EP 944 America was Born in Protest and Makes Progress in Dissent
In 2025, more Americans have taken to the streets to protest various issues that concern them about our nation’s politics than in the recent past. As a country that came about from rebellion against tyranny, it is an American birthright. Various forms of protest have given energy to civil rights, improved labor conditions, a cleaner environment and the ending of wars, like Vietnam. However, there are many who are not moved to participate in this great American tradition or may not think they are. Writing to a government official, signing a petition or not shopping at a particular business, as well as more demonstrative acts of holding a sign in public, constitute a form of protest. We learn a great deal about the various manifestations it takes in Gloria J. Browne-Marshall’s new book, “A Protest History of the United States.” She gives us eye-opening account of its centrality to the American experience then and now. Regular people using resistance, rebellion and activism represent the most effective way to change our world.
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Courses on Western Civilization were once a staple in schools. No longer. It’s been replaced by Global Civilization or Social Studies courses. Our guest, former Harvard Professor, James Hankins and his co-author, Professor Allen Guelzo, sought to change that so that the good resulting from the traditions of Western Civilization–its art, literature, law, philosophy, science, faith, and tolerance–are preserved and, thus, perpetuated. Professor Hankins authored volume I of ‘The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition” and Professor Guelzo will take this impressive work from the 1500’s to the modern day in Volume II. The epic scope of the project is meant to provide that which threads from ancient Greece, through the Roman Empire and Christendom and then to more modern civilizations, including our own. The second volume will provide context as to how our Founding Fathers tried to maintain the synthesis of reason and compassion, the twin exemplars of the tradition they unpack for us. Western Civilization’s great achievements predominate, but its failings are also a part of this scholarly work. Professor Hankins joins us today to discuss.
America built this thing we call the middle class. It was purposeful and forward-looking public policy in the 1930’s which recognized that the strength of our democracy required a vibrant sector that could aspire to a middle -class life of owning a home, putting your children through college and retiring comfortably. It resulted in a period our guest calls the ‘Great Compression’ (1947-1974) in which workers received a fair share of the nation’s economic prosperity. In this timeframe, there was an expectation of job security and stability, undergirded by strong labor unions. Much of that has changed over the last 50 years as wealth has gone to the top and left workers behind. Much of our political unrest today (affordability) is a byproduct of those changes. So, what happened? Our guest, University of Texas Law School professor, A. Mechele Dickerson, lays it out, chapter and verse, in her new book “The Middle- Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream.” It’s essential to any understanding of where we are today
How can we have too much free speech? And should everyone have access to large platforms to express increasingly outrageous and unbridled opinions? That was what I was asking in this conversation in the context of the infamous Tucker Carlson interview with avowed Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes. Why platform him and extend his audience four times beyond what he otherwise would have? And given that the emotional fragility of many in this moment might incite someone listening to act out in some manner? And while my guest, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, a clinical psychologist, and author of “Can I Say That” finds his remarks detestable, as well, she holds the view that free expression, when suppressed, leads to greater psychological problems in the process. It’s an interesting discussion. I paraphrase a lawyer who questioned Sen. Joseph McCarthy, during his Red Scare moment, in the 1950’s asking the question ‘have you no decency, sir.’ The lack of civility and restraint now occupies the speaker’s corner in America and in an era of social media the amplification of it is very loud and unsettling. And while the First Amendment is often cited as giving me the right to say anything I want, it refers specifically to the government’s inability to suppress that speech. Your employer can do it. Owners of professional teams can throw you out of the stadium for being obnoxious. Perhaps mom had the right idea. If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. Mr. President, are you listening?
Routines, purpose and morning rituals can be key determinants as to whether older Americans’ lifespan will be one in which their health allows them to remain active and engaged. And Dwayne Clark, co-author of “The Miracle Morning After 50: A Proven Path to Joy, Vitality and Purpose for Aging Adults,” provides evidence of that in this podcast. He, along with co-author Hal Elrod, have seen close up two kinds of aging–those who live with purpose and those who quietly fade. Once you begin to hear his approach to increasing your health span, it will become evident that Clark has thought long and hard about the practices that work and can communicate them very effectively. Among the methods: joint-friendly exercise, sleep-awareness, purpose-driven visualization, and journaling, all of which prompt our ability to refocus and recharge. He will have you rethinking your approach to meeting the day in this inspiring podcast.
Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for President in 1964, was in no way a virulent racist, like others in his era, including Bull Connor, George Wallace or Strom Thurmond. But he reached a higher plateau in American politics and his views on ‘freedom’ were in direct contrast with those of Martin Luther King, Jr., who felt that until human and economic rights were secured for all, it did not exist in full form in America. Goldwater felt that freedom was in trouble because the federal government was usurping states’ rights and the rugged individualism, he espoused with his Western frontier approach to government. They embodied a modern clash of the civil rights movement and the conservative movement as they both gained momentum. Clearly, in the short run, Martin Luther King, Jr’s. vision won out in 1964 when the Civil Rights bill was passed and Goldwater lost in emphatic fashion to Lyndon Johnson, winning only five states. However, their differences have been embodied in our politics to this day.
Throughout history diplomats have played keys roles in settling disputes among nations by winning alliances, splintering enemy coalitions, and making peace with their bitterest foes. And, yet, in the post- Cold War period America has relied more upon the strength of its military, international covenants and economic muscle, as the world’s reserve currency, to impose its vast might on allies and adversaries alike. Our guest, A. Wess Mitchell, a Principal and Co-Founder of the Marathon Initiative and the author of the new book, “Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger,” thinks this approach will not work going forward because America does not have the capacity to vanquish all the threats on the battlefield, particularly with the fragility of our own domestic politics and heavy debt load. He makes a compelling argument as we circle the globe with him looking at America’s position in the world today.
Our guest took on a sweeping assignment in his new book “To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution.” But Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, and the author of this ambitious work came away convinced that there has been a steadier strategic theme throughout our history than he had earlier imagined. Whether in Democratic or Republican Administrations, America has been no shrinking violet when it comes to exercising our military capabilities. On balance, with the acknowledgement that we’ve made numerous mistakes, it’s been as a force of good in the world. And while superpowers throughout history have generally found other nations working to balance their powers and end up isolated in the world, America has had an uncanny ability to build international alliances. This has been a unique feature of the American approach. Will it continue under Donald Trump or will we shift from grand lofty principles, like human rights and the flowering of democracies, to a more self-promotional foreign policy? And where will that lead. That’s the subject of today’s podcast.
If you think about it virtually all major public policy issues involve the application of science. How do we deal with global warming? What limits can we put on the development of nuclear capability from a rogue nation that we are able to drag to a bargaining table? How do we get consensus on a strategy to blunt the next airborne virus which starts with human and animal contact continents away? Yet it would seem that the lens through which scientists look at problem solving and that of politicians is worlds apart. So how does scientific input affect the ultimate resolution of some of the world’s most vexing problems? Nobel Laureate, Dr. Peter Agre, attempts to answer that question in his new book, “Can Scientists Succeed where Politicians Fail?” It’s interesting when you consider how we must rely on scientists to help craft policies to ameliorate problems that resulted from their own acumen. The limiting of the potential of nuclear weapons may be the best example, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the nuclear bomb, realized early on.
It’s fair to say that I had no idea that a society which likes to lock all of our troubles away, was now releasing many youthful offenders into different types of therapeutic settings, which take various forms. This phenomenon has been going on for the last twenty years as one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped trying youth as adults, except in extreme cases. The number of children locked in cages has dropped by 75 percent. Nell Bernstein, author of “In Our Future We Are Free”, explains the forces that moved our society from one most concerned about “juvenile superpredators” to a time in which the youth prison is rapidly fading from view. Interestingly, much of the dynamism behind this movement came from the young people left in horrific conditions within these facilities, as well as some prison administrators who themselves were concerned by the treatment of these young offenders.