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The Gist
Steven Hahn Unmasks the Myth of Liberal America
00:37:10
Diplomacy via tweet rarely ends well, but US ambassadors are now flailing into their way through international tensions with sarcasm, memes, and zero restraint. Plus Steven Hahn, NYU historian and author of Illiberal America: A History, joins to...
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- [00:00]
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Mike Pesca
It's Thursday, August 8, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Recent spats Diplomatic spats have not been handled diplomatically. For instance, after Emmanuel Macron, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, declared his or France's intention to recognize the Palestinian state as a state, American ambassadors took to Twitter, you got to say X, formerly Twitter to assail him. U.S. ambassador to France Charles Kushner did not like it. U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee got sarcastic quote, I can now exclusively disclose that France will offer the French Riviera and the new nation will be called Frank Instein. I don't get it, but that's okay. I do note that the New York Times says the statements by the two American ambassadors were further evidence, if any were needed, that old notions of diplomacy and alliances have evaporated since Mr. Trump took office. I have, I have some evidence that it was before, and it's not Trump causing it. He's the symptom. It's the fact that our communications are so much quicker. It's getting in the way of reasoned diplomacy. Similarly, Israel Katz, who is Israel's foreign minister, that's really the best country for him to hold that job. After Spain and Ireland did what France recently did, declare that they would be recognizing Palestinian state, he put up some stock footage of a couple dancing flamenco and sent a message to Spanish leadership, Hamas, thanks for your service. But this goes way back. Well, at least as far back as social media. The Chinese have a lot of diplomats called the Wolf warriors. And they do things like call Trudeau a boy. And they do things like, well, in one instance, Li Yang, who is China's general counsel to Rio de Janeiro, went on Twitter to mock the United States after that building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed. He had two pictures of the collapsed building and then the demo job to clear all the rubble American style rescue. Very layman in saving people, but too expert in blasting again. I think I do get it, but that's not great syntax. It's okay. Except it's not. We're just sped up so much that the worst instincts of diplomats, and I'm not saying any of those guys would normally have good instincts, but the worst instincts are exacerbated. And when it comes to issues like diplomacy, taking a breath and not saying or tweeting the most intemperate thing would probably best serve long term interests. That's not going on. And it leads me to the subject of today's show and today's interview. Illiberal America A History is a new book by Stephen Hahn. Now Stephen Hahn teaches at nyu and we get a little into the origin story for this book, which is that he was commissioned to write a straightforward textbook and it so frustrated him he said I need to do some parts of America that aren't maybe what the town fathers of a small town in Texas would like their children to believe. However, there are so many times in American history this came through in Han's book, this came through in my rereading of the Grant biography, when instantaneous knowledge and communication would definitely have gotten in the way of progress. There are some instances we know that instantaneous communication, for instance, is what allowed the battle, or the lack thereof is what allowed the Battle of New Orleans to take place. Andrew Jackson won this battle after The War of 1812 was over because they couldn't know it. But I was thinking about instances after the Civil War was over and General Grant, still general, had to tread cautiously because he couldn't exactly get word out in a timely manner to all of his generals. But ex Civil War generals, there were still rogue generals in Texas and Alabama still fighting the war, and Grant thought if he imposed too harsh a peace, he would push away the Southerners from ever joining the Union. By the way, this instinct was a noble one and should be complimented. And he was better for Reconstruction than any national figure, especially Andrew Johnson. Which is not to say that him going easy on the south had only salubrious effects. But I do think that if everyone was able to say everything as soon as they said it, it would have caused so much more bloodshed. It would have slowed the progress of repairing the country, which was slow enough. There are so many instances of communication by the very dent of it not being instantaneous was also beneficial to the would be communicators. Not because of Trump, because of human nature. And technology. Steve Hahn is an NYU professor. He is the author of A Liberal America, Not a Liberal, but Illiberal America, and he joins me for the whole show. Hymns can't control snoring or blanket stealing. Appropriation they sometimes call it. But what about when it comes to performance? They've got you covered. 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They integrate with Zoom, Google, Meet Slack, Asana, Zapier, and your CRM. And right now when you sign up for a yearly Fireflies subscription, you get your first two months free. Just go to Fireflies AI slash the gist. That's right, two months free. When you go to Fireflies AI slash the gist. That's Firefly. Steve Hahn is with me. He's the Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Illiberal America A History. A blessedly short subtitle, but an expansive project because what Steve is trying to do in this book is not to tell the story, warts and all, but essentially say, you can't tell the story without warts. Warts sometimes just are the story. Reclaiming History he used to write about the victims of history, and this is an effort to go through America, and it's not as expansive as it could be, but he writes well and he picked his shots to go through America and tell the story as a story of illiberalism. I thought, like, everything he does was very illuminating and worth it. Hello Steve, welcome to the Gist.
