whether it'sgoing to be possible to do this
within the university.
You're well aware of theseburgeoning civic centers that
are happening around the world,and I will remind you of a
conversation you and I and Randyhad many, many years ago about
(34:37):
the need to start up a newuniversity and I think that's a
lot of people are realizing that.
It's just not clear that thedisciplinary guilds within the
universities are going to comeout of their tailspin and maybe
we have to start over.
It's a frightening thought, butthere are a lot of wonderful
young people who got enough ofan education to realize they
have to keep on and they'rehungry and this is huge
(34:57):
demographic late 20s to mid 40sof people who want now to have a
real education, the sort theydidn't really get of people who
want now to have a realeducation so that they didn't
really get.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, I was just a week ago with the director of
the new center at University ofNorth Carolina and it's
refreshing to hear that.
You know, like you, they'resetting, you know, up the
classroom for these candidconversations among students
from the left and right and themiddle, where they have Chatham
House rules.
They can speak in the classroomand have these vigorous
conversations.
It is refreshing, and there areother schools as well, so
(35:31):
hopefully that'll make somedifference and perhaps have some
influence on more traditionaldepartments over time.
I guess we have time for onemore question and you can take
it.
It's a short question.
I'll preface it by saying we'rerecording this just two weeks
before the US election.
This isn't about the election.
It's more broad question ofjust do you find reasons for
(35:52):
optimism about the future and,if so, where?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I do but I should say that I think we're still on the
downward slope of the curve.
But I'm nevertheless optimisticbecause I think people are
beginning to realize we're onthe downward slope of the curve,
that we've made this hugeinvestment in our own lives and
as a society in digitaltechnology, which is a global
technology, and we've lost sightof everyday interactions and
(36:18):
why those are life-sustaining.
And I say to my students okay,so here are the rules for the
class.
You have to cancel all yoursocial media and then you'll be
healthy and then we can talk.
And they're petrified of this.
I say I'm looking at a group ofaddicts, and addiction just gets
worse until it gets better.
And so I think we're getting tothe place where people are
realizing the digital panacea.
(36:39):
It will not feed us that.
We are embodied creatures.
This is why I'm a Tocquevillescholar.
Roger, we're embodied creatures.
We can only find thenourishment we need in the
immediate situation around us.
That the answers to sound likeBob Woodson for a minute the
answers to all the problems thatwe see, they're there locally.
We don't have to swoop in there.
(37:00):
The answers are there to befound.
We just have to look for themin our local community.
So I think we're getting to thepoint where we're having a
digital hangover, and I thinkonce that breaks, then I think
people will begin to open theireyes and say, okay, this is not
working.
This has been an addiction.
It's a high and a low, and wehave to find something that's
not both a high and a low but issustainable on a daily basis,
(37:24):
and so I have a hope that thatwill happen.
I'm not sure exactly when it'sgoing to happen, but I see the
fatigue in my students.
They know that the answersthey've been given are not
working and they're so unhappy.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, I've heard you say before you've told them that
you've warned them thatFacebook is death.
Yes, that's a lecture I give.
Yeah, well, josh's book isAmerican Awakening Identity
Politics and Other Afflictionsof Our Time, published in 2020.
I understand you're working onanother book.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
On the subject of hope, All of my books lately
have been secretly about hope,but this one's called the Gentle
Seduction of Tyranny, and whatI'm looking at is this phenomena
of.
I think so many of us feel likewe're being pulled headlong
into this new and very dangeroussocial environment where human
freedom is being squelched andrenounced.
(38:14):
And so I'm going to Tocqueville, who I think saw already in the
1840s that there were all sortsof reasons why the state was
going to grow stronger, andno-transcript, and the subtitle
is 20 Reasons why the StateGrows Stronger.
And he saw this in the 1830s,long before the progressives
arose.
So there are habits of mindthat he warns us about envy, all
sorts of things that we need topay attention to.
(38:37):
So I think that unless wechange our habits of mind,
there's no national solution toour problems.
We have to do the hard work.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I look forward to that book and hopefully we can
have a book party and have youback on the Liberty and
Leadership podcast.
Thank you for the time you'vecommitted to teaching our
students in courses here inWashington DC and overseas in
Prague.
I'll look forward to having youat a TFAS program again soon
and thanks for joining me today,josh.
My pleasure to having you at aTFAS program again soon and
thanks for joining me today,josh, my pleasure.
(39:06):
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg, andbe sure to subscribe to the
show on your favorite podcastapp and leave a five-star review
.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
(39:30):
things, large and small.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
Today I'm your host, roger Ream.
Today I'm very excited towelcome Dr Joshua Mitchell.
Dr Mitchell is a professor ofpolitical theory at Georgetown
(00:22):
University and has taughtseveral courses in political
philosophy at TFAS programs bothin the US and at our
international program in Prague.
