The Resilience of the American Experiment
Samuel Moyn on how we should not be timid as we perfect our democracy.
Happy Fourth of July, dear Crowd!
I was going to write something brief about American exceptionalism to commemorate the holiday. I said I’d do it right after
and I finished recording an episode of the podcast with the great . But as we were wrapping up, the conversation took an unexpected turn to a nugget I’d like to share with you in lieu of an essay.I was asking Samuel Moyn whether he worried that some of his more far-reaching ideas for reform, which entail re-imagining parts of our constitutional order, might be inviting catastrophe by risking chaos.
“Has Hobbes been transcended?” I asked.
Here’s Sam’s reply in full:
This Fourth of July teaser is from the second half of the episode, which will be for paying subscribers only. You won’t want to miss the whole show, which uses the Supreme Court’s immunity decision as a jumping off point to so much more. It will be dropping on Friday, July 5th.
May your barbecues be bountiful and your fireworks spectacular!
— Damir
Happy 4th to WoC. Look forward to any discussion with Samuel
As a member of the “progress studies” crowd, I am probably among the more pessimistic about the future of the US.
The rot is quite evident at every level, the democratic system appears more and more dysfunctional as time goes by.
We need a fundamental rethink about how we talk with one another and how government functions as a whole.