1 Burst results for "Rod Dreyer"

The Argument

07:59 min | 1 year ago

"rod dreyer" Discussed on The Argument

"For cat. No, it's democracy. Zack's right. Ah, dang it. Thank you, Brett. But I think that, again, if democracy itself is the challenge, isn't that simply because people are going to use democracy to do things that we don't like. I think that that's something to go to talking about hungry and Victor Orban. Someone made a really smart point to me a while back. That was like, the reason why someone like rod dreyer likes Orban's Hungary is because he finds freedom there because the people he doesn't like are repressed there. Whereas I think he feels repressed here because the people he doesn't like find freedom here. And it isn't that kind of an inherent challenge that people are going to use liberalism and use democracy to do things that we do not like. What do you think, Rhett? I mean, I agree with, I think the implicit argument in your question shade, which is I read Zach's tweet, only because it was sent to be, not because I read Twitter. But I read Zack's tweet, and I thought, you know, this is the kind of stuff sort of the far right. I don't want to say the far right in a race a sense, but the anxious right kept saying during the Cold War, people like Jean Francois ravel, you know, democracy against itself, the idea that the institutions of democracy had become essentially useful idiots as it were for the ambitions of its totalitarian players. It's a perpetual threat to any democratic system. But the Orban government, to me, is a perfect example of how you weaponize the mentality that you can't allow too much liberalism or too much democracy because it might be instrumentalized by your enemies in order to create a political system that most of us recognize is not really democratic and is certainly not liberal. So it's hard for me as I think of the potential cures that are sometimes suggested for reining in the accesses of liberalism or democracy, reigning and misinformation, reigning in far right extremism and time and again, all of those cure strike me as really bad ideas. And one of the reasons they're bad ideas is that two can play the game, right? I mean, you want to rein in Fox News, eventually someone is going to do that to their opposite numbers on MSNBC. You don't like the excesses of rich right-wing billionaires giving money to candidates like JD Vance, who you dislike. Well, eventually that's gonna swing around to other liberal billionaires, you know, giving money to democratic causes. Typically the best response to the problems of freedom in my view is kind of libertarian of me is usually more freedom. I don't apply that universally and they're exceptions and those are interesting exceptions. But I think it's really dangerous when people start going down the path and saying, capitalism, yes, but heavily regulated capitalism democracy, yes, but heavily regulated, democracy, same for free speech. I think you end up in a cul de sac with unintended consequences that are harmful to your own side. I was so close to saying that I was going to agree with everything that you just said, Brad. And then he threw in democracy and capitalism there as the same kind of entity that heavily regulated should be viewed with extreme caution and I was like, oh, oh no, I'm going to have to argue with him again. But no, look, I mostly agree with what you're saying and I'd rather focus on that than a disagreement in kind about capitalism versus democracy, a social systems, right? Because I really do think that part of being a liberal and part of taking the ideas of liberalism seriously is accepting that there are defects in the system that you can't fix. Or more precisely, that you can't use government power to fix, that it would be wrong for the state to be involved in certain settings. From the nation, whatever you see it by the use of the government, like someone somewhere is going to do something you don't like. Right. And that is just, that's just a fact. It's a feature of the system. Because what I don't like might actually end up being a good thing, or even better, an authentic representation of a certain strain of the people who would otherwise have to be repressed by force. And it would be really, really, really bad in a democratic system. If you end up having people who feel like they can't speak or participate in public life, unless they do so through the force of arms that their viewpoint is so thoroughly repressed that they need to resort to violence. That doesn't obviate the need to analyze the way that liberalism generates its own problems and challenges internally, right? We can't just be oh, well, liberals and we'll just go solve things all on its own through the magic processes of freedom. I don't think that's true either. We need to acknowledge the problems the system creates while defending it and figuring out what kinds of solutions are compatible with the protection of fundamental freedoms and liberal values. Yeah, and I think I agree with what Zach said, maybe this is contract to the spirit of this podcast, but the agreement. The agreement part. They're always exceptions to rules, right? I mean, we're not even a crazy right winger like me is not for totally unregulated capitalism, right? I also believe that, you know, there have to be guardrails in all kinds of ways around certain kinds of speech around democratic procedures. The question is what the tendency is, right? Is your tendency to censor or is it to disclose? It's the instinct more than the rule that strikes me is what's at issue today. And one of the reasons I worry about liberalism today is I feel like our instincts are moving in the wrong direction. Repeatedly towards censoriousness towards shutting conversations and shutting lines of inquiry down rather than saying maybe we need to check our instinct to suppress before we do that because again, this issue of unintended consequences is what repeatedly ends up hurting us the most. What are you arguing about with your family, your Friends, your frenemies? Tell me about the big debate you're having in a voicemail by calling 347-915-4324. And we might plan excerpt of it on a future episode. This podcast is supported by polestar, a design focused electric performance car brand hole star is saying no for all the right reasons. No empty promises, because polestar turns visions into reality. No greenwashing, because their words are set in stone. No conquering Mars, because earth is our priority, and no compromises, because our planet deserves real action. 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