Joshua Mitchell has writtenwidely on a range of subjects,
most recently on identitypolitics.
Dr Mitchell is one of theworld's leading experts on
(00:43):
Alexis de Tocqueville and hasapplied the wisdom of
Tocqueville and other greatthinkers to many of the problems
of today.
Josh is the author of severalbooks, his most recent one being
American Awakening IdentityPolitics and Other Afflictions
of Our Time.
His previous book, tocquevillein Arabia, has just been
(01:05):
re-released by Encounter Bookswith a new introduction.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Good to see you, roger.
I want to discuss the insightscontained in your most recent
book, american Awakening, butI'd like to first begin with
your previous book, tocquevillein Arabia Dilemmas in a
Democratic Age, which youpublished in 2013, and now, I
(01:27):
understand, is coming out againthrough Encounter Books with a
new introduction, which I'mlooking forward to reading.
The themes in both books reallytie together and they focus on
identity, how a democratic manhas become disconnected in a
world of unbounded freedom, theconcepts of debt and guilt,
redemption, innocence.
So let me begin by asking justa general question about the
(01:51):
origins of your thoughts onthese themes.
Did they start the day you satdown in graduate school with a
copy of Tocqueville's Democracyin America?
Or do you trace them more toyour experiences in Qatar and
Iraq and at GeorgetownUniversity and more contemporary
events taking place?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's a great question .
My father was Foreign Serviceand we grew up in the Middle
East and I say that with alittle caution it was really my
formative years until I wasabout seven.
And then I come back to theUnited States and I realize,
even though I'm obviously anEnglish, native English speaker,
I realize there's somethingdeep here that's different than
the Middle East.
And obviously, a native Englishspeaker, I realized there's
something deep here that'sdifferent than the Middle East
and I think it took me decadesto formulate it, but it was this
(02:28):
Christian underpinning.
So I've always had atheological interest and in
graduate school I was admittedboth to Divinity School and the
Political Science Department andchose the Political Science
Department only because I hadgreater freedom but I kept
taking religion courses.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing I would say isI finished up my graduate
program and with greatembarrassment I say I had never
read Tocqueville's Democracy inAmerica, and I was asked to
(02:52):
teach a course the followingsemester at the place where I
had finished up, the Universityof Chicago, and I thought, okay,
better read this book,democracy in America.
And I read the author'sintroduction, which was 11 pages
long, and it took me three anda half hours I thought, no, I'm
going to really pay attention tothis.
And I closed that book and Ithought to myself well, you're
now going to spend the rest ofyour life with this book.
That was 1989.
(03:13):
And so he's been my constantcompanion.
And then I would add just verybriefly I became deeply troubled
by what was happening in theacademic field of political
science, political theory ingeneral, that the great authors
of the 20th century andpolitical theory had come out of
World War II and they weretrying to understand the world.
(03:33):
And what was happening by thetime the late 80s and 90s rolled
around in the academic worldwas that people were losing
track of the world and gettinginvolved in secondary and
tertiary literature, gettingcompletely lost in this and
forgetting that we have a worldout there to explain.
And I became so discouragedthat I had an opportunity to go
and be on Georgetown School ofForeign Service startup team in
(03:53):
Qatar in 2005.
And I left, roger.
I wanted to step intoadministration, get back on the
ground, build something, and Irealized within three months of
being there that Tocqueville'squestion, which is, what is the
transition from the aristocraticage to the democratic age look
like, was being played out rightin front of me in Qatar, and I
(04:14):
was deeply dissatisfied with thelanguage of Islamic
fundamentalism, which is the waywe had named it since 2001.
I thought, no, that's notenough.
We need to come up with acomprehensive framework to
understand this.
And I concluded then and herewe are, almost 12 years later
Roger and I have the same viewthat Tocqueville understood that
there's a wrestling match goingon around the world, this
movement from what he called thearistocratic past to the
(04:36):
democratic present, and I seethis in young people all around
the globe no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I thought it best to start with you kind of
describing those two economiesand then we'll move more into
the important themes that youbring out in that book.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Let me add there's a third one too.
So part of what I'm deeplyconcerned about, roger, is that
I don't think the leftunderstands what it's doing.
It's deeply involved inidentity politics but I don't
think there's a reallyself-conscious understanding
what's happening.
The right wants to understandwhat's happening.
As I say there and elsewhere,the twin understandings of debt,
(05:42):
the two economies, as I callthem, that conservatives
understand are, let's call it,the free market economy, the
economy of payment, and theother economy is the one in
which we have a debt and apayment, so to speak, to our
fathers, and that's tradition.
And I think the conservativemovement has been held together
tenuously by those twotraditions let's call it the
(06:04):
free market tradition and thetraditionalists, and oftentimes
in tension now, but they bandedtogether because of the twin
threat of progressivism andcommunism abroad.
I mean, there was unanimity andI think that's split apart a
little bit now.
