Left Anchor

With New Hampshire coming up, we've unlocked our episode on the Bernie-Warren competition.

Bit of a different episode today: Ryan reads a very long 1997 essay about the Second World War by the late Lee Sandlin called "Losing the War" (with permission from Nina Sandlin). Though it takes three hours to finish, it's a remarkable piece about the way the nature of the war was obscured from public view, why wars happen, and what we should remember about it today. Enjoy!

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Today we've got UC Davis Professor of History Eric Rauchway on to talk the history of the New Deal, particularly the transition period in the winter of 1932-33 covered in his book Winter War. We take apart the common false belief, held by both Republicans and Democrats (including Barack Obama) that FDR deliberately refused to help Herbert Hoover fix the Great Depression so he could get the New Deal passed, when in fact it was Hoover who refused to help in an effort to get Roosevelt to abandon all his campaign promises. We then take down the liberal idea expressed by Jonathan Chait and Jonathan Alter that FDR was really a secret moderate, and talk about how ideological the 1932 campaign really was. Enjoy! Rauchway's other book The Money Makers can be found here, and his essay in The Presidency of Barack Obama can be found here.

Today we've got two professional union organizers on to talk about the state of labor organizing in 2019 -- the tactics of the union busters, the hostility of the Trump administration, and the brushfire labor militancy that has sprung up across the country. Read more about Google's union-busting tactics here, and find the essay about progressive union-busters here.

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We've got Professor Nicole Fabricant from Towson University to discuss what's going on in Bolivia. We talk about Evo Morales' flawed but decent record, the source of right-wing authoritarian sentiment, and the military coup that displaced him. Enjoy! Her book Mobilizing Bolivia's Displaced can be found here.

Today we've got Ezra Levin, co-author of the book We Are Indivisible (along with his wife Leah Greenberg) to talk about how he fell, by his own account, ass-backwards into leading a national political movement. We discuss the nature of political organizing in the online age, what objectives Indivisible is focusing on, and what lessons others might learn from them. Enjoy!

We have on Nicholas Buccola to talk about his book The Fire Is Upon Us, which is a history of the famous debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley. We discuss why Baldwin whipped Buckley so handily, how Buckley's rhetoric of racial resentment and anti-democratic views continue to hold sway on the right, and more! You can watch the debate here, and find Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation that was mentioned here.

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We've got Professor Matt Karp of Princeton on to discuss his new Catalyst article on "The Mass Politics of Antislavery," his first preview of a new book on the history of the 1850s that is in progress. Then we turn to the debate about Bernie, Warren, and the upper-middle class, starting with another article: "A Socialist Party in Our Time?" by Abbott and Guastella. Check out his book This Vast Southern Empire here.

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Today we've got Heidi Sloan, a DSA member who is running for Congress in Texas' 25th district. We chat about what got her into politics, what it's like running as a DSA member, what is most important to her about politics, what attracted her to the People's Policy Project's Family Fun Pack, and more. (PPP has also endorsed her candidacy.) Enjoy!

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Today we've got Professor Harvey Kaye on to discuss his upcoming book Take Hold of Our History: Make America Radical Again. We discuss how many of the grim realities of American reality and history are totally at odds with our founding values and aspirations -- but also how on many occasions Americans have made serious efforts to live up to them, and changed this country for the better. Enjoy!

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Today we've got Professor Jedediah Purdy on to discuss his new book This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth. We talk about how he distinguishes a socialist society from a commonwealth, the advanced case of political rot in the United States, what is to be done about climate change, and more. Enjoy!

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Here's a little excerpt from a story by Ryan's father about running the Little Colorado during a flood. Find the whole thing here!

