You can think of this episode as kind of a soft reboot of ReImagining Liberty. Or a back-to-basics. This is a show about politics, but it's a politics grounded in a particular set of values and a particular perspective, and with the political and policy specifics downstream of those. Ever since the election, I've spent a lot of time on those specifics, as well as on the policy details of what the forces of illiberalism are up to. And that's important. But I want to bring the show back, at least a bit more, to those values and that perspective. What is it about the kind of radical liberalism motivating this show that sets it apart? What are those values? What is that perspective?

So today's episode is the start a series of conversations on just that. And it's framed around change. I've brought back my very first guest, and my dear friend, Cory Massimino. He has been, it is fair to say, one of the biggest influences the evolution of my intellectual and moral approach to politics over the last ten years. We talk about how our views have shifted, what it means to be a radical liberal, and what sets the kind of radical liberalism at the heart of ReImagining Liberty apart from the right-leaning libertarianism many are familiar with.

Cory is an independent scholar and a Fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society, where he hosts the podcasts Mutual Exchange Radio and The Long Library.

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Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Today's episode gets a bit meta. I've done something like ninety ReImagining Liberty shows, and hundreds more on other podcasts, but I've never done one on the place of podcasting itself in the political environment. This even though podcasting has been one of the big themes of politics lately, in many ways blamed for the rise, or at least persistence, of the ideologies that have reshaped our political culture and institutions.

I'm delighted to bring on Landry Ayres for that. You probably recognize his name, especially if you're a long-time ReImagining Liberty listener, and especially if you listen all the way through to the end credits. Landry has been my producer for the better part of a decade, going all the way back to Free Thoughts, the show I hosted for eight years before this one. He is also Creative Director at the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism and Managing Editor and Senior Producer at The UnPopulist.

Get early access to ReImagining Liberty, listen ad-free, and get access to our listener Discord community, by joining my Patreon. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

We sometimes talk about technology on ReImagining Liberty, in the context of how it interacts with a liberal society, or how technology can help us defend and advance liberal. The big technology everyone's talking about right now is, of course, artificial intelligence. It's a topic I've written about, but not one I'd yet done an episode about specifically regarding what it means for liberalism.

Then I read an essay by Ted Underwood, a professor in the School of Information Sciences, and in the English Department, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It's titled "A more interesting upside of AI" and you can find a link to it in the show notes. He argues that the framing of AI technology as aiming at "super-intelligence" is misguided, both undesirable and misunderstanding important aspects of society and culture. Instead, he's an advocate of viewing AI as a cultural technology. What grabbed my attention was his further claim that, as a cultural technology, it can help us map and appreciate cultural differences, and cultural similarities, in ways that line up with, and support, liberal principles like pluralism, tolerance, and understanding.

It's a big claim, and a fascinating one, and it lead to really fun and illuminating discussion.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

It's difficult to be optimistic about liberalism's future. Certainly in the short to medium term. We're in an acute period of democratic backsliding and authoritarian ascendency. The opposition party, or at least its leadership, has been largely supine in response. A backlash is rising, but it's an open question whether it'll be enough, and soon enough, to make a difference.

But it's also not a time to give up all hope. There is a backlash. The current regime is deeply unpopular. And a ton of Americans—and people around the world watching what's happening to America—are rediscovering the value of liberal principles and values.

My returning guest today is Andy Craig, a Fellow in Liberalism at the Institute for Humane Studies. We discuss the blitzkrieg of lawlessness in the first six months of this new Trump administration and why so many Democratic lawmakers have failed to respond to it with seriousness and urgency. But we also talk about the way forward, and how liberalism—true and radical liberalism—can chart that course.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Liberals, particularly classical liberals and libertarians, have too narrow a view of power. They focus on government force, or the threat of government force, and ignore all the other ways power is exercised in society. And the way classical liberals and libertarians imagine the fully autonomous self is at odds with our deep cultural embeddedness and the social construction of our identities, our ways of seeing, and the concepts through which we come to understand ourselves and the world.

That's the argument my guest sets out in his new book, which asks classical liberals and libertarians to take seriously the analysis of power, knowledge, and identify set out by the French theorist Michel Foucault. And, as Mark Pennington further argues in Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom, taking Foucault seriously strengthens the foundations of liberalism and makes it better able to respond to illiberal critiques.