But my point in AmericanAwakening is that there is a
third economy.
It's what I call the spiritualeconomy.
It's invisible.
(06:24):
The Bible has it throughout.
So Judas, for example, is thetreasurer for the apostles and
he's concerned about payingmoney, gathering money to have a
revolution.
He's a social justice warrior,by the way and when the oil is
poured out on Jesus, judas isthinking dollars and cents and
Christ says you know, the poorwill always be with us.
(06:45):
This is important.
There's another economy.
Here is what he's announcing,and Judas doesn't understand
this, which is why he betrayshim.
So there in the story of thebaby in the manger.
There's so many instances in theBible where there's a deeper
understanding of a spiritualeconomy, and that's the
foundation of Christianityunderstanding of a spiritual
(07:06):
economy, and that's thefoundation of Christianity.
And my argument is thatidentity politics taps into this
deep understanding of debt, aspiritual debt Christians would
call it original sin, and thatwould then have to be resolved
in your relationship to God.
And then Protestants andCatholics are going to disagree
about the place of the church inthat reconciliation.
But my argument is the churcheshave failed us, and what's
(07:28):
happened is this deeper need tothink in terms of spiritual debt
has now spilled out into thepublic and it's taken the form
of identity politics.
And my view is a healthyeconomy, a healthy working
economy, a free market, can onlytranspire if we've relegated
this spiritual economy to thechurches.
(07:48):
And when it spills out, thenpeople say goofy things about
what we're supposed to do in theworld.
So AOC and the left will saywell, of course we have to spend
$50 trillion to clean upAmerica, to clean up the
environment, to be pure, becausethe whole green economy is,
it's a theological concept ofpurity versus dirty fossil fuels
(08:10):
.
So unless we're able to getright where the spiritual
economy belongs and what it cando, it spills out into the
political scene.
And that's really the greatdebate now, because the left
says we don't care about cost,we have no concern about cost
because the real economy is notthe moneyed economy of debt and
borrowing.
The real economy is the economyof spiritual cleanliness.
(08:30):
And so that's the titanicbattle we're involved in.
The way I put it in the book iswe have two ways forward.
We can either do what I callthe politics of innocence and
transgression, which is thispolitics of spiritual debt, or
we can do what I call thepolitics of competence, and the
American regime is based on that, adam Smith is based on that,
(08:51):
tocqueville's based on that, andthat's really the titanic
choice we have in front of us.
And if we don't return to thepolitics of competence which has
all sorts of implications foraffirmative action and DEI, you
know those.
If we don't return to that,we're doomed, because nature is
only going to put up with this,or history is only going to put
up with this, or providence isonly going to put up with this
for so long, because if youdon't have competence, you're
(09:12):
going to have foreign powersthat are going to overrun you,
and that's the final threat here.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You make an interesting distinction in your
writing about this identitypolitics and contrast it with
progressivism.
Because, as you point out, theproblem today in the left isn't
progressivism, becauseprogressivism in some sense is
ruled by elites.
It pays some lip service tocompetence of a kind.
But you point out that it's notthat the left wants the experts
(09:38):
to rule, they want theinnocents to rule.
I think is the way you put it.
You make a strong statementthere.
You say the left does not wantto strengthen America, it wishes
to destroy it.
Could you expand on thatthought process there?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So the way I characterize America is in terms
of three phases.
The first phase, which is theone Tocqueville and the founders
were thinking about, was aregime of citizen competence,
decentralized government insofaras that's possible.
You count on citizens to becomecompetent through their
mediating institutions, whichthe state has little control
over.
In the late 1800s, late 1880sor so, you get Woodrow Wilson
(10:14):
and others beginning to say well, it's too complicated,
democracy is too complicated.
We need to have experts runningthe regime.
And so that moves us into thesecond phase of American history
, which is progressivism.
Expert competence it's stillcompetence.
We should be clear about this.
It's a belief that you need tohave competence, but it says the
argument is that citizensaren't up to it, so we're going
to have experts, and I don'tlike that.
(10:36):
But it's at least acontinuation of the idea that
you have to have competence.
And what I've noticed in thepast 20 years in higher
education is that we're nottraining experts anymore.
To get through higher educationyou have to demonstrate that
you are going to abide by thispolitics of innocence and
transgression, or the shorthandis identity politics.
(10:58):
Identity politics is concernedwith one thing it's concerned
with establishing purity andstain and purging the stain.
So critical race theory, forexample, and DEI are really
about calling out what they callwhite privilege.
To do this, you have to go backcenturies.
I mean, marxism called out theoppressors, but it had nothing
(11:21):
to do with their past.
It had to do simply with whatclass they're in right now.
Identity politics needs to do adeep dive on your history, and
mine everybody's history, toshow that, in fact, that there's
a group of people who areirredeemably stained.
This is deeply theological, andthe problem with irredeemable
stain is there's no way out.
And so what identity politicswish to do?