If a Democrat wins the White House next year, they will almost certainly not have 60 votes in the Senate, or perhaps even a majority. New bold legislation like a Green New Deal will face a near-impossible uphill struggle. But hang on -- it turns out there are gigantic reams of statutory authority just waiting to be picked up. We've got David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, on to talk about his fresh magazine issue laying out just some of these tools. The Prospect has Marcia Brown on how the next president can unilaterally cancel almost all student debt, Graham Steele on how they could put chains on Wall Street, Gabrielle Gurley on how they could decriminalize pot, Sandeep Vaheesan on how they could turn an antitrust blowtorch on corporate oligopolies, and much more! Without exaggeration, what the next president will do with his or her statutory authority is probably the single most important issue in the 2020 primary. A sizable presidency's worth of accomplishments is theoretically possible just by enforcing existing laws. We (and the candidates) should pay close attention!

In this excerpt we discuss how Republican electoral cheating reveals their lack of power in an Arendtian sense. Subscribe now to hear the full episode!

Today we've got on Liza Featherstone to chat about her article on the families of 2020 candidates. From there we move onto a broader discussion of the merits of Bernie vs. Warren, how FDR became a class traitor, whether Lincoln was any good, and more! Also links to her books: Divining Desire and Selling Women Short.

We've got writer David Klion on to discuss the freshly updated magazine Jewish Currents, Center for American Progress chief Neera Tanden's decision to bust the ThinkProgress union, the prospects for imperial rollback after 2020, how far the new Koch- and Soros-funded Quincy Institute should be trusted, and the evolution of Bernie Sanders' foreign policy thinking. Here are his Nation articles: on Matt Duss, lefty foreign policy, and the Quincy Institute.

We bring on Dr. Jamaal Green -- otherwise known as the Surly Urbanist -- to talk about the ongoing debate about the role of slavery in early capitalism. Was it necessary to get capitalist development started, or did it actually slow down economic growth? Moreover, why is this an important question, and what does the gruesome history of slavery tell us about the nature of capitalist institutions? Tune in to find out!

Listen to Ryan's petty rant about how Bret Stephens has the easiest job on the planet, but can't even enjoy it. Subscribe here to hear the full episode!

We've got a gen-u-ine lefty preacher, Rev. John Thornton Jr., on the podcast to talk about what it's like participating in organized leftist Christianity in 2019. We discuss "The Class Struggle and Christian Love," by Herbert McCabe, plus two of John's articles on the failure of "compassionate conservatism" and why there has so far been no appearance of a serious religious left.

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Today former press secretary for Hillary Clinton and spokesman for Chuck Schumer Brian Fallon jumps into the Left Anchor lion's den to advocate for his proposal for all 2020 Dem candidates to promise the following: "[no] more corporate lawyers on the federal bench during the next Democratic administration." We discuss the plague of corporate lawyer logrolling, how Brian came to believe in the need for stark reform to the Democratic Party (including breaking up its comfortable consultant monopoly), and the need for drastic restructuring of the U.S. courts to defend any possible progressive agenda, should Dems win full power in 2020. We and Brian obviously do not see eye to eye on everything, but it was still a productive conversation.

Something is happening in the Texas legislature's Republican delegation ... but what it is ain't exactly clear. We bring on Chris Hooks to talk about his Texas Monthly article explaining how the state's GOP Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen punched himself directly in the dick through the medium of a loony right-wing crank, and how that bodes for the political future of Texas.

Adam Gaffney is the president of Physicians for a National Health Program and a doctor at the Harvard Medical School. He talks to us about the prospects for Medicare for All, whether moderate Democrats are serious about reform, and the best way to cut down America's ludicrously high health care costs.

Svalbard is a huge island about halfway between the north coast of Norway and the North Pole, which has the unusual characteristic of being accessible to anyone in the world without a visa (with some exceptions). Atossa Araxia Abrahamian joins us to talk about her trip there for an article in The Nation, as well as her book The Cosmopolites. The article in The Intercept about the late Jimmy Aldaoud can be found here.

