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.

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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.

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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.

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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/

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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.

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The first few months of the Trump administration have proven not just how willing much of America was to embrace and celebrate fascism, but how crucial careful, clear-eye, and thoughtful reporting and analysis are to building and sustaining a resistance movement.

Few publications have been as essential in this moment as Liberal Currents, which has consistently brought deep understanding, a sense of urgency, and a commitment to the necessary practical steps of defending liberal institutions and values.

That's why I'm delighted to have on today the founder and editor-in-chief of Liberal Currents, Adam Gurri. We talk about the intellectual environment, the virtues of being well-informed while not overwhelmed, and what political sciences has to say about whether Trump can succeed in his quest to become a dictator.

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As we've talked about a fair amount on the show, gender is at the center of the ideological clashes defining our political moment. Trumpism is, at its heart, a misogynistic movement, and the fractious coalition of philosophies within the Trumpist tent all agree that increased freedom and opportunities for women have been very upsetting for right-wing men.

My guest today brings gender into dialogue with the structure of the economy has it has manifested in the developed world. And, in doing so, she offers an intriguing challenge to libertarian and radical liberal economic priors. It's one worth engaging with and thinking through.

Alysia Ames is a CPA who has spent her career as an accountant in and around government. She lives in Iowa with her husband and two daughters. Her writing can be found on her newsletter, Accounting for Taste. See the link in the show notes. You can also find her on Bluesky as @fakegreekgrill.

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Many very rich men who support Trump fancy themselves heroes from the novels of Ayn Rand. I've never done an episode of this show on Rand's ideas, because I'm not a Randian, and don't think about political questions through anything like an Objectivist perspective. But the fact that so many men breaking the country believe they are Randian archetypes makes her ideas now, I think, worth talking about. Particularly because, as my guest argues, Rand would hate these guys.

Paul Crider is an associate editor at Liberal Currents and an admirer of Rand. But he comes at from an interesting perspective, being on the whole pretty progressive, and decidedly not an Objectivist libertarian. He recently published an essay at The Bulwark about how Elon Musk, far from being a Randian heroes, is in fact a representative of her villains.

Paul and I discuss Rand's ideas and their influence, and then walk through how men like Musk are just the sort of people she loathed.

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I wanted to try to do a hopeful episode. The world look pretty grim right now, and many of us feel discouraged. The unlawful and authoritarian actions of the Trump administration keep coming at a relentless pace, and it can be difficult to see any reasons for optimism. It can also be lonely. Someone mentioned to me recently that, in times as dark as these, we need friends, but we also need comrades. We need people who share a common purpose in defending liberalism and who are working, alongside us, to fight back against those who threaten it.

Which is why I'm so happy today to welcome my friend—and, in the sense above, comrade—Carolyn Fiddler to the show. She’s Director of Communications at the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and an expert in state politics. We talk about what attorneys general are doing to challenge the worst of Trump's policies, and how they've already found some success. And we look ahead to future challenges and the tactics the legal system offers to protect liberal institutions from the forces of the populist right.

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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.

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