Since these people can't bebrought back into the fold, they
(11:51):
have to be canceled.
This is how we get the languageof cancellation.
It tries to purge and uses themedical model.
So there's toxic masculinitythis is a medical model or a
psychological model.
Heteronormativity, homophobia,islamophobia these are claims
about sickness and health, notabout ideas that one should talk
about, but literally aboutwho's pure, who's poisoned, how
we clean up the social body.
(12:11):
So this is very, very dangerous.
It's a continuation of Marxism,and this is why I say to my
colleagues everywhere we can'tthink of it quite as Marxism.
But what it does like Marxismis it identifies a group that
has to be purged.
What it does like Marxism is itidentifies a group that has to
be purged.
And I say to my students and tomy colleagues that I'm very
(12:31):
worried that we're in the veryearly innings of a new kind of
thing.
It's not Marxism, but it's likeMarxism in that it wishes to
purge.
This could go on for 100 yearsand we have to remember that the
death toll with Marxism was 100million people and we haven't
really begun to see the fullimplications of purgation.
And just to carry this furtherand I do say this in the book,
as you know, I think the fullimplications of identity
(12:52):
politics is transhumanism,because the problem is the human
being is stained just by virtueof having, say, a carbon
footprint or by desiring toreproduce.
I mean, all this produces atoxin on the earth.
If carbon is a poison, which isdeeply dubious from a
biological standpoint, then theonly implication is that we have
(13:12):
to move beyond the human form,because humanity itself is
poisoned and there's a movementwithin identity politics doing
that.
So identity politics is thisattempt to think only in terms
of purity and stain.
I characterize it as a greatawakening unto purity and stain,
without God and withoutforgiveness.
So we're involved in thebiggest religious movement we've
had, I'd say, since the 1820s,but there's no reconciliation,
(13:35):
there's no forgiveness, there'sno atonement.
It's incredibly dangerous,roger.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
To take that a little further in your book you talk
about these incomplete religionsthat have replaced Christianity
, and I think you sayTocqueville predicted this
development in his writings andwe look now to man for
redemption instead of to God.
Is that the correctunderstanding of that?
And what are these incompletereligions?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Roger, I can't remember honestly, if I may have
used the term in passing inAmerican Awakening, but I will
say in the several years sincethen I've thought a lot more
about this term.
So in Democracy in America,tocqueville tells us that man is
a religious animal and you cantry to erase it, it will never
go away.
So he writes that in 1840.
And then he never finishes hisgreat work on the French
(14:21):
Revolution called the Old Regimeand the French Revolution.
No-transcript.
(14:49):
And my argument is that we don'tmove from the Christian world
to the secular world.
This is a great mistake that Ithink conservatives need to
rectify.
Tocqueville's brilliant insightis that we move from the
Christian age to an age ofincomplete religions, because
the longing to work throughpurity and stain, the longing
for redemption, is in the humansoul, and so if Christianity
(15:14):
falters for one reason oranother, then what you're going
to have are incomplete religionsthat appear and make moral
claims.
So, for example, the FrenchRevolution was the first
incomplete religion.
Marxism, whose toll was 100million, was the second great
incomplete religion.
And my argument is that we areon the cusp of this third one,
(15:35):
identity politics, because theretoo you've got the Christian
category of irredeemable stain,you have the Christian category
of the scapegoat.
But what makes itextraordinarily dangerous is
that, whereas for the Christian,you admit that you have a stain
that's so deep within you thatGod himself has to come to the
(15:57):
rescue.
That's an incredible insightright there.
But all of us around the world,irrespective of our different
social standings and what wehave done and received at the
hands of other people, all of usbear this stain, and only the
divine redeemer can heal thesins of the world.
So the world can only be madepure through the divine act of
(16:18):
self-sacrifice.
But what we have with identitypolitics is the taking of this
I'll call it a verticalrelationship between a divine
and man and turns it on its side, makes it a horizontal
relationship in the followingform we, the defenders of
identity politics, have theaudacity to make declarations
about who is pure and who isstained, and you can establish
(16:41):
exactly what your moral standingis by going to look up your
intersectionality score.
So the prime transgressor, as Icall him in American Awakening,
is the white heterosexual male.
Let's add Christian.
The question of the Jews that'sa very interesting question
which October 7th has raised,and we can talk about that later
.
But you need a primetransgressor.
This is the key, because it'sonly through the prime
(17:05):
transgressor that everybody elsecan establish their relative
standing.
So, for example, this seeminglyinnocuous term people of color
is actually disgusting andrepulsive because it presumes
that there's an alliance betweenall groups who are not white.
Because they're not white,white is sustained and we, we
people of color, despite ourdifferences, have this one thing
(17:27):
in common that we are theinnocent victims.
It's deeply, deeply pernicious.
Let me carry on just for asecond.