Harris County (home of Houston, Texas) recently entered into a consent decree to overhaul the cash bail process in its courts -- which among other things makes it much harder to lock up poor people for minor offenses. Famed Judge of the Harris County Criminal Court No. 8 Franklin Bynum joins us for the second time, together with his friend, adviser, and fellow organizer Bryan LaVergne, to tell us what it all means and what being a judge is like after 6 months on the bench. Watch Franklin give a speech advocating for the consent degree here.

In this excerpt, we've got Professor Rob Larson on the podcast to talk about his new book Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom. Subscribe now to hear all bonus episodes!

This time we have some actual breaking news on the podcast! After discussing the Pelosi/Squad dispute (TNR article here) and the Mueller testimony today (NR article here), we turn to Senator Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) speech at the National Conservative Conference a few days ago. We discuss the deeply anti-Semitic overtones of singling out 3 Jewish academics (out of 4 mentioned) to blame for "cosmopolitan elites" who despise patriotism, have no national roots or identity, and sell out the working class to international business. But then we actually looked up the quotes of the academics he mentioned, and discovered that he had wildly mischaracterized all but one of them. Indeed, one said basically the opposite of what Hawley accused him of. The discussion of Hawley's deception starts at 40:15, but we'll also include the details below the fold. You can listen to our previous episode about patriotism here.----more---- In his speech, Hawley said the following: According to the cosmopolitan consensus, globalization is a moral imperative. That’s because our elites distrust patriotism and dislike the common culture left to us by our forbearers. The nation’s leading academics will gladly say this for the record. MIT Professor Emeritus Leo Marx has said that the “planet would be a better place to live if more people gave [their] primary allegiance ‘to the community of human beings in the entire world.’” NYU’s Richard Sennett has denounced what he called “the evil of shared national identity.” The late Lloyd Rudolph of the University of Chicago said patriotism “excludes difference and speaks the language of hate and violence.” And then there’s Martha Nussbaum, who wrote that it is wrong and morally dangerous to teach students that they are “above all, citizens of the United States.” Instead, they should be educated for “world citizenship.” You get the idea. The cosmopolitan elite look down on the common affections that once bound this nation together: things like place and national feeling and religious faith. In reality, Sennett was the only one whose writing actually fully fits this description (in a 1994 New York Times op-ed). Here's more context from the Nussbaum quote (in a 1994 Boston Review article): As students here grow up, is it sufficient for them to learn that they are above all citizens of the United States, but that they ought to respect the basic human rights of citizens of India, Bolivia, Nigeria, and Norway? Or should they—as I think—in addition to giving special attention to the history and current situation of their own nation, learn a good deal more than is frequently the case about the rest of the world in which they live, about India and Bolivia and Nigeria and Norway and their histories, problems, and comparative successes? [...] Once again, that does not mean that one may not permissibly give one’s own sphere a special degree of concern. Politics, like child care, will be poorly done if each thinks herself equally responsible for all, rather than giving the immediate surroundings special attention and care. Nussbaum is against nationalism and patriotism in general, but not to the sneering extent that Hawley says, and indeed allows that people can take special care for their own surroundings and communities. Nowhere does she disparage place or religious faith as such. Leo Marx's quote comes from a roundtable response to Nussbaum's article. The quote above comes from the introduction -- but the entire remainder of his piece is dedicated to questioning the quote's premise: It is one thing to establish the rational and moral superiority of cosmopolitanism, but quite another to get it adopted. If most people really chose their beliefs according to those criteria, nationalism would have disappeared long ago. Professor Nussbaum's case for cosmopolitanism would be a lot stronger if she acknowledged, and somehow dealt with, the deep non- or extra- or ir-rational roots of its triumphant rival, nationalism. As a result of the history of the two concepts of over some three millenia, cosmopolitanism has been -- still is -- associated with urban sophistication, learning, privilege, high status, and a quasi-aristocratic intellectuality and aestheticism; on the other hand, nationalism has been -- still is -- identified with the relatively straightforward, passionate, anti-elitist programs of land-oriented, populist mass movements. When we consider the roles the two actually have played in cultural history, choosing between them becomes a far more intractable problem than Professor Nussbaum suggests. It is bound to generate a deep, discomfitting ambivalence in left-wing intellectuals. He then goes on to defend the better side of American identity in particular: Her neglect of historical particularities also mars Professor Nussbaum's views of the American case. She seems to regard American nationhood as indistinguishable from other routine embodiments of nationalism. But the originating concept of the American repu