Pennington is Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy, King's College, University of London, and is Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society.

We discuss Foucault's ideas, and introduce them for listeners who know nothing about his theories. And we show how they can point to liberal conclusions, including individual rights and a free market economy. Mark's book is the book I've been wanting someone to write a long time, and it not only doesn't disappoint but is, I think, one of the most import books in the liberal tradition in decades.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

What's happened to Twitter, or now X, is the clearest example of why it's actually not great that so much of our digital communication is controlled by just a few firms and, through them, the whims of guys like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. These single points of control not only mean a product we love today can be unlovable, or just gone, tomorrow, but also give more dangerous actors, like governments, avenues to use that centralization against us.

The alternative is to revive what the internet once was: a decentralized and much more open place. I think this is really important, not just because it makes our digital communication less subject to arbitrary will, but also because it enables us to carve out communities for ourselves.

My guest today wrote what is probably the most important essay about this need for decentralization, called "Protocols, Not Platforms," which inspired some of the most exciting current developments, including Bluesky. Mike Masnick is an expert in technology and technology policy and the editor of the indispensable blog, Techdirt. He's also on the board of directors of Bluesky.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

The government's power to see is its power to oppress. The more the state knows about us, the more levers it has to control us. Understanding that connection, its history and its application, is critical if we are to secure our liberties in the face of authoritarian threats, such as the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the federal government in Los Angeles.

I'd scheduled this episode—with returning guest Patrick Eddington about his new book The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and Political Repression from McKinley to Eisenhower—before ICE set off protests in LA. But what's happening there highlights the need for conversations like the one that follows, because the tools we give the state to protect us are the tools a rogue administration can use to destroy our freedoms.

Patrick Eddington is a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. He was formerly a CIA analyst, but left the Agency in 1996 after he and his wife Robin, also at the CIA, became whistleblowers, publicly accusing the CIA of hiding evidence that American troops were exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons during the Gulf War.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Equality is central to the liberal project. Thomas Jefferson failed, dramatically and unforgivably, to live up to this ideal, but he stated in correctly when, in a letter, he wrote that "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately." Liberalism views us as equals, and demands the law treat us as such.

The illiberal project, then, is the denial of this equality. And the failure to notice inequalities, or to view the inequalities afflicting some as less worthy of concern than the inequalities afflicting others, is how nominal liberals can slide into illiberal politics without realizing it.

My guest today has spent his career reminding liberals of their blind spots, and calling for the principles of a liberal society to be applied consistently, leaving no marginalized groups marginalized.

Jonathan Blanks is a writer and editor who has spent the bulk of his career focusing on constitutional law, civil liberties, due process, and criminal legal issues. After more than 12 years at the Cato Institute, Blanks has spent the past few years writing about American culture and the effects of police policy.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

The Trumpist right has a very clear picture of what they imagine masculinity to be, and are quite upset that it's not a picture all men find all that appealing. It's one of violence, belligerence, and professions of heavy labor. Anything else, including the whole of the knowledge economy that has made the developed world rich, is inauthentically masculine, the result of corrupting feminization.

As someone who earns his living communicating ideas, and is pretty happy doing so, I find their argument unpersuasive. So too, I find the politics of reaction, exclusion, and domination that accompany that argument quite a bit less desirable than a free and open and liberal society.

That's what my guest and I discuss today. Toby Buckle is the host of the Political Philosophy Podcast, an excellent show that explores the intersection of politics and ideas. We talk about what men want, whether the story the right tells has any grounding in reality, the fundamentally adolescent nature of far-right masculinity, and how liberals can better pitch finding meaning in a liberal world.

Toby's article about what men want: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/most-men-dont-want-to-be-heroes-and-thats-okay/

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

The authoritarian right loves to talk about how they're upholding democracy. Trump didn't lose the 2020 election, because if he had, democracy would've been against him. So instead it was stolen from him, his loss a subversion of the democratic process. Now, as a deeply unpopular second-term president, he and his loyalists pretend they are executing the will of the people, instead of horrifying most Americans while circumventing the people's elected legislature.

My guest today has written a terrific book, The Reactionary Spirit, about this odd contradiction in contemporary autocratic rhetoric: On the one hand, far-right anti-democratic regimes speak in the language of democracy and popular will. On the other, they are, well, anti-democratic regimes. Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad, right-wing populism, and the world of ideas.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.