The problem and there are manyproblems with this One no
peoples ever make advances ifthey keep blaming others for
their troubles Does not happen,and I work closely with Bob
Woodson, who says that the ideaof the innocent victim in black
America is probably the mostpernicious idea of all.
(17:49):
That's stopping black Americafrom moving on.
So we can talk about that too.
But the problem is, you've gotthis need to purge.
With Christianity, there's adivine scapegoat who takes away
the world.
But when you turn this verticalunderstanding on its side, then
you need to go out and identifypeople, and the first group
that's been identified we allknow this very well is the white
(18:10):
heterosexual male and all thathe has accomplished.
And so, to come back to yourearlier point, identity politics
is out for the destruction ofeverything that the prime
transgressor has brought about,and that would be the US
constitution, it would be freemarkets, it would be Republican
government, christianity, itwould be any number of these
things.
So the prime transgressor andall that he's responsible for
(18:31):
must be purged.
This is not a project ofconstruction.
The progressivists believe thatthey can make a better America.
The great book of theprogressives is called the
Promise of American Life.
They might've been wrong, butthat's what they believed.
So we have a big problem withidentity politics.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And they've had this whole concept of colonizers.
Lately has been a new conceptwhich places a lot of us in that
category of transgression.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And that's an incomplete religion too.
So the post-colonial literatureit draws on Marxism.
Maybe it's incomplete religion,2.3 or something, and identity
politics is 3.0.
But there's a great temptationto use these easygoing terms.
And when you have theseeasygoing terms, roger, it
doesn't matter that theconcertgoers were slaughtered
and raped, because if you're acolonizer, if you're an
(19:19):
oppressor, you deserve death.
We have to be very clear onthis.
There's no moral nuancewhatsoever within these
incomplete religions, which iswhy Stalin could just say yeah,
we're going to slaughter 40million Soviets.
That's what we're supposed todo, because they're impure you
have commented in several places.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I know about the problems, that some of these
problems are on the alt-right aswell and you see it sometimes
on the right.
Could you comment on that?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
alt-right as well, and you see it sometimes on the
right.
Could you comment on that?
Yeah, so just a quick passagefrom Tocqueville that I love.
At the end of the author'sintroduction he says while the
parties have busied themselveswith tomorrow, I've tried to see
the whole of the future.
So what he sees is that in thisnew age, this new democratic
age, you're going to havesplinters on either side, and my
concern on the right is thatthere are very smart people on
(20:05):
the right who have their fingeron the pulse of identity
politics and they know whatneeds to be done.
And that's fantastic news,because I don't think we get
back to a kind of Tocquevillianliberal regime and I don't mean
that in the sense of leftism.
I don't think we get back to ituntil we can get rid of
identity politics.
But the alt-right option is onethat a lot of young I'll say
young men America, I think,maybe even more so in Europe are
(20:28):
very tempted by, and we have tounderstand what it is at a very
deep level.
You can talk about RichardSpencer and others and say
they're members of the alt-right, and no doubt there are people
who self-identify as alt-right,just as there are people on the
left, who identify themselves ascommunists and progressives,
and they're not.
We have to think deeply aboutwhat the alt-right is, and the
(20:50):
person who you would need tolook to is Nietzsche, who very
consciously set out this, whatwe'll call an alt-right
alternative, and I need toexplain how he thought this
through.
In his book called the Genealogyof Morals, in the second essay
I'll paraphrase he asked thefollowing question how can you
have a tomorrow?
(21:10):
Now he knows what the Christiananswer is.
The Christian answer is look,we're all stained, we're all
broken, we do terrible things,and if we had to bear this
weight eternally or for a longtime, we would get to the place
where we would be frightened todo anything for fear of its
consequences.
He wasn't defending this, buthe said the amazing thing about
(21:31):
Christianity was you're forgiven, there's atonement, there's
repentance, and so the whole ofhistory is bloodshed and
violence.
And yet we go on with hope thatall this can be put behind us
and we move toward a redeemedworld.
And Nietzsche said well, that'show the West was won, that's
how Europe prevailed in theworld.
They were no pure or any moreimpure than anyone else, but
(21:55):
they had this amazing way ofhaving a tomorrow.
And he thought that the currentmoment in Europe I'll get to
the alt-right in one second thecurrent moment in Europe
involved this haunting situationin which Christianity was
faltering and Europeans stillhad debt.
And so let me bring this up tothe 20th century.
All of a sudden, the legacy ofcolonialism, two world wars, the
(22:19):
Holocaust this is a lot ofweight to bear.
And if Christianity is there,you say praise God, you repent.
Who knows what kind of world wecould have had if Christianity
was intact, because Christianityis not for the faint of heart.
It starts from blood, violence,cain and Abel, but it says,
(22:40):
nevertheless there's a wayforward.
It's an amazing thing, but whatNietzsche saw was that
Christianity was faltering andthe weight of transgression was
weighing ever more heavily.
