Glenn Loury: Elon Musk’s apartheid politics

Summary

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Podcast Summary: UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

Episode: Glenn Loury: Elon Musk’s Apartheid Politics
Date: January 30, 2026
Host: Freddie Sayers (UnHerd)
Guest: Professor Glenn Loury

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Freddie Sayers interviews Professor Glenn Loury, a renowned economist and social commentator, about his recent essay critiquing Elon Musk’s embrace of right-wing identity politics, specifically Musk's public comparisons between contemporary America and post-apartheid South Africa. The conversation explores the dangers of racial essentialism on both the left and right, the evolution of American conservatism, and the risks Musk's rhetoric poses to civil society and democratic institutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Elon Musk’s “Apartheid” Rhetoric and Social Media Influence

• Freddie Sayers opens with Musk’s recent tweets, highlighting statements where Musk endorses the idea that America is heading towards a South African scenario unless drastic action (like "remigration") is taken (03:32).
  • Musk agrees with claims that "white men will be slaughtered" if they become a minority, promoting "white solidarity."
• Main Concern:
  • Loury finds the tweets "alarming” due to Musk's massive influence and worries about the normalization of racially charged, apocalyptic rhetoric.
    • Quote: "It's Elon Musk. He's the world's wealthiest man. He has... an enormously influential platform. People listen to him... There’s a kind of essentialization that’s going on where you identify a problem in society, you see the demography, and you attribute the root of the problem to the demographics.” — Glenn Loury, 04:02

2. The “Category Error” of Comparing the US to South Africa

• Loury: Western countries like the US are "not South Africa." The institutions, traditions, and history differ fundamentally. It’s misguided to import racial fears specific to South Africa into the American context (04:02–05:54).
  • Quote: "Western Europe and... the United States... are not South Africa. These are well ordered constitutional republics..." — Glenn Loury, 04:02
• Sayers: Points out the irony of Musk, himself an immigrant from South Africa, “failing to assimilate as an immigrant,” by projecting his country of origin's racial anxieties onto America (12:03).
• Loury: "South Africa is a historical phenomenon of its own unique character... That’s a fact about South Africa, but it’s not a fact about the United States. Musk is making that category error.” (12:41)

3. Normalization of Identitarian Politics—From Left to Right

• Loury: The right’s embrace of identity politics is not just a backlash to the Woke left, but a full-on adoption of dangerous racial essentialism (06:27).
  • Initially, he viewed right-wing identity talk as mere backlash, but now sees a disturbing “convergence” with the left's methods.
  • Notes that even Jewish communities have begun to practice "robust" identity politics post-October 7, 2023, normalizing identitarianism at large.
  • Quote: "I didn’t see... the potential for many white people to... embrace identity mongering on their own account..." — Glenn Loury, 06:27

4. Failures of Leadership—Obama and the Conservative Movement

• Missed opportunity for a transcendent, non-racial approach during the Obama administration.
  • Quote: "An opportunity was missed by President Obama, the first African American to hold the highest political office... who might have adhered to a higher ground than in fact he did..." — Glenn Loury, 10:24
• On the right, current leadership lacks the high-minded, visionary quality needed to reject racial politics firmly (09:18–11:18).

5. The Shift in American Conservatism: The “Crack Up”

• Loury: Traces the evolution from Buckley-era “fusionism” (libertarian, hawkish, traditionalist) to today’s fractured conservative movement, where MAGA populism often overlaps with race-based identitarianism (20:36).
  • “Part of what [MAGA] seems to be becoming... is a kind of white identitarian reaction against diversity, equity and inclusion...”
  • The right’s internal fragmentation (“philosophical confusion”) has created a vacuum for these ideas to take hold.

6. Media Influence and the Dangers of Normalizing Racial Politics

• Musk’s ownership of X (Twitter) supercharges the impact of his rhetoric; ideas can shift the political "Overton window" and slowly erode taboos against racist appeals (19:05).
  • Quote: "The overt embrace of white solidarity ought to make our hair stand on end... It opens the door for a different kind of politics, a more chauvinistic, white-supremacist, frankly, politics.” — Glenn Loury, 19:05
• Importance of recognizing and calling out “deleterious” cultural trends without resorting to censorship.

