John Podhoretz Isn't Worried About American Democracy
John Podhoretz joins the podcast to talk about why he thinks American democracy is safe, how the political reordering has driven some of his former colleagues to the Right and the Left, and much more.
John Podhoretz is always a great interview. And he has seen a lot over the years. What follows is a lightly edited transcript from part of our discussion that focused on how Podhoretz’s former colleagues have gone in radically different directions:
Matt: I was going to ask you about Bill Kristol, who is the co-founder with you of The Weekly Standard. It’s interesting how people who were very simpatico at one point–have gone in different directions. Like Sohrab Ahmari and Jennifer Rubin, who both wrote for you at Commentary. What do you make of where they've gone and how things have been reordered or scattered?
John: These are friends and old colleagues of mine, and I don't feel comfortable criticizing them, because, you know, I maintain friendly relations, and I've known to many people who allowed political disagreements to get in the way of their friendships go down that road. But I do think that it is indicative of the destabilized nature of our politics and of the conservative movement, in general, that you see all of this fracturing. You have Jen Rubin going sort of full hog, almost like a Democratic political consultant in a Washington Post column. You have Sohrab, basically, moving from being a defender of classical liberalism to basically finding moral and religious reasons [to believe] that the project of the Enlightenment was itself an evil. And then you have Bill [Kristol, who], I think was hoping that the Republican Party would come to its senses politically and pursue a—you know, not pursue a sort of Trumpian future—and as the future became more Trumpian, he basically threw his lot in with the other side essentially becoming a you know, if his dad was sort of like the first neoconservative, he was the first neoliberal (not in the sense of somebody who supports globalization, but essentially saying that this project on the Right…is now corrupted beyond repair, and I’ve got to join the other team to see that it's destroyed). I don't hold with any of their approaches, and don't believe in supporting politicians and political causes and ideas [solely] because I hate the fact that people on my side no longer say a lot of things that I like.
Matt: Yeah, that's pretty much where I am, John. What's the line from the movie Office Space? You know, where the character named Michael Bolton gets asked, “Why don't you change your name?” And he's like, “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks!” Why should I quit being a conservative? Let me ask you, so your dad, was recently quoted in The Wall Street Journal saying that the difference between the right and the left is that the right is pro-American, and the left is anti-American, and that's kind of all you need to know. I'm paraphrasing. What do you make of that?
John: I think there's something to it, but I don't think that Donald Trump is particularly pro-American. I think he's pro the America that serves him or elected him and that he has become a “delegitimizer” of the American Republic, and therefore, I don't see that as a pro-American stance, at all. Though, I do believe that the embrace of the radical agenda of Black Lives Matter and all kinds of ideas that sprung there from in the summer of 2020, does mark the Democratic Party as having moved once again into kind of a philosophically anti-American stance. Trump's support for America is conditional, based on whether it is what he wants it to be at at any given moment. [While progressives are] not that interested in supporting America, period.
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