For the free episode this week, we are UNLOCKING a bonus episode from back in April on Ilhan Omar and Patriotism. We are doing this for unfortunately timely reasons, in light of Trump's bigoted, xenophobic attacks that then were amplified by a chanting crowd at his rally soon thereafter. In this discussion from the bonus episode archives, we discuss the ongoing conservative hate campaign against Ilhan Omar, and then turn to the question of patriotism -- is there anything worth salvaging in the concept? Starting with this brilliant lecture "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" from Alasdair MacIntyre, we bring in Kant, Rawls, Charles Mills, and Kurt Vonnegut.

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This time we've got Jeff Spross filling in as guest host to chat with Chris Arnade, author of Dignity, a Studs Terkel-style ethnography of American poverty. We talk about what inspired him to leave Wall Street and start writing about poverty, the varied characteristics of broke Americans, and the real problem with the top 20 percent (hint: it's not their incomes, but their politics). The interview went long, so we'll be breaking it into two episodes. Stay tuned for part II tomorrow! Note: Ryan makes an error in discussing the top 20 percent. The bottom half of this group did not experience an absolute income decline from 1980-2014, but rather growth slower than the national average.

Subscribe here to hear the full episode, and you can find Tomorrow without Fear here.

This time we've got David Sessions on to talk about the extraordinarily weak tea contained in Adam Gopnik's new book A Thousand Small Sanities. Are liberals responsible for all the good things that have happened in the last 300 years, or is penny-ante moderation the appropriate response to all problems? Tune in to find out! (Read David's review of Gopnik here.)

Max Alvarez joins us again to talk about his experience navigating the treacherous waters of higher education this time. We discuss how he came to end up in graduate school, how the logic of markets has penetrated the university, and the political function thereof. Find some of his writing on this here, here, or here.

For once we've got a timely episode! Today we're talking with Carl Beijer, whose People's Policy Project paper on the international financing of climate change policy came out today. Tackling this problem is going to require an eye-watering quantity of international subsidies, and it's worth thinking about how that might happen.

Here we discuss a section of Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous essay on why America should support right-wing dictatorships. Subscribe now to hear the full episode!

This time we've got historian Greg Grandin on to talk about his new book The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, about the history of the American frontier, how it has functioned politically over the years, and how Trump is drawing on that legacy today. (Also listen for an interlude about whether it was appropriate for Bernie Sanders to oppose Reagan's death squad policy in Central America.)

In this excerpt we talk about some strengths and blind spots in Warren's foreign policy ideas. Subscribe here to hear the full episode!

We bring on Astra Taylor to talk about her twinned book and documentary on democracy (What Is Democracy and Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone). We discuss the theory and practice of self-government, how she developed her film and book, and what lessons she learned in the process.

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Did you know Vidal Sassoon was a committed anti-fascist who brawled with Oswald Mosley's followers after the Second World War? Today we learn that and more from Natasha Lennard, author of the recent essay collection Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life. We talk about the psychological and economic roots of fascism, the role of violence in defeating it, and how society might be changed to allow people to live better lives.

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Today we take a partial look at Bernie's policy platform -- his anti-usury bill, his agriculture policy, his ideas to desegregate education, Medicare for all, his plan to fix Puerto Rico, and more!

Subscribe now to hear this (and all previous) bonus episodes, plus a clean feed including all free ones as well!