7. Is a Racial Response Ever Justified?

• Freddie Sayers plays devil's advocate: If the left made it racial, mustn't the right respond in kind?
• Loury pushes back:
  • Argues firmly for universal, non-racial norms and against essentializing politics by race.
    • “Why are we parsing the population and dividing the polity in terms of race?... We should be reluctant to go against [liberal principles of universality] in reaction to political trends we don't like.” (25:35)
  • Proposes issues like immigration can be debated using cultural, linguistic, or civic criteria instead of race (27:18).

8. The Resilience—and Strain—of American Institutions

• Concerns:
  • Judicial independence, politicization of law enforcement, fragmentation between state and federal authorities—all “worrisome” (28:59).
  • Yet Loury believes the constitutional order’s record justifies cautious optimism.
  • Quote: “We’re under strain... but we’re the best bet we’ve got going. I’m worried but I’m not in despair, and I’m certainly not at the point of giving up on them” — Glenn Loury, 28:59

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the power of Musk’s endorsement:

  • “Ideas are the precursor to movements and politics, policies and politics that actually hit the ground. The overt embrace of white solidarity ought to make our hair stand on end." — Glenn Loury, 19:05

• On the comparison with South Africa:

  • “The United States is not South Africa... We do have the Constitution, we do have the courts... I don’t think it really requires a lot of effort to refute the association or identification of the United States racial history with South Africa’s...” — Glenn Loury, 17:27

• Looking to the future:

  • “I can't say with confidence that 10 years from now everything's going to be okay. I'm really worried about where the country is going, and in my own small little way, I'm trying to... sound an alarm.” — Glenn Loury, 31:00

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [01:22] Introduction to Glenn Loury and setup of Musk’s tweets
• [04:02] Loury’s initial reaction to Musk’s tweets
• [06:27] Analysis of identitarian politics on the right and left
• [09:18] Why a non-identitarian “good backlash” never materialized
• [12:03] Are Musk’s views an “importation” of South African politics?
• [17:27] Why the US and South Africa are categorically different
• [19:05] Dangers of mainstreaming racial politics via influential platforms
• [20:36] The breakdown of fusionist conservatism and MAGA's rise
• [25:35] In-depth argument against racial essentialism as a political response
• [28:59] The strain and resilience of American institutions
• [31:00] Loury’s personal sense of urgency about current trends

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Tone and Closing

The conversation, while measured and deeply analytical, is underscored by real concern. Loury, a lifelong advocate for transcending race in public life, strikes a sober, at times alarmed, note about the normalization of race-based thinking on both sides of the US political spectrum. Freddie Sayers, in keeping with UnHerd’s tradition, challenges Loury’s arguments robustly, ensuring the conversation includes meaningful counterpoints.

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Final Words:
“Despite being the first tenured black professor at Harvard back in the 80s, [Loury] has never in his long career lent into race as a way of seeing the world... So to have him apparently so worried about what he’s seeing on the American right... should, I think, give us all pause.” — Freddie Sayers, 31:31

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Transcript

[Raj]

Hey, it's Raj and Noah.

[Noah]

And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

[Raj]

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[Noah]

But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.

[Raj]

We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.

[Noah]

Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Raj]

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[Freddie]

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[Freddie]

Hello and welcome back to Unherd. Professor Glenn Lowry is one of the United States most eminent professors of economics and and social science. He was the first tenured black professor at Harvard University at the tender age of 33. Was famous throughout the late 80s 90s, 2000s. Thought often as a conservative minded a commentator on matters of economics and social science. Since what we've been calling the Great Awokening of 2020. He's also been very vocal calling out identity politics. He was considered by the New York Times as conservative leaning even just a couple of years ago on that basis. And yet today in a really important intervention, he is talking about what he's seeing as the new identity politics of the right, in particular encapsulated by the world's richest man, Elon Musk. He joins us right now to talk us through it. Professor LARRY welcome to Unhers.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Thank you Freddie. Good to be with you.

[Freddie]

You also have a fantastic YouTube show, the Glen show, which if people enjoy this conversation, they should check out.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

I'm glad you told them.

