The right-wing ideologies we see most active in the world right now aren't intellectual by any stretch of the imagination. But there is a rich tradition of conservative political and social philosophy and, as liberals, it's important to understand what its objections to liberalism look like.ReImagining Liberty stalwart Matthew McManus, a lecturer in political science at the University of Michigan, wrote an article for Liberal Currents not too long ago about the philosopher Roger Scruton's criticism of liberalism from a conservative perspective. Scruton's work is perfect—because of its erudition, accessibility, and exemplariness—for understanding the philosophical conservative perspective.Today Matt and I use Scruton's ideas as a way to interrogate the conservative intellectual tradition and to argue that conservative philosophy aims less at a society organized around truth than it does a society where certainty rarely faces challenge.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

How we navigate the new political environment the voters thrust upon on, and the new regime that seeks to tear up the very foundations of our liberal society, is a matter of ethics. And ethics is bigger than just political questions. It's about how you live, what you aspire to, and what makes for an admirable life, both inside and outside of politics.My guest today has written an important book about just that. Seth Zuihō Segall is a clinical psychologist who served for nearly three decades as an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Medicine and is a former Director of Psychology at Waterbury Hospital and a former President of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. He is also a Zen Buddhist priest, and if you're a regular listener to ReImagining Liberty, you'll know how much I think Buddhist philosophy contains insights of great value in understanding our current moment.Segall's newest book is The House We Live In, which explores the crises imperiling American democracy and argues that progress depends on our arriving at a new consensus on what it means to be a good person and lead a good life and re-imagines an ethics suitable for our time.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

In this discussion, Tom Palmer, Executive Vice President for International Programs at Atlas Network and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, argues that markets do more than generate wealth—they can also enhance our moral character. He challenges common criticisms that markets foster selfishness, instead showcasing how they promote cooperation and ethical interactions. Drawing on personal stories from Guatemala, he illustrates the positive dynamics of market exchanges, revealing the camaraderie and mutual benefits that arise when individuals collaborate.

The information environment in which Americans form and discuss their political views has gotten weird. Walter Cronkite is gone. The editorial pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal have lost influence to podcasters, social media influencers, and internet conspiracy theorists. Trump's rise, and return to power, was in large part fueled by figures on the far-right who knew how to take advantage of this changed environment in a way liberals haven't yet figured out.This means that, if liberalism is to have a political future, liberals need to understand how media today looks nothing like media twenty years ago. And there's no one better at explaining how weird things have become, how they got that way, and how we can navigate through it than Renée DiResta. She's an Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. Prior to that, she was the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory. And she's the author of the indispensable book Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Last fall, I had the extraordinary opportunity to travel to Delhi, India, to give a talk to young Indian liberals. The topic was the connection between Buddhist philosophy and liberalism. If you’re a regular reader of my work, or listen to my podcast, you’ll know this connection has been central to my work for some time. I believe that Buddhist ideas give us important tools for understanding not just why we ought to be liberals, but why liberalism is the best political system for make the world better.This bonus episode of ReImagining Liberty is the audio of that talk. You can also read a transcript of it if you prefer.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Alan Elrod, President & CEO of the Pulaski Institution and a columnist at Arc Digital, dives into the intriguing concept of status anxiety and its connection to Trump's rise. He discusses how many Americans feel their status has declined and see Trump as a remedy. The conversation explores the role of attention in politics, the generational shifts in perceptions of status, and the challenges of fostering civil discourse in our online age. Elrod emphasizes the importance of community engagement in overcoming the impact of status-driven narratives.

In this conversation, Aaron Ross Powell and Anthony L. Fisher (Senior Editor at MSNBC Daily) discuss the political landscape following Trump's second inauguration, focusing on the rapid changes in governance, the Democratic response, and the fractured media environment. They explore the implications of these dynamics on public opinion and the importance of engaging in new media spaces, particularly podcasts, to effectively communicate liberal values and counteract authoritarian tendencies.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

We've talked a lot about gender on this show, in the context of transgender rights, the way declining relative status drives men to the political right, and the broader role gender plays in the political environment. The results of the presidential election in November proved just how central gender is to story of rising illiberalism, with men shifting right while women shifted left.To discuss how we should read this shift, and dig into what's causing it, I've brought back Samantha Hancox-Li, who I last had on the show in September to talk about the distinction between progressivism and liberalism. Samantha's a writer, game designer, and associate editor at Liberal Currents, where she recently published an excellent essays called "The Crisis of Gender Relations."If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty, I encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

For this first episode to be recorded after the results of the presidential election, I've brought on my friend and former colleague ⁠Walter Olson⁠. Walter is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a staunch defender of democracy and liberal institutions, and an expert in the processes and law of American elections.We talk about why the election went the way it went, avenues for electoral reform, and what lessons liberals should take from the results, given that we now need to commit ourselves, over the next four years, to a rigorous defense of liberalism.If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty, I encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠.Produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte. Music by Kevin MacLeod.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Today's episode was recorded a few weeks before the results of the November presidential election, and before an unrelated change I've made to this podcast. So before we jump into my conversation with Matthew McManus, I wanted to take a moment to give some context and talk about ReImagining Liberty going forward.First, for all of its life, ReImagining Liberty has been a listener supported show, and the way listeners supported it was to become paying members and get early access to new episodes. Starting today, I'm no longer doing that. Every episode of ReImagining Liberty will come out when it's ready, and I've turned off paid memberships. I did this primarily because I had an increasingly difficult time being consistent with the show's release schedule, and I didn't want people paying to get early access to episodes that weren't coming out on time. If you're listening to the show right now, nothing changes for you. You'll continue to get episodes right here--just now at the same time as every else.That said, if you do want to support ReImagining Liberty, there are three ways you can do it. First, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps Apple to show the podcast to more people, and encourages people who find it to subscribe. Second, tell your friends. If you like an episode, forward it along to someone. If you like the show, tell people about it. Third, I have a free newsletter at www.aaronrosspowell.com. Sign up for that to get my new writing. Any or all of those three is a huge help and does a ton for the show.Okay, now on to today's episode.The election results very much have liberalism on the defensive. The Trump years are likely to be quite dark, the darkest most of us have seen in our lifetimes. There's a lot liberals can do to fight back, and we'll explore that in future episodes.One area we need to pay a lot of attention to is why the arguments we make--and by "we" I mean what we might label "market liberals"--fail to persuade everyone they need to persuade.Today's episode is very much about that. It's about a position that overlaps with a lot of liberal principles, but also rejects a lot of the free market positions I and other market liberals take.My guest is my friend Matthew McManus, a ReImagining Liberty regular. He's a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Michigan. In his new book, The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, he argues that not only are socialism and liberalism compatible, but that the future of Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.