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Stephen Hahn
Hi. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
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Mike Pesca
So let's start here. And where you do start is with definitions. And I think we'll circle back to that because it's important. I want to talk about that when we talk maybe about Planned Parenthood and eugenics. But there are portions of history that of course, we all regard as a liberal slavery. There are portions of history that those of us who know a little bit about history look back and say, well, that certainly wasn't a liberal time, like the Palmer Raids. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about that. But what about the lacuna? What about the parts of history that really were marked more by illiberalism than liberalism that you think the general public or even people who think they know history have more or less forgotten?
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Stephen Hahn
Well, that's a great question. And you know, one of the things I really was hoping to do with the book was in a sense, de centering liberalism. Not saying it's not very significant, but really I'd say for the last seven or eight decades, most people who look at American history, whether professional historians or not, sort of see the American experience defined around liberalism. And therefore the warts, as you pointed out, are seen as kind of deflections from bumps along the way. Limitations of liberalism. And I was interested in really talking about multiple political currents, one of which is illiberalism, and it constitutes itself in a whole variety of forms. So one of the things I tried to do in the book is not pick out those episodes in the past that, as you point out, are clearly associated with what we would call liberalism, but in fact pick out many of the moments in the past that we think about the other way that we think about as sort of the foundational moments in the rise of liberalism. And so I began in the 17th century, but there's a chapter dealing with the revolution and the constitutional period in which I talk about the role of anti Catholicism as a motivating force. I talk about the limitations and the backlash against democratic movements in the 1780s that produced the Constitution and a long term interest in monarchism, monarchy. You know, we like to think of the American Revolution as sort of a rejection of monarchy. But really right up until the last moment, most people who were active in the colonial cause were appealing to the king because they thought Parliament was really the enemy. And certainly at the time of the Constitution, there was, you know, important people like Hamilton who wanted a very strong executive and others who thought that there was no way that the republic was going to survive without a monarchy. So I wanted to, you know, place a lot of emphasis there. I then turn to the 1830s, which is the era of Jacksonian democracy, which we see as kind of, you know, this sort of seed bed. Yes, of. Well, we used to.
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Mike Pesca
Or at least the Democratic Party used to embrace it more with Jefferson, Jackson dinners. Now they moved away.
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Stephen Hahn
Well, that's for branding purposes, but exactly the era of the common man, so to speak. And you know, one of the things I try to do is talk about Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln and then talk about the 1830s as a time that also included a great many expulsions. Expulsions of native people, expulsions of black people, expulsions of Mormons and Catholics. So, you know, in a sense forming kind of an illiberal democracy that was democratic in certain respects and exclusive, you know, in other respects. And I think this is often forgotten. And Tocqueville himself, who is usually invoked as a sort of someone who saw American democracy in the making, was warned about some of these tendencies, that he really thought it wouldn't take much for the United States to move in an authoritarian direction for people to give up their rights, for the will of community, to undermine democratic means.
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Mike Pesca
Right. So Lincoln's first speech at the Young Men's Lyceum, he talks about tyranny becoming the norm, unless a, quote, political religion based on reverence for the laws and quote, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason took hold. And Tocqueville towards the country around that time. And they come to maybe different impressions of America here. Lincoln is very worried about the direction and de Tocqueville is more or less inspired. But. But two things. One, you point out that they're not really disagreeing as much as it might seem. But the other thing I would say is don't you think a lot of it comes back to just the comportment of each as an individual and how they saw the world in general?
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Stephen Hahn
Well, look, they are coming from different social and cultural locations, needless to say. I mean, Tocqueville is coming to the United States really to take the measure of the new system of penitentiaries that's emerging and getting a sense of how France might look at the issue of criminal justice. He is both interested and appalled by some of the things he sees. But I think that Tocqueville ended up taking on the project that turned into Democracy in America, very big two volume book because of what he did see going on. And remember, he comes in the early 1830s. Lincoln is speaking at the end of the 1830s. A lot of the mob violence that was taking place actually took place in the mid to late 1830s. But nonetheless, I think what struck me in reading the book was his sense that there was that democracy was based locally in the community and that had a lot of beneficial aspects to enabled many people, men to buy into it. But at the same time it also resulted in ideas about communication, community justice that in many ways rejected the rule of law and took matters into their own hands.