[Freddie]

Let's just start by reading a couple of these tweets and then you can tell me what your thoughts were. Just to put our audience in the picture. So this is from Elon Musk, the proprietor, the 100% owner of the world's largest speech platform, and this is what he chooses to put on it. That is what will happen to America, he says, quoting someone who is saying that the South African scenario is our future if we don't start remigration, which is sending immigrants home. Another tweet. Yes, he says, commenting on someone who is saying what they've managed to accomplish in South Africa is what they want to inflict on all of us. The race communism that destroyed Rhodesia and South Africa, they are bringing to America to turn us into the global favela. Some other guy says, guys, they just want to eradicate white people. It's that simple. Some people really do, says Elon Musk. And this one really most striking. An anonymous commenter says the following. If white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non whites openly hate white men while white men hold a collective majority, then they will be a thousand times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over whites, they presumably being non white people, White solidarity is the only way to survive. Mr. Musk quotes that with 100% saying he agrees with it, endorses it 100%. What do you think, Glenn? Larry, when you read those kind of.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Tweets, well, if I may say so, they are very alarming. I mean, first of all, it's Elon Musk. He's the world's wealthiest man. He has, as you point out, an enormously influential platform. People listen to him. He has influence. He is a pacesetter of our time. So there's that. Secondly, Western Europe and immigration and multiculturalism. Canada, the United States, Australia, these are not South Africa. These are well ordered constitutional republics with a tradition of mediating political conflict in peaceable ways and so on and so forth. So I think there's a kind of category mistake that's being made. And looking at the unhappy, I will acknowledge post apartheid sojourn of the South African society, identifying that with race and then importing the trepidations associated therewith into an assessment of what's going on in the West. But thirdly, race is not the driving factor even in the problems in the west, the problems of crime, welfare, and so on. These are not racial problems. So there's a kind of essentialization that's going on where you identify a problem in the society, you see the demography of the society, and you attribute the root of the problem to the demographics, when in fact, broad institutions of governance and policy administration are at hand, which are not racial, which apply across the board to all of the citizens. You know, that's the kind of sentiment that I tried to bring to bear in my article of criticizing Elon Musk, who is an estimable figure, to be sure, meaning I'm not saying he's a dummy by any means, but I think this he's getting badly wrong.

[Freddie]

Let's try and unpick that, because there's a lot in that. The first is this idea that somehow, if we're trying to understand the genealogy of how we got here, the right, instead of rejecting the identitarian politics of the left, that the movement called WOKE instead seemed to have adopted it. There's a kind of convergence that you talk about that explain that idea to us. So what you're seeing here is it's weirdly a kind of exact inverse of the WOKE left.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

I think I got it wrong originally in looking at the rhetoric on the right. I thought of it as a backlash. I thought of it as the identity mongers on the left overplayed their hand. The summer of 2020 here in the United States, the George Floyd riots and so on, the racial reckoning that everyone was celebrating on the left. Talk about systemic racism and white supremacy and 1619 projects, wanting to reinterpret American history through the lens of slavery and so on and so for the celebration of certain pseudo intellectuals like Ibram X Kendi, you know, anti racism being the Bible seminars and diversity training indoctrinations and so on and so forth. And I thought, well, if I were a white person and I were being subjected to that kind of thing, I might well react negatively against it. What I didn't see is the extent to which there was a real potential for many white people to not only react against the excesses of identity mongering on the left, but to embrace identity mongering on their own account, to see it as a tool of politics to normalize the emphasis on identity. And I might just add here, I think in the post October 7, 2023 environment where there's been a good deal of concern about anti Semitism, the people who are Jewish and concerned about Jewish rights are also embracing a kind of identity politics and in a robust way that is independent of a reaction against the anti racist identity politics. And I just wanted to put that on the table that we are normalizing in our politics. Identitarianism and the right, far from being an obstacle to that, are in fact joining the party with the use of this politically destructive, in my opinion, liberal political order, this politically destructive tool.

[Freddie]

Because there was or there could have been a kind of good backlash to some of that 2020 and beyond stuff, couldn't there? I mean, you might call it a classical liberal reaction or basically a philosophical rejection of identity as the way to judge people. There could have been, in theory, it hasn't really happened, an administration coming in and saying, no, we are going to be absolutely meritocratic in the way we think about our institutions. We're not going to be choosing things based on skin color, all the rest of it. That would have been, I think, a positive development, but it didn't happen. It got sort of very quickly bypassed by this more edgy, race inflected movement. Why do you think that was? Why did the good backlash not happen?

