writer on the erosion of the liberal order and politics known as ill liberalism. also at nationalism, goldman security and identity politics impact elections in the united states and abroad. >> well, thank you brad for the kind introduction. and let me start by thinking my friend robbie george and his james mattis program on american idealism and institution for bringing to princeton. it's my first time, beautiful campus. let me extend and warm welcome to all of you for coming. i want to start with a personal story about my birthday. i happen to have been born on february 1, 1985. but the february 1 is the point of interest. because on the persian calendar i was born and raised in tehran iran, it's a date on which the ayatollah khamenei, is the anniversary of the day which the ayatollah khamenei in 1979 return to tehran from his exile in paris to help the islamic revolution and found the islamic republic that took over after the shah was toppled. i mentioned that because throughout my childhood when i was growing up, all of our relatives and friends, they would sometimes as they can remind what your particular i would say february 1 and he would always say -- because you brought -- terrible but it is true. so why do i say that? none of my relatives were exactly opposition figures. they were not, they're just average middle to upper middle class tehran residents. so the surprising fact is most of them actually supported the revolution when it happened including some of them lower civil service in the regime. so to me that was always something that was with me as a warning for the hazards of political frenzies back and take over because you had an imperfect authoritarian state in iran that was socially permissive and progressive in many ways. it was not a democracy but in a fit of national i was a political madness that many of the people who carried out the revolution immediately came to regret a top of that replaced it with a profoundly illiberal, quasi-totalitarian islamist regime. i mentioned that because i think it will help anchor the talk in a personal story because now i think were not at a threat of saint is, and islamist revolt take over the west. at least not in that way, and the way it did in iran that it's just to be careful about rocky about that might be not perfect but replacing it with what. so when officer george invited me to give this talk, it was last summer. i just published a cover essay and "commentary" magazine titled "illiberalism." we were in the heat of the president, pain on the u.s. and i tried in that -- campaign in the u.s. and i tried in that is that while election, although as watching it from london, in the context of what i saw as a global development which is namely the rise of illiberal movements of the far left and far right across much of the developed and developing world, and the decline of liberalism as a governing philosophy. i wrote quote as liberalism fades populism at eight -- politics of all kinds are gaining adherents, and coat. i went on argue that what we now call trumpism and sanders is him by the because the month socials was also a contender when i wrote that piece, represent the american expressions of this wir crisis of liberal order and of the liberal intellectual tradition. most journalists, meet remus included, were convinced donald trump was headed for a thumping in november. in fact, i made a bet with different from boston who is a trump supporter, very early supporter that it hillary lost the election i would eat one of my shoes. here we are now, i still have made good on that bet and i'm not sure if i ever will. i will have to make up to them someone with a i think the essay itself is held up pretty well. the events have since been confirmed my basic claims. to wit, think something has gone awry with liberalism. you can see the signs from the philippines to south africa, from vermont to vienna. i should note you probably know this, unnecessary but still when i say liberalism i don't mean that as a shorthand for people to vote for the democratic party in the u.s. or as a sort of shorthand for the centerleft, but in the broader philosophical sense. i want to find it very loosely. i'm sure you will dispute my definition. we all fit different things into liberalism but broadly individual rights, democratic, pluralism and relatively free markets. what used to be called the open society. that liberal idea hasn't appeared to my mind as vulnerable as it is now since perhaps the period between the two world wars. only nowadays the opposition to liberalism doesn't come from systematic ideologies like communism and fascism, but instead it tends to come from movements that are geographically disparate, often very instinctive and often they are in combat with each other meaning the very liberalism or continue with each other. they are more likely begin to be local in focus and internally divided among themselves which is why i use the somewhat catchall term ill liberalism to describe this. this