Best New Thinking: What’s Wrong with America?
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
01/04/24
•34m
About
Comments
Featured In
The United States seems to be on the verge of some kind of Judgement Day. Extreme partisanship, a past (and future?) president facing seemingly endless indictments and legal entanglements, a profound loss of trust in institutions and leaders, citizens who tell pollsters that their country is heading in the wrong direction and they fear the future—despite objective economic conditions that are better than almost anywhere else. What’s wrong? Why the deep unhappiness, even depression? Is the American dream becoming a nightmare?
Sometimes the best insights come from the outside. Our guest on New Thinking for a New World is an inside outsider with almost unique insight into how the United States works. Lars Trägårdh is a Swedish historian who has lived in the United States on and off for decades and has spent much of that time observing and thinking about the social contract between Americans and their government. Today he's a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, but continues to spend considerable time traveling across the United States.
Listen as he does a deep dive into the social and political challenges confronting America.
Is the United States headed in the wrong direction?
This episode was originally published on Sep 28, 2023
Previous Episode
Best New Thinking: Should We Tolerate the Intolerant?
December 28, 2023
•29m
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies Financial Times.
Popper, an Austrian philosopher who had fled the Nazis, wrote those words as he came to grips with how the Nazis had infiltrated and overrun liberal European societies. Fast forward to today. Elisabeth Braw, writing in the Financial Times, cited Popper’s thinking about the risks of tolerating the intolerant as she explained the recent explosion of terror threats on Sweden following incidents of Koran burnings. Although the Swedish government condemned the burnings, it could not prevent them essentially because of freedom of speech protections in Swedish law.
So Sweden finds itself in a double bind: it badly wants to stop Koran burnings, but to do so it would have to undermine a key aspect of its liberal democracy. Of course, that dilemma is not unique to Sweden in this era of violent hyper-partisanship.
Braw is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Listen as she explores the potential consequences of being too tolerant in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.
What do you think? If Sweden could find a way to outlaw desecration of the Koran (and other holy books), would the terror threat disappear? And would that justify limiting freedom of expression?
Link to article in the Financial Times that is referred to in the podcast (the article is behind a paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/0ac9e1a9-2aad-47d9-83fb-4839e9b31b33
This episode was originally published on Aug 24, 2023
Next Episode
SPOTLIGHT: The Year of the Ballot
January 11, 2024
•10m
During 2024 more than 50 countries, including seven of the world’s most populous nations, will vote in national elections. While many thousands of names will appear on ballots, what’s really at stake is the future of democracy itself.
Can democracy cope with the centrifugal forces of the radical right and radical left? Will “strong man” leaders continue to triumph with their often simplistic, sometimes hateful policy ideas? Will extreme partisanship continue to undermine national consensus?
Although not one of the countries holding elections this year, Chile potentially offers some insights into what might happen in other places where democracy is on the line. After violent political instability in 2019, Chileans tried to address underlying causes through a highly participatory process of constitutional reform. They failed: two different proposals were voted down in national referendums. What lessons for the rest of us?
Isabel Aninat is a Chilean jurist who was in the thick of the search for a new constitution. In this thought piece for New Thinking for a New World she offers her reflections on the implications of what happened on her country’s search for a more perfect democracy.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted