General Summary: Professor Michael Lee discusses a chapter from his book We Are Not One People, co-authored by Professor Robert Atchison, entitled “Secession All the Way Down.” Professor Lee explores the relationship between libertarians and their relationship to America’s tradition of secession. A team of undergraduates explore this relationship and reflect on Professor Lee's findings.

Detailed Summary: Lee’s interest in conservative politics and educational background (0:00-2:00); Lee explains the basic argument of Libertarians as well as a brief overview of their history of secession (2:00-6:25); Lee dissects the effect John C. Calhoun had on libertarian ideology as well as their interpretation of his arguments (6:25-9:13); Lee explains the specifics of the libertarian ideology in reference to secession and clarifies seeming contradictions found within (9:13-14:51); Lee translates what secession would look like and provides insight into where libertarian ideology draws a line (14:51-16:17); Lee reflects on the difference between libertarians and the Libertarian Party (16:17-19:06); Lee provides an in-depth analysis of the libertarian ideology and its relationship with race and racism (19:06-28:49); The hosts and Lee make their concluding statements and reflect on the interview (28:49-29:40).

Scholarly Article Informing this Production: Atchison, Robert, and Michael Lee. “Secession All The Way Down.” We Are Not One People, 2022, pp. 47-74.

Credits: This podcast was produced by Mark Longaker, with resources and assistance provided by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. It features the voices of Gregory Flores, Andrew Valdez, and Michael Lee. The music featured in this podcast, titled “commonGround,” was created by airtone and has been repurposed here under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license 3.0. Additionally, conversation.wav to an external site. was adapted and incorporated under Creative Commons 1.0 license.