After the Theocons (w/ Damon Linker)
Added 2022-09-20 15:55:20 +0000 UTCDamon Linker is an idiosyncratic figure among political writers—trained by Straussians as a political philosopher, he's a former editor of First Things, the flagship publication for intellectual religious conservatives, who broke with that publication over the Iraq War (among other things) and is now a self-described centrist. He's also a longtime friend of the podcast, who recently started his own attempt to grapple with what's happening in the GOP and among conservatives, a Substack newsletter he titled Eyes on the Right.
In this conversation, Matt and Sam talk with Linker about what his own trajectory can teach us about the Right: his experiences working at First Things while the Bush administration was gearing up to invade Iraq; why thinks Sarah Palin marked a turning point on the Right; and his case for understanding Donald Trump as a political, rather than legal, problem.
Sources:
"The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics," First Things, November 1996
Damon Linker, "There is No Happy Ending to America's Trump Problem," New York Times, Aug 21, 2022
"A Giving of Intellectual Accounts," Eyes on the Right, Sept 9, 2022
"How Do You Solve a Problem Like Donald Trump?" Eyes on the Right, July 18, 2022
The Theocons: Secular America Under Seige (Doubleday, 2006)
Matthew Sitman, "Reading Left to Right" (review of Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square), Commonweal, Aug 24, 2015
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Comments
Sorry I can’t help—I’m not sure if they’ve ever given something that could pigeonhole their own perspective though. This episode is interviewing someone who isn’t a leftist anyway so probably safe to say you’ll get a better grasp from more personal episodes. I generally think they tackle in a efficient, piecemeal anyway. Tbh, I think it’s better if they don’t state it. The podcast is focused on contextualizing and analyzing the right from multiple angles after all.
Montez
2022-10-02 04:27:36 +0000 UTCTwo comments on Damon Linker's views on prosecuting Trump: FIRST, I believe Damon is attacking a straw man in suggesting that people on the left think jailing Trump would eliminate the menace to democracy. In my circle, I don't know anyone who takes shares that view -- most recognize that the GOP has for decades promoted racism, lied about election fraud, attacked the media, and sought to undermine voting rights. My view: Jailing Trump won't solve everything. But it will make clear that that the threat of further political violence won't put Trump above he law. SECOND, re Damon's fears that convicting Trump would make a martyr of him and inflame polarization further: that ship sailed some time ago. If you think 2024 won't be a hate hurricane anyway, you're being naive. And the solution may not be to "outvote" him because Republicans are busy seeking to disenfranchise likely Democrats, and preparing to overturn a Democratic presidential victory through various (semi-)legal means. Do you seriously imagine there won't be political violence in 2024 whether or not Trump was convicted? These are frightening times. But polarization isn't the main problem. A fascist GOP is. (I'll comment on that characterization another time.)
Mitchell Zimmerman
2022-09-29 03:17:13 +0000 UTCThank you for this episode with Damon Linker. I was NOT at all familiar with his writing, and will endeavor to change that. Right around 30 minutes in, Linker is talking about how he arrived at "First Things" and says: "In the spirit of pluralism, people who enter politics based on religiously grounded moral assumptions should not perforce be excluded from the conversation just because that is the origin of their first principles, and that's because everyone's first principles are kind of mysterious." This seems so true to me.
Jerry Callen
2022-09-26 02:38:33 +0000 UTCwould love to hear from Will too. seems like an interesting guy
Christian
2022-09-25 03:36:44 +0000 UTCI like to think of the Niskanen Center as a centrist coalition of "good government" conservative and liberal pragmatists--it's sort of what I wish the Republican Party looked like if it were sane. Speaking of Niskanen, one person you might consider having on your program is Will Wilkinson. Like Linker, his background is in political theory and he spent a lot time passing through many of the same conservative/libertarian institutions that Matthew Sittman has, and has similarly moved left over the years (decades?). I'm sure you would have a lot to talk about, from faith to political philosophy to contemporary politics. Cheers!
bdyeates
2022-09-24 00:55:06 +0000 UTCI agree with history chick's point about the straw manning of the argument to prosecute trump. I'd like to think that folks are capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time. Prosecuting Trump while also tackling the political problems of the country should be able to be done at the sametime and I'm unclear why it has to be either or. Also, I'm a new subscriber. I'm aware that the hosts identify as "left" but I'm unclear what that means. The hosts themselves throw some gratuitous jabs at "the left" towards the end of this conversation. Is jimmy Dore left? Is Rachel Maddow left? What about the maga communists crew? Or those calling themselves progressives like Cenk Uygur and the young turks? My assumption of the popular understanding for what makes up "the left" , is you start at Bernie and dont stop until you see black and yellow flags(anarcho Capitalists). Is there a past episode that can provide some clarity? Thanks!