- [16:56]
Mike Pesca
Communities are tight knit, but the nefarious way to say that is that they're insular. And I know you've written a lot about communities, but you also recognize that, you know, lynching or we're. We're seen as an expression of community sentiment.
- [17:11]
Stephen Hahn
Absolutely. And that's how they represent themselves, as community norms being violated by outsiders, by people who are threatening or bode ill for the community at large.
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Mike Pesca
And also another interesting through line with your work here is prisons and incarceration. And you go back, we talked about the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Rush was one who was very interested in prisons. Right. You could tell a whole. Maybe if you have time, you could tell the whole story of America through its prisons. And it wouldn't be a story of liberalism, would it?
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Stephen Hahn
No. You know, I've been involved in prison education for the last eight years.
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Mike Pesca
Meaning you go in and you teach.
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Stephen Hahn
I go in, I teach. Well, NYU has a prison education program at Wallkill, which is up the Hudson Valley.
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Mike Pesca
Oh, with the Brennan Center. With the Brennan Center.
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Stephen Hahn
It's not, it's separate from that. But in any event, you know, I've been teaching there. And then I decided that, you know, I really should. I'm a historian, I should learn more about the history of prisons in the penitentiary. And now I teach a course at NYU in the Making of Mass Incarceration. Pointed out one of the things that really struck me and sort of speaks to the question about how liberalism gets entangled with illiberal dispositions is that the architects of the penitentiary who saw this as a alternative to more traditional forms of punishment, community based, involving corporal punishment and so on and so forth, were also in the anti slavery movement. And I was really, that's. I mean, I didn't quite recognize that I didn't put two and two together as fully as I should have. And then over time, you know, anti slavery people and abolitionists, at least when they looked to the north, became advocates of vagrancy laws. You know, they were very frightened about disorder. They were very frightened about so called masterless people who were roaming around. And you know, I think the penitentiary and its, you know, imbalance, implicit expulsion of people both from the community and, you know, as we know, from political society in general, worked very well. And certainly we see by the late 20th century that, you know, mass incarceration is a bipartisan project.
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Mike Pesca
What parts of this book really resonate with the prisoners when you tell them about it for the first time?
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Stephen Hahn
You know, that's interesting. When I was finishing the book, I was having a very hard time with the conclusion because the book was pretty dark and I didn't want to end simply on a dark note. And I remember coming in, we were doing a course called American History Makers yous Probably Never Heard Of. And I did have them read Benjamin Rush. And as you can imagine, they were incredibly interested in this. And they saw. I asked them to think about and write about because they read his critique of slavery and they read his critique, critique of the death penalty, and then they read his advocacy of the penitentiary. And I said, how do you make sense out of this? And they were really interesting because they understood it as a way of wielding power. It's not necessarily the way in which my students at nyu, who I teach a similar course, didn't quite see it that way because they were interested in Russia's humanitarianism. And the students, the incarcerated students, were kind of interested in different forms of power. So, you know, it was. It was a terrific discussion. And of course, one of the many times that I was the student and they were the teachers.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. By the way, did Rush get sidelined? He certainly we could take. There's a hundred different figures in your book where you could play this game with the game of rule or exception.
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Stephen Hahn
What happened?
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Mike Pesca
Yeah, but also the game of rule or exception. Was he. He's a signer of the Declaration.
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Stephen Hahn
Yes, he is.
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Mike Pesca
He's a figure of the Enlightenment. He is a part of the American story. He's not George Washington. He's not John Adams. He's not Thomas Jefferson. So. Yeah. What happened and how much of his story is the story of America? And does it add up to the scales of more liberalism or more illiberalism?