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

That's a good question and I'm not sure I know. I think adhering to principle, to high principle is not the first order of day to day politics, regardless of your ideological coloration. And I think the temptation to get people's juices flowing, to get them off their seats and out of their chairs, to have them feel threat, is a powerfully attractive motivation for getting people to the polls, getting them to donate money, keeping their attention. So there was a need for high minded, visionary, public spirited leadership. And with respect to the current leader of the Republican Party and the right wing politics in the United States, which I know better than I do Western Europe, we don't have that kind of leadership.

[Freddie]

In your essay for us, you describe the reach to racial identity as a political tool as emotionally energizing and cognitively cheap. In other words, it's kind of stupid almost, but it produces, it's titillating and it gets people going.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Yeah, it's on the cheap. I should say here though that I can't only blame the current political leadership on the right of American politics for the situation we find ourselves in. A person could say, and I have said on other occasions, that an opportunity was missed by President Obama, the first African American to hold the highest political office in the country, who in his very DNA embodied a kind of transracial, humanistic posture and who might have adhered to a higher ground than in fact he did adhere to in his administration of the country's political culture. Over the years from 2008 to 2016, when the seeds of 2020 were being sown, he could have taken a higher transracial posture himself. And he didn't do that. And I think that's not to his credit. So just to be fair, I think.

[Freddie]

That'S a really important point. And also the years beyond 2016, when President Obama was very quiet, the kind of woke wave, he ducked it, he did not say, this is wrong. This is going to provoke a backlash. Although you sense from some of his interventions that he kind of saw what was coming. He didn't speak out.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

I've said this, and it may not be fair to Barack Obama that he was a young man when he left office with a post presidential career ahead of him that he hoped to enjoy quietly with his lovely wife Michelle, and that taking the tack that you've just hinted at would have cost him plenty in terms of his reputational standing with the constituency that he perhaps is most interested in cultivating.

[Freddie]

Let's get back to Elon Musk then, because the thought that you've shared with us is such an interesting one. I think we need to really understand it, which is that Elon Musk is actually, let's not forget, an immigrant to the United States. He was born in Pretoria in South Africa. And in a sense, he is importing the culture of his birth country with its very particular view of race, which is very much a South African way of seeing things. He's importing it into the United States by his own kind of rhetoric. You could say he is failing to assimilate as an immigrant.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

So it seems to me, I hadn't quite thought of it in terms of Musk assimilation, but I do see the importation problem. And, you know, South Africa is a historical phenomenon of its own more or less unique character. And, you know, there was a racial fight over the control of the state, which was resolved to the disadvantage of white South Africans. And the consequences of that, as I said already said, could be judged to have been less than entirely desirable and positive. That's a fact about South Africa, but it's not a fact about the United States. And I believe Musk is making that category error.

[Raj]

Hey, it's Raj and Noah.

[Noah]

And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

[Raj]

Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.

[Noah]

But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.

[Raj]

We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.

[Noah]

Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Raj]

And for the first time ever, we're gonna have full video episodes on YouTube because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're gonna be right here to help you do.

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[Freddie]

What do you have to lose?

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[Freddie]

In South Africa, it's a different story. There was apartheid for decades upon decades, everything was literally decided based on skin color. And so we've now seen an unfortunate backlash to that after a temporary period with Mandela where things were kind of held slightly differently. And that's a very South African problem. So the United States has had African Americans there, initially as slaves and subsequently as citizens for a very long time, and it has a very different history. And what you're suggesting is that the institutions and the Constitution of the US Are stronger and less kind of existentially linked to race than South Africa. So Musk is basically confused.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

I think that puts it very well. The United States is not South Africa. There's no chance, in my humble opinion, that the course of events that transpired in South Africa would be seen to transpire here in the United States. We do have the Constitution, we do have the courts, we have the traditions and customs. We have gone through a civil rights movement, which is a rather successful transition in American politics, establishing norms and so forth and so on. So I don't think it really requires a lot of effort to refute the association or identification of the United States racial history with South Africa's racial history.

[Freddie]

And it is, you could say, kind of ironic that what Musk is giving us is almost like a post colonial reading of American history and the American moment, which is exactly what the right wingers have been so upset about that the left has been doing for decades. It's a sort of obsession with these kind of race struggles in a particularly colonial context. And he's committing the kind of neat inverse of it for us here.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Well said.

[Freddie]

His unique position is that he owns and also dominates X, formerly Twitter. He has more followers than anyone else. When he puts out messages, they create ripples. Tell us about that aspect of this, because this isn't just any old person who is reaching to race rhetoric. You could argue he's one of the most influential people in the world. What effect in the real world do you think it might have?