Bruce W
2022-09-22 22:53:22 +0000 UTCI had no idea Linker's tenure at First Things fell apart so directly due to an article advocating for more paternal involvement in childcare. That's fascinating. It makes me wonder what our intellectual right/post-liberal recurring characters would have to say about such an article today. Linker seems to think it's the Trumpy characters who reacted with fury and disgust to the idea of him caring for his own child, but I'm honestly not sure. Would somebody like Deneen, for example, insist on 6+ months paid paternity leave? Would he/did he push back on the douchebags who were bragging about not having done anything when their kids were newborns? Our pro-family right, I fear, wouldn't have anything better to say on the topic than the dudes wearing Ray-Bans in their twitter avatars did.
Hannah
2022-09-22 18:34:52 +0000 UTCGood discussion. Coming from a philosophy undergrad background of my own (though without much Leo Strauss) I'm sympathetic to Damon's search for knowledge in his younger years and his kind of nomadic journey. Though, from a quick read of his blog it looks like I might have a few differences with him when it comes to interpretations of the classics.
Martin Oswald
2022-09-22 13:47:24 +0000 UTCThat 'lactating' anecdote, my god. Conservatives really are absolutely depraved, awful people.
-thundergolfer-
2022-09-22 01:17:39 +0000 UTCGreat conversation! I like Linker and read his substack newsletter, but find his argument for not prosecuting Trump problematic. But what I think really bothers me is the misrepresenting the arguments on the other side. Sure, there are probably some people who think it will fix everything, but they aren't representative of the serious arguments in favor of prosecution. It's easy to sound smart when you're knocking down straw men arguments. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks guys!
History Chick
2022-09-22 00:20:52 +0000 UTCI also remember a lot of claims about the "incoherence" of liberalism. It seems like the post-libs are just playing the same tune by trying to draw together knee-jerk nationalism, west coast Straussian ideas about the pre-constitutional order of the American founding, supposedly organic local/ethnic/religious ties, etc. It's a real hodge-podge, but now they're throwing the claim of incoherence at the old fusionists. Pot calling the kettle black in that regard.
Seth Morgan
2022-09-21 17:56:46 +0000 UTCThat was a great discussion. The line about First Things engaging in intellectual “lumping” really hit home. I was in college during the immediate post-9/11 period, and I remember the conservative intellectuals I knew piling onto this idea that there was an immanent connection between the Enlightenment liberalism of the U.S. Founders, Aristotelian anthropology, Augustinian Christianity, Neoconservative foreign policy, and the unreflective common sense of evangelicals in the American heartland. The idea wasn’t that these things had to be synthesized, but rather that they all expressed a perennial philosophy that had been forgotten amid the cultural decadence of the Boomer period but was waiting to be revived. (The word I remember these guys using to describe their opponents was “incoherent” – as though the problem with the governing liberalism of the day was that it had no philosophical first principles, just a hodge-podge of Clintonian relativism and welfare-state policy fixes.) The hope was that the WTC attacks might shock ordinary Americans into seeing the connections between all these things and inaugurating a new era of philosophically robust (another favorite adjective from the period) Americanism. At the time I knew an older English professor at Baylor who hoped that institutions like his might aid this awakening by introducing virtuous philistines like GW Bush to the Great Books and getting them to say, “oh, of course, this is what I _already_ think.” In that sense, I guess, it was another instance of intellectuals believing that they can articulate the beliefs of the common people for them, and that in doing so they’ll be welcomed as liberators. More often than not, the tiger doesn’t want to be ridden that way.
Sebastian Lecourt
2022-09-21 13:23:09 +0000 UTCReally fabulous convo. Linker is a hell of a raconteur. I appreciate his reasoning and his grave and justified concern about an American Years of Lead reboot in reaction to prosecuting Trump and Sam's skepticism of what a conviction would really fix. But. I have to ask why if he so fears a Fed prosecution of Trump being politicized and spun out of control he doesn't feel the same about a state prosecution. You really believe Trump wouldn't get on his high dudgeon about a witch hunt just because it's Georgiand not the DOJ? Not enforcing the laws for political reasons strikes a bit relativistic for a former Straussian.
Lou Guberti Ng
2022-09-20 22:10:37 +0000 UTC