And in America, I would add, asthe churches are faltering
after World War II, we have TVpictures of young black kids
being hosed down in the South,and so we have the weight and
(23:01):
the guilt of slavery being shownto us, and yet the churches
can't do anything about it.
So what Nietzsche thought wouldhappen was that the West would
slowly die, and I think in thishe's pretty accurate how we
would be so terrified andfrightened by all that we had
done and all that we might do,and so we would just stop.
There would be no moreambitious space programs.
(23:23):
Why have we not gone back tothe moon?
After 50 years, we would notbelieve that free markets are
good things because, oh, youknow what about the poor people?
The cost is too high of takingany risk, and that, as you know,
is someone who teaches AdamSmith.
I mean, you cannot move forwardwithout there being collateral
damage and the belief that oncethat collateral damage happens,
(23:44):
there's a way to autocorrect.
It's not final.
That's the whole point aboutmarkets.
So he thought that we would getto the place where the West
would just shut down.
So he asked the question well,so how can you have it tomorrow?
And he said well, now there'sonly one way forward, and that
is to forget.
And what he means by this isthat you would look on all the
horrible things that yourhistory shows slavery,
(24:07):
colonialism, two world wars, theHolocaust and say we don't care
.
We just don't care.
And that is a veryunderstandable position that a
lot of young men take, becausethey are told you have
irredeemable stain, there isnothing you can do to erase it,
and for that reason they saywe're taking Nietzsche's path,
(24:31):
we don't care, we will not takeupon ourselves any guilt
whatsoever.
And I have to tell you from myown position, which is the
Christian position I don't wantto get rid of guilt, but it
cannot be that we are put onthis earth to feel guilty and
die.
It cannot be that.
It must be and I believe it isthat we are going to be involved
(24:51):
in all sorts of transgressions,some greater, some less, and we
are given an opportunity everysingle day to atone for this,
repent and start anew.
But when you have a generationof young men who are told that
because they're white, they arepermanently toxic and must be
purged, I understand why they goto the Nietzschean alt-right
and it's a terrible way to go.
But the left with identitypolitics has brought this upon
(25:14):
itself.
That's what they don'tunderstand.
They have caused this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Well, let me ask you to comment on the state of
higher education in this country.
We saw of higher education inthis country.
We saw, you know, this pastacademic year, the rise of
anti-Semitism, the protest fromthe left, and our colleges and
universities are, you know,built these days around identity
(25:38):
politics.
You know we don't have torecite all the things that are
going on in the university.
You talk about, I've heard youtalk about, and I think it's in
your books as well this ritualof Passover, innocence signaling
.
I think you call it too.
Could you talk about that andwhat your thoughts are on the
university today?
I mean, there are a few, veryfew exceptions, but it's a sad
state of affairs.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, hillsdale, dallas, a few others, but almost
all of them have been captured.
So I don't use the term virtuesignaling, because virtue is of
Greek origin, but the categoryof innocence and victimhood is a
biblical category, and so weare deeply involved in the
biblical category of innocencesignaling, not virtue signaling,
but let's talk about what thatmeans.
(26:17):
So the Jewish Passover ritualis one in which God says paint
the blood of an innocent lamb onthe lintel of your door, ie
make it visible outside of thehome and death will pass you by.
And my argument is today, inAmerica, at a time when
competence is rapidly collapsingand we should do everything we
(26:38):
can to rebuild competencethrough our mediating
institutions, through ouruniversities, we're not
interested in competence.
We are practicing a variant ofthe Jewish Passover ritual every
single day, multiple times aday.
What we're looking for is a wayto avoid social death.
The term is cancellation, butwe need to think of this as a
theological phenomena.
(26:59):
People put Black Lives Mattersigns in their front yard, or
this office is green, orwhatever it happens to be
something on their door toindicate that social death or
cancellation should pass them by.
And what's so deeply perniciousabout this?
Let me just speak about thiswith respect to Black America is
that it does nothing.
It just allows you to be leftin peace so that you don't have
(27:24):
to do anything.
And there are problems.
There's ways to construct.
Bob Woodson tells me in the1950s, when this idea began to
circulate in black politicalculture, that maybe they could
(27:52):
take the standing of theinnocent victim.
A lot of black leaders saidunder no circumstances will we
do this.
So the category of the innocentvictim was one that was put
upon black Americans, and somewanted it, I suppose, but it was
a super imposition.
And what the left then did wasit said well, okay, black
America is the basis for thewhole idea of innocent
victimhood.
And then it added on top ofthis women's rights.
(28:15):
Women's rights is acontinuation of civil rights.
And then the argument as civilrights goes to women's rights,
so it goes to gay and lesbianrights and so now to transgender
rights, and so what's happenedis that black America has been
used, in my view, in order toget ahead.
Now, how do I see this on campusfor all these other groups to
(28:36):
get ahead?
It's very interesting, roger.