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Well, I think it insinuates itself into people's thinking. I think ideas are the precursor to movements and politics, policies and politics that actually hit the ground. And, and I think it's subtle. There's a question of, you know, like whatever you want to call it, Overton window or kind of tacit understandings. The overt embrace of white solidarity ought to make our hair stand on end. It ought to be gravely alarming. The advent of such ought to be gravely alarming to our sensibilities. And over time, and by degrees, the cultivated resistance to that kind of thinking, the delegitimization of that kind of thinking fades and it opens the door for a different kind of politics, a more chauvinistic white supremacist, frankly, politics. I don't like censorship. I'm not saying people should be overtly prevented from making arguments, but I'm saying we can be aware of cultural trends and we can comment culture, those trends when we regard them as deleterious. And that's what I'm doing.

[Freddie]

So in your unherd essay, you situate this tendency in a kind of bigger political crack up, which is that the right of centre has until recently been a collection of different strands, as you see it, that have now are separating. And so there's a kind of vulnerability on the right for these kind of worse ideas to come in. Talk us through that.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

It's clear that Donald Trump's advent and his success and his seizing the high ground of leadership of the right of American politics is historically significant. And while this is not my field of expertise, I'm an observer who has been following political affairs in the United States for a half century. I remember the old fusionist, William F. Buckley esque conservatism, which was kind of a blend of hawkish foreign policy, libertarian economic policy, and a kind of pro religion, traditional values sentiment. Those three strands being held together. You know, there were tensions and so on, but they were held together until we get to the turn of the 21st century where we see the forever wars discrediting neoconservatism and we see the financial crises and drama of economic problems. Discrediting. No, I wouldn't say discrediting, but certainly holding in some relief embrace of libertarian economics. And we see the advent of the Trumpian populism of maga. Now, what is maga? It's not easy to say exactly what it is, given that Trump doesn't project a coherent ideological argument, but part of what it seems to be becoming, if you follow Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk for that matter, is a kind of white IDENTITARIAN reaction against diversity, equity and inclusion type thinking and anti racist sentiments coming from progressives. And that is filling a vacuum, it seems to me that has needed to be filled in terms of giving a analytical framework to conservatism. And while this card has yet to be fully played, I'm alarmed at the direction that it's taking.

[Freddie]

It's partly a philosophical kind of confusion then what used to be the conservative movement has kind of broken up in the chaos that ensues. Some of these quite ugly ideas can find purchase.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Correct. And we don't know where it's going to sort out. And it really matters how it sorts itself out because this is a very important strand of the American political system that will be with us for a while, I think.

[Freddie]

Okay, Glenn, I'm now going to just for a moment argue against you because we promised to kick the tires on these things unherd. We don't belong to a herd. And I don't think Elon is going to engage with this article on X. We've put it out there. It's been mysteriously quiet. The response on his own network. I can't think why the algorithm would disfavor something so overtly critical of the proprietor, but we'll see. I think he might say if he was sitting listening to us, you guys are being kind of weak, overly paranoid. And all he is suggesting is that the Woke Mind virus, as he calls it, is so powerful and has drenched so deep into our institutions that a really robust response is required in order to keep it at bay. And that means that just as the rights of minorities have been obsessed about over recent decades, it is time to speak up for the majority and make sure that the power of the majority has some sway and doesn't get eaten up by all of these communists and wokies and all of the rest of it. If he said that, what would he say back?

[Raj]

Hey, it's Raj and Noah.

[Noah]

And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

[Raj]

Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.

[Noah]

But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.

[Raj]

We'll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.

[Noah]

Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Raj]

And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

Love y'.

[Grow Therapy Advertiser]

All.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.

[Freddie]

What do you have to lose?

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time.

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50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy See Terms.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

I'd say why is it racial? Why are we parsing the population and dividing the polity in terms of race? I agree that normies, that is people who are not left radicals who are not manic advocates of a certain diversity mania deserve to be argued with. But why are we putting it in terms of white people? White people are not a culture group. They are a race. And if we thought that the liberal principles of universality and so on were worth defending, then we should be reluctant to go against them in reaction to political trends that we don't like. I agree, and I mean, I've said it in, you know, throughout my career, that the affirmative action regime was problematic. It was problematic even for those for whom it was said to be beneficial. But it was certainly problematic for people who were displaced, placed, and discriminated against on behalf of its objectives. I agree with that. That's true. Independently of the fact that whites were hurt at the expense of blacks, I think that it's possible to make the arguments without essentializing the race of the.