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Stephen Hahn
Well, you know, that's. It's a great question. And I do think that he's one of these people. That's why I included him in American History Maker you probably never heard of, because there are a lot of them. And in some ways, looking at people like Rush, who is, you know, a Philadelphia person, he's best known in Philadelphia, the world of Philadelphia politics and cultural life. He is a reformer in many different ways and prominent in Philadelphia for that reason. He lives into the teens of the 19th century. But I think people like him, who are best known for their humanitarianism, who are best known as early critics of slavery, who are best known as critics of the death penalty, which was really unusual at that point, then they will become great advocates. And Rush wrote about the penitentiary not simply as a reformatory. I mean, he saw corporal punishment there as a necessary means of keeping order. Then the question is, well, if you take someone like Rush and there are many people like him in our past, how do we make sense about. Of these contradictions? And one of the things I try to do is simply suggest that liberalism can be many different things, and it precedes liberalism itself, but it kind of winds its way around. And I think it shows some of the shortcomings of liberalism and liberals who are very Concerned about order. And when disorder takes place, they find it pretty easy to fall back on illiberal solutions.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah, so liberalism, this is where we get to definitions. It's not the same as progressivism. And this is highlighted with. Let's talk about. Because you do Planned Parenthood, the. The very liberal and progressive impulse to give women autonomy over their reproductive health. But it's also tied in with the idea of eugenics. And so to me. But I wonder what you thought of this analysis. It shows that the things we call progressive, often in light of history, don't seem to be, but also through an examination at the time, would reveal themselves not to be. And there's a lot of cultural momentum to what gets considered on the. On the forefront of progress among people of a liberal set. Now, I don't know if your definition. You tell me why the definition of eugenics is illiberal, even if it was seen as progressive. I don't know if definitions will guide us through. But, you know, what's your analysis of that?
- [24:18]
Stephen Hahn
Well, you know, I have a chapter. It's called Modernizing Illiberalism. And it's a way of, you know, trying to avoid making this simply a continuity story of. Here we go again. And the progressive. It's. It does focus on the progressive period, which we tend to associate with the advent of modern, with the rise of a new perspective on society, of the relationship between the government and business and labor and the public more generally. We associate a numbers of reforms that have to do with child labor or women's rights and so on. Of course, the women's right to vote is one of the things that comes out of it. But one of the things that really struck me is I did get interested in you job. And I couldn't quite understand why it was seen as kind of a sideline to what was going on in Progressivism. Because I remember I got interested in Margaret Sanger because of her complicated political history. And I read the minutes of a international birth control conference that took place in New York around 1920. And when I saw the list of people who were in attendance because the emphasis really was on eugenics, it was a who's who of American political and intellectual life, many of whom bought into this. And I see this in liberal terms as a way of embracing innate hierarchy and inequalities. I mean, in effect, they are interested in social engineering. They see the state as a vehicle to carry that out, and they're interested in creating a better society through breeding. And sterilization becomes an aspect of This. I mean, Woodrow Wilson, as governor of New Jersey, signed off on a sterilization law. And this is very widespread for a very, very long time. And it made me reckon the period and look at things so that people like Herbert Crowley, who was at this, have a view of democracy in a much more limited way. I mean, he's a critic of Jeffersonian democracy. There's too much democracy on the ground, and you need a democracy of people who have been educated and who understand, as he puts it, the national purpose. And this is an era, of course, when Jim Crow not only comes into being in the Southern states with the disfranchisement and segregation of black people, but it's embraced nationally and is seen as a modern way of dealing with the new problem of race relations. You know, you think of Bob Plessy and a number of other Supreme Court decisions, not to mention American imperial adventures overseas, where the Supreme Court basically says that those people who are under US Occupation elsewhere are not entitled to the same rights as Americans are. So I really did think that it was important for us to understand that these illiberal sensibilities were creeping right from the beginning into what we think about as the advent of modern liberalism, which becomes most apparent in the 1930s.
- [27:54]
Mike Pesca
We'll be back with Steve Hahn, author of Illiberal America, in a minute. As summer winds down, I'm all about refreshing my wardrobe and what I like to call my staple pieces for the season ahead. I didn't know they were called staple pieces, but then I found out what they were. Quince helps me do that. Quint styles are so versatile, I find myself reaching for them again and again. I want to mostly focus on linen pants. Linen shorts? Really? Oh, am I a Beau Brummel, a man about town, in my linen Quince shorts? They're half the cost of similar brands. I take it on faith. I don't even look to similar brands. So good are the Quince shorts. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing process and premium fabrics and finishes. And make sure their shorts are not too short, but not too long, but definitely linen. And you know what? The je ne sais quoi of these shorts have convinced me to look into towels. Towels, which Quince is also pioneering. I'll throw out another one. I got a boy who's going to college and he needs luggage. Let's quince it up, I say. Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with quince. Go to quince.com the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com the gist to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com the gist let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.
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Stephen Hahn
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With their new Family Freedom offer. That's not the itinerary we're following.
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Stephen Hahn
Bon voyage.
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- [30:40]
Mike Pesca
We're back with NYU professor Steve Hahn. So complicating this is the fact that many early proponents of Planned Parenthood, what became Planned Parenthood, Sanger herself was progressive slash liberal on almost all other issues. W.E.B. du Bois was a major backer and at least flirted with her endorsed eugenics, certainly not for Jim Crow reasons.