I have conservative blackstudents at Georgetown and they
are very circumspect because thesick and twisted thing about
identity politics in blackAmerica is that if you are black
American and you want to getahead in this crazy world in
which identity politics is thehall pass, you literally have to
say things like I don't knowwhat a woman is, and that ought
(28:59):
to sound familiar, right, theSupreme Court justice, the woman
who could not say what a womanis?
Because if you're going to getahead, you have to let all these
other groups piggyback on yourwound Feminism, gay and lesbian
rights and transgender rights.
And I will say right now that,hey, if you want to separate
those things, go ahead and talkabout them.
Great, but the violence donehere is to piggyback on the
(29:21):
wound of black America.
So to your larger question aboutuniversities.
Look my kids.
They are being taught thatthere's a certain way you have
to speak, certain way you haveto think, if not you're going to
be canceled.
We have a free speech policy atGeorgetown which is pretty
robust, but that's not where thecancellation is happening.
It's happening over socialmedia.
The Lord of the Flies junglethat the students are living in
(29:43):
is not on campus, it's in theirsocial media Instagram and
TikTok and all the rest.
So we have a horribleintellectual environment.
Roger, the day after the Hamasattacks on October 7th, I said
to my class of 30, I'd like tohear your views on what happened
.
You could hear a pin drop.
I have never seen, in my 35years of teaching, more fear of
(30:08):
speaking candidly, ever, neverbefore.
They are petrified to speak andthis is why, whatever you might
think of Kamala Harris, theregime that has been moving
forward in this direction since2010,.
Beginning of the second half ofthe Obama term I think that's
when it really started to happen.
It's a steamroller and it hasto be stopped or else there'll
(30:30):
be no free speech at university.
Quick story I was in Iraq fortwo years, as you know, as the
chancellor of the AmericanUniversity of Iraq and Kurdistan
, and my kids had gone through acivil war and a lot of them had
weapons, and I said to themlook, you have to leave your
(31:00):
AK-47s in the trunk of your carout in the parking lot.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The university is the only known institution in the
universe where we have to sitdown and have difficult
conversations and they got that.
My students in America don'tget that.
They're scared to death tospeak.
Wow, that's really something.
I will say that we caught uprecently with a student who was
in your class at TFAS, who's nowat Columbia University, and he
said your course continues tohave a great impact on him and I
know there are many more likehim.
I'll say his name was Adam.
You know talk about howprofound the experience was in
(31:22):
your class and I hope at TFASclasses you bring the students
out and they aren't shy abouttalking.
But I would guess you must hearfrom students from your classes
who maybe privately communicatewith you about how refreshing
it is to have a professor likeyou and have the conversations
that you have in your classes.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
They come to my office, roger, and close the
door and they say well, you know, I actually believe a lot of
things you have the courage orthe nerve to say, but I could
never say them in class.
The interesting thing that'shappened in the last two
semesters, though, which I haveto note.
I think a lot of students arestarting to wake up it's been
very interesting and evenstudents on the left.
(32:04):
So I teach a class calledConservatives and Radicals once
a year, and I say on the firstday I say, okay, here's the
story.
There will be no choreographedconversations about men and
women, about race worthless, Idon't want to hear about them.
We're going to have difficultconversations and you're going
to say things that you've neverdared to say and that are
probably going to beoverstepping and overstating
(32:24):
things, and then it's going tobe okay, because that's what a
university is for.
So I think students arerealizing that identity politics
is.
It's not defensible at all, butyou can say maybe one or two
sentences about it, and thenafter that you realize there's
no there there.
So certainly the students onthe right are hungry for a
(32:45):
language which allows them tounderstand what's happening, and
the way I put it to them isit's an incomplete religion, and
the only way you battle anincomplete religion is with a
complete religion, and so myview is it's only with the
awakening of Christianity anew.
And I have no idea how thathappens, but I think that's the
only antidote to this.
And on the left it's been veryinteresting too.
(33:07):
Some of my smartest students onthe left.
They come and close the doorand they say well, look, I
believe these things, but, boy,you depart one iota from the
orthodoxy and you're done.
And let me say one other thing.
What's been interesting for meto watch Roger is guys my age,
so late 60s, early 70s, formerDemocrats and I grew up in the
(33:28):
Democratic Party.
Really until Reagan I was astaunch Democrat.
But a lot of them are startingto speak up.
And for decades I would arguewith them and say you don't
understand.
What you fought for in the1960s is not what's happening
now.
And they say oh no, it's goingto be okay.
I think October 7th was awake-up call to a lot of guys on
the old left and they realizedwell, wait a second here.
(33:50):
We really don't want to chantthings like from the river to
the sea.
This is not the left.
So I think some of the old leftis waking up.
The guy I watch and no, Ihaven't spoken to him in a
couple of years is Joel Kotkin.