[Freddie]

People who are involved, to which I'm predicting here. He might say, I wish it did not have to be racial, Glenn. He didn't want it to be racial. The other side made it racial. They are mass importing migrants from cultures that are not friendly to us and don't share our values in order to get a political advantage and usher in a permanent democratic presidency. And, you know, only a racial response will suffice.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

And I would reject that. And I would say that the Institutions are supple and malleable enough to manage the problems of immigration or urban governance or economic inequality without reverting to crude racial rhetoric. I would say two wrongs don't add up to a right here. I would say if you are worried about who's coming into the country, let's vet who's coming into the country not based on the color of their skin, but based on whether or not they know the English language, they understand the U.S. constitution, they affirm the principles of a liberal democratic order. I'm not objecting to being discriminating with respect to how it is that we govern ourselves and emphasizing dimensions of social value that we regard to be credible. I'm objecting to racially essentializing that project. There are white people, by the way, white, quote, unquote, people who have despicable values and who are not helpful to the project that we hope to promote here in the United States. And we're generally in the west as well. Their whiteness doesn't inoculate them against the habits of mind and the social practices that you might abhor.

[Freddie]

You mentioned there that the institutions are strong enough. Do you think they are? It feels now more than. I don't know. You might even say any time in your lifetime that those institutions, the checks and balances, the independence of the judiciary, the strength of the good quality media, et cetera, are weaker than they need to be in order to uphold the order we've all been used to for so long. I mean, do you worry about that? That somehow we're cracking up as a system of government?

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

We're under strain, that's for sure. Yes, I do worry about it. When the executive starts to tell the judiciary you want your orders enforced, you enforce them. I'm not doing it. Go to hell. I'll be worried when administrative discretion of legal prosecution starts to be used in a way that is vengeful and politically partisan. I will be worried. Which is to say I am worried when state authorities and federal authorities can't get on the same page about the enforcement of federal law in the local jurisdictions and work in opposition to each other. I'll be worried. And I am worried when resistance to a policy takes the form of a violent or nearly violent protest and the protests take the form of obstruction and so on, and attacks on law enforcement personnel and so on, I'll be worried. And I am worried. We're under strain, that's for sure, but we're the best bet we've got going. We've got here in The United States, 250 years of experience with a constitutional order, order that, all things considered, have weathered the storm, including civil war and eradication of slavery as a practice in the country, and so on, the civil rights movement, which I've mentioned, and so on. So I think we're the best bet, these institutions for the management of these kind of problems going in world history. I'm worried, but I'm not in despair, and I'm certainly not at the point of giving up on them.

[Freddie]

And in your heart of hearts, do you think that in, let's say, 10 years from now, we will be looking back on this period as turbulent period that we got through and the system held up and some kind of more healthy democracy came out of it? Or do you think in 10 years time things will be more fraught, tensions will be harder, and there'll be no end in sight? I mean, what. You can't predict the future, of course, but I'm just wondering emotionally where you think this might play out.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Well, the reason that I elected to use my platform at Unher to write, as I have written about Elon Musk's tweets, is because I can't say with confidence that 10 years from now everything's going to be okay. I'm really worried about where the country is going, and in my own small little way, I'm trying to, you know, sound an alarm and hope to rally again with modesty. Some more positive responses.

[Freddie]

Professor Glenn Larry, thank you for your time today.

[Professor Glenn Lowry]

Thank you very much, Freddie.

[Freddie]

That was Glenn Lowry, professor at Brown University, formerly of Harvard. And as I said at the start, this is someone who, despite being the first tenured black professor at Harvard back in the 80s, has never in his long career lent into race as a way of seeing the world. He has always downplayed it. He's interested in merit, in systems of government that provide the greatest affluence and flourishing for the most people. He's a genuine intellectual with a sanity that is very hard to dismiss. And so to have him apparently so worried about what he's seeing on the American right. The American right, by the way, which he is usually associated with, should, I think, give us all pause. Thanks to Glenn and thanks to you, this was unheard.

[Raj]

Hey, it's Raj and Noah.

[Noah]

And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.

[Raj]

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[Noah]

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[Raj]

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[Noah]

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[Raj]

And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're we're going to be right here to help you do them better.

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