Brian Lehrer Weekend: A Defense of Liberalism; Health Insurance Changes; Tracking Your Kids

Brian Lehrer (0:00)

Hi, Brian Lehrer here. Up next, Brian Lehrer Weekend. Three of our favorite segments from the week packaged together for you to listen to on the weekend. So enjoy, and I'll see you back on the radio Monday at 10 a.m. on WNYC and wnyc.org.

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now, Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS.

Washington Post columnist and the author of several books, most recently, Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash, from 1600 to the present. He was on the show for a book interview when that came out two years ago. And his classic from 2003, that may have turned out to be more prescient than maybe he even imagined, 2003 book, The Future of Freedom, Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. Now, Fareed has some thoughts about the blue wave election in the big picture context of what it might mean for liberal democracy itself, as well as security at home and abroad. He'll also be in a debate about American liberalism at the 92nd Street Y on Thursday night. We'll give you details about that. Fareed, it's always great to have you on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Fareed Zakaria (1:32)

Thank you so much, Brian. It's always a pleasure to be with you.

Brian Lehrer (1:35)

First, in the context of your book, Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash, from 1600 to the present, it could be called from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the present, how do you see this 10-year period of Trumpism and the big arc of Western history?

Fareed Zakaria (1:56)

I think if you look at periods of rapid technological, economic and cultural change, you always see a backlash. That's what I, you know, I started the book in the 16th century because I was stunned to see the Dutch, who were really the first ones to have true technological and economic breakout dynamism, very quickly had a party that said, let's bring the things back to the way they were. Let's, let me take you back to the old days. Let me take you, let's make the Netherlands great again. And right up to now, we've been through probably 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall of the most rapid change you could imagine, right? Think about the massive expansion of globalization with, you know, two, three billion people joining the global economy.

Think about the information revolution completely upending the old economy. And think about the cultural changes, the rise of women, the rise of minorities. So you put all that together and you, at least historically, you know, you were bound to get some kind of a backlash. I think what remains unclear is given that the backlash had this very unusual leader in the United States, that is Donald Trump, is this the, you know, is the midterm elections a repudiation of that new right-wing populism, the backlash itself, the MAGA ideology? Or is it a repudiation of Donald Trump? I think it's a bit of both, but I think it's fair to say that Trump being such an unusual personality, so much, you know, just crazy stuff, the ballroom, the gilded, you know, bathrooms, the quasi-authoritarian tendencies, the corruption, the truly idiosyncratic foreign policy, you know, I just want to invade Iran almost on a whim.

You know, we can tell that this was a kind of repudiation of that. Is it a broader repudiation of the forces that led to MAGA?

I don't think so. I think that this struggle between liberalism and its opponents will continue for a while, not just in the United States, but in most of the Western world.

Brian Lehrer (4:26)

Well, why do you think it's not a backlash against the backlash in a larger sense against MAGA? Because when I look at the second Trump term compared even to the first Trump term, it's harder against diversity, it's harder against freedom of the press, it's harder against peaceful undocumented immigrants, it's way more open to corruption, it's harder in terms of American imperialism. Weren't people reacting to the overreach in those respects?

Fareed Zakaria (4:57)

Yes, absolutely. This was a more pure MAGA agenda, and clearly there were parts of it that were very unpopular.

The border, to be clear, closing the border was very popular. The raids, the ICE raids, the excesses, particularly on people who had been in this country for a long time, were, it was very unpopular. So it's a little bit of a mixed bag on immigration. Much of what the kind of opposition was, if you think about it in issue terms, was about affordability and inflation. That doesn't cut one way or the other, really. It's not really a MAGA issue.