I mean, joel Kotkin, he's aDemocrat, a Brooklyn Democrat,
probably a few years older thanme, and it's been very
(34:13):
interesting to see his eyes open.
He realizes this is a deathcult.
I mean, he wouldn't dare put itthat way, but that's what we're
faced with is a culture ofdeath, and it's going to take a
lot to get it back, and in theuniversities it's going to be a
long haul.
I sometimes wonder whether it'sgoing to be possible to do this
within the university.
You're well aware of theseburgeoning civic centers that
are happening around the world,and I will remind you of a
conversation you and I and Randyhad many, many years ago about
(34:37):
the need to start up a newuniversity and I think that's a
lot of people are realizing that.
It's just not clear that thedisciplinary guilds within the
universities are going to comeout of their tailspin and maybe
we have to start over.
It's a frightening thought, butthere are a lot of wonderful
young people who got enough ofan education to realize they
have to keep on and they'rehungry and this is huge
(34:57):
demographic late 20s to mid 40sof people who want now to have a
real education, the sort theydidn't really get of people who
want now to have a realeducation so that they didn't
really get.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, I was just a week ago with the director of
the new center at University ofNorth Carolina and it's
refreshing to hear that.
You know, like you, they'resetting, you know, up the
classroom for these candidconversations among students
from the left and right and themiddle, where they have Chatham
House rules.
They can speak in the classroomand have these vigorous
conversations.
It is refreshing, and there areother schools as well, so
(35:31):
hopefully that'll make somedifference and perhaps have some
influence on more traditionaldepartments over time.
I guess we have time for onemore question and you can take
it.
It's a short question.
I'll preface it by saying we'rerecording this just two weeks
before the US election.
This isn't about the election.
It's more broad question ofjust do you find reasons for
(35:52):
optimism about the future and,if so, where?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I do but I should say that I think we're still on the
downward slope of the curve.
But I'm nevertheless optimisticbecause I think people are
beginning to realize we're onthe downward slope of the curve,
that we've made this hugeinvestment in our own lives and
as a society in digitaltechnology, which is a global
technology, and we've lost sightof everyday interactions and
(36:18):
why those are life-sustaining.
And I say to my students okay,so here are the rules for the
class.
You have to cancel all yoursocial media and then you'll be
healthy and then we can talk.
And they're petrified of this.
I say I'm looking at a group ofaddicts, and addiction just gets
worse until it gets better.
And so I think we're getting tothe place where people are
realizing the digital panacea.
(36:39):
It will not feed us that.
We are embodied creatures.
This is why I'm a Tocquevillescholar.
Roger, we're embodied creatures.
We can only find thenourishment we need in the
immediate situation around us.
That the answers to sound likeBob Woodson for a minute the
answers to all the problems thatwe see, they're there locally.
We don't have to swoop in there.
(37:00):
The answers are there to befound.
We just have to look for themin our local community.
So I think we're getting to thepoint where we're having a
digital hangover, and I thinkonce that breaks, then I think
people will begin to open theireyes and say, okay, this is not
working.
This has been an addiction.
It's a high and a low, and wehave to find something that's
not both a high and a low but issustainable on a daily basis,
(37:24):
and so I have a hope that thatwill happen.
I'm not sure exactly when it'sgoing to happen, but I see the
fatigue in my students.
They know that the answersthey've been given are not
working and they're so unhappy.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, I've heard you say before you've told them that
you've warned them thatFacebook is death.
Yes, that's a lecture I give.
Yeah, well, josh's book isAmerican Awakening Identity
Politics and Other Afflictionsof Our Time, published in 2020.
I understand you're working onanother book.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
On the subject of hope, All of my books lately
have been secretly about hope,but this one's called the Gentle
Seduction of Tyranny, and whatI'm looking at is this phenomena
of.
I think so many of us feel likewe're being pulled headlong
into this new and very dangeroussocial environment where human
freedom is being squelched andrenounced.
(38:14):
And so I'm going to Tocqueville, who I think saw already in the
1840s that there were all sortsof reasons why the state was
going to grow stronger, andno-transcript, and the subtitle
is 20 Reasons why the StateGrows Stronger.
And he saw this in the 1830s,long before the progressives
arose.
So there are habits of mindthat he warns us about envy, all
sorts of things that we need topay attention to.
(38:37):
So I think that unless wechange our habits of mind,
there's no national solution toour problems.
We have to do the hard work.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I look forward to that book and hopefully we can
have a book party and have youback on the Liberty and
Leadership podcast.
Thank you for the time you'vecommitted to teaching our
students in courses here inWashington DC and overseas in
Prague.
I'll look forward to having youat a TFAS program again soon
and thanks for joining me today,josh.
My pleasure to having you at aTFAS program again soon and
thanks for joining me today,josh, my pleasure.
(39:06):
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg, andbe sure to subscribe to the
show on your favorite podcastapp and leave a five-star review
.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
(39:30):
things, large and small.
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