“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This famous line from The Leopard has become a shorthand for moments when a ruling order senses its own looming downfall.

And it feels eerily relevant now, in an age when the liberal order we cherish seems increasingly unsteady. We are living in a moment when we shout “regime decline” from the rooftops. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel is about what it feels like to live inside history—inside the collapse of a social order and the disorientation that accompanies the fall of a ruling class.

In this episode, historian Dominic Green joins Shilo Brooks to explore why today’s American and British establishments resemble that fading aristocracy: oligarchic, overregulated, technologically backward, and increasingly contemptuous of the people they rule.

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