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Stephen Hahn
Right.
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Mike Pesca
The thing that you said where if I were to say what are the aspects of it, do the taxonomy of eugenics and tell me what in the DNA strikes you me as a liberal? It's the cementing of hierarchies. But it does seem to me that there are other aspects of it where you can get tricked into or someone who would want to be liberal and think of themselves as liberal would be misguided. And so I was just thinking of a couple other concomitant social forces at the time. Would the temperance movement, should that be seen as liberal or illiberal? On the one hand it's illiberal because you're banning action from someone. On the other hand it's a liberation to free people from often the corporate imposed ills of drink. Right.
- [31:54]
Stephen Hahn
I mean I think you know, temperance and then prohibition, which is more extreme version of that. And of course a state sponsored one. You know, like many policies and ideas are understood on the ground in a Whole variety of ways. And that's one of the things we need to understand about history and politics is that people are drawn in oftentimes for reasons that kind of defy the formal analysis of what's going on now. You know, temperance appealed by and large to certain groups of people. I mean, it was something that was based in the kind of northern middle class. This was a way in which women found their way into politics in very, very powerful ways.
- [32:43]
Mike Pesca
Huge overlap with the suffragette movement.
- [32:46]
Stephen Hahn
Absolutely. And of course, the suffrage movement has its own complications when it comes to race. So that even back in the Reconstruction era, when there was enormous disappointment on the part of Stanton and Susan B. Anthony because the result was male enfranchisement, not women's enfranchisement, who basically had this view of, you know, why are you putting these ignorant black men in and not educated white women? And this really lasts into the, you know, very much up to the end of this, where there is always a very strong current of racism. And as we know, despite the amendment, black women really don't get, get the right to vote formally at least until 1965 in the voting Rights Act. So, you know, but there are radicals in the suffrage movement who don't think about it that way. And there's always struggles within these movements. And certainly, as you point out, the overlap between temperance, suffrage, other forms of social reform. I'm not trying to suggest that, you know, it's all one thing, because I don't think it is. And there's certainly a left wing of progressivism, especially on the ground in areas like the upper Midwest, for example, Robert LaFollette and, you know, who are trying to carve out something democratic in a different way. And I think their impact on the New Deal is very, very important to recognize. Nonetheless, it seemed to me, especially given the incredible interchange, first of all, the popularity that Mussolini had in the United states in the 1920s, the back and forth scientists in the United States and Germany, including in the 1930s, over eugenic research, the fascination that the Nazis and Hitler had with this. Hitler thought that the, you know, the segregation laws were too extreme. But he was fascinated with the American history of westward expansion and the expulsion of native people as finding breathing room that he was so interested in.
- [35:01]
Mike Pesca
Well, just like our founding fathers were very motivated by anti Catholic sentiment. It's probably the one thing, as you point out, that kept the clan from.
- [35:09]
Stephen Hahn
Totally aligning with Hitler or with Mussolini. I mean, that was, that was, that.
- [35:14]
Mike Pesca
Was a problem explicitly Hitler. Right.
- [35:17]
Stephen Hahn
I mean, the American Legion, you know, also invited Mussolini to one of its annual conventions. He didn't come, but so they went to visit him in Rome and brought him a cowboy hat.
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Mike Pesca
So until, you know, was he ever pictured wearing it? I can't.
- [35:33]
Stephen Hahn
Yes. Oh, really? There is a picture. Picture. You know, so until Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, which, you know, soured a lot of people on the regime, you know, he was seen as one of the ways forward and a kind of form of continuity between the progressive impulses, certainly in its corporate aspects in the United States in the first two decades or the three decades of the 20th century and what was going on in Europe as well. It does raise interesting questions that I think American historians have not fully grappled with, which has to do with the place of the United States in the building of authoritarian regimes in the first several decades of the 20th century. Because when FDR was elected in 32 and took office in 33 at the depths of the Depression, and there are a lot of people, including self described liberals, who were telling him he really needed to take on extraordinary powers, maybe even to undermine, just to ignore the works of the Congress. Now, this didn't have to happen because it had overwhelming support in the Congress, but it was one of these moments where things could have gotten anyone of a number of directions. And given the power of the Klan as a social and political movement in the 1920s, given, you know, some interest in Nazism in certain circles in the United States, who knows? So I think it's one of the things where it's interesting to revisit internationally, you know, how to think about this. Because in the past, the American liberal tradition, interpretation had an easy solution. This was American exceptionalism. We don't really need to understand that. And look, if we're looking at the current political moment, it would be a great mistake to see the United States isolated, you know, from what's going on in, you know, all over the world. It's a illiberal moment globally, and I don't think we can understand it in the United States without looking at it that way.
- [37:50]
Mike Pesca
So didn't I think In Fear Itself by Ira Katz Nelson.
- [37:54]
Stephen Hahn
Yes.
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Mike Pesca
About how a couple of FDR as functionaries, or at least people influential in the administration, went and studied Mussolini, Right?
- [38:02]
Stephen Hahn
Yes. And Lippmann was one of the people. Walter Lippmann was one of the people who said, you know, you better prepare yourself for, you know, grabbing power and some kind of dictatorship.
- [38:12]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. So couple questions, global questions, and I want to ask you about another one of your projects, how it Seems hard. I don't want to, I don't want to rest on the American exceptionalism, we did nothing wrong argument.
- [38:27]
Stephen Hahn
Right.
- [38:28]
Mike Pesca
But I don't want to, I don't want to say we did nothing right. I mean, we're here and there were some accomplishments and I'm glad my kids are American, for instance. Not that we can't be a more perfect union. How do you. So your book is a corrective to the assumption that liberalism is the rule, not the exception. But how far do you think the pendulum should swing? What's useful? Let's say Steve Hahn becomes the next 1619 project. How long do you take it to get this book put in the hands of every teenager or to really make it so that the correction corrects but doesn't overcorrect?
- [39:09]
Stephen Hahn
Right. Well, I think the possibility of it being the hands of many teenagers is, is probably not facing. And also, also I might say that I've always been dubious about all origin stories. I mean, origin stories are mythologized. Origin stories are told to validate national aspirations and all countries have their own version of exceptionalism. One of the things that I think taking a liberalism seriously means is that, that you take the kind of progressive changes that have taken place in the United States even more seriously. And looking at them carefully, there were, I think about most dramatically the abolition of slavery, the defeat of the slave holding class, the advent of a kind of modern liberalism in the 1930s that was not really taking place in many other societies. I really do think, and it's one of the worrisome things about the attack on history teaching and history learning is to ignore the role that people of African descent played at many points and were the ones who took the ideas in the Declaration of Independence and our most far reaching ideas deals most seriously. They didn't want any liberal democracy, they didn't talk about exclusions. And you know, in the 1850s and 1840s we were dealing with a period of active nativism, of trying to limit the power and access to political life of immigrants who were, you know, forming a new section of the working class, mostly in northern cities. And no one would have expected, you know, the struggle of African Americans who were free and of women before the Civil War for their own rights were kind of hitting the wall. And then you have what was really, if nothing else, a massive political revolution in American society with the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments, Civil Rights bills, often made possible by the activity of African Americans and their own vision. So I do think that what my interest is, is in recognizing the multiplication multifaceted political traditions of the United States and how they flowed separately and how they flowed over one another, how they influenced one another. Because I do think that we still tend to see what I describe as a liberalism as a form of quote, unquote backlash. It's rage, it's insubstantial. And I think we have to take it much more seriously than that. It reflects a whole subject, sets of belief systems, ideas about relationships, practices and so on. You know, in the 19, I think 40s or 50s, there were interviews with people who were in the Klan in Indiana and they couldn't understand why anyone under saw it as an extremist organization. I mean, they just thought it was sort of part of social life. There were recreational activities and as opposed to something that was all about racism and anti Catholicism and anti Semitism. So I mean, I think this is part of taking seriously the political culture of the United States as opposed to marginalizing and erasing currents that were really, really important. And maybe they didn't win at the time, but they are there for us to learn from and, you know, for us to recover.
- [43:02]
Mike Pesca
The name of the book is Illiberal, A History. It's written by Steve Hahn, who won the Pulitzer for a Under Our Feet Black Political struggle in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration. Thank you so much, Steve.
- [43:16]
Stephen Hahn
Thank you. Great discussion, I appreciate it.
- [43:23]
Mike Pesca
That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. I assembled the Gist list alongside Kathleen Sykes. I mean not really alongside. She's in Utah. I'm here. But we collaborate as do Astrid Green and the team. She runs our socials and Ashley Khan is our production coordinator. Who's in charge? It's Michelle Pasca. As I'll tell you, she is loathe to say in Peru. G Peru. Do Peru. And thanks for listening.
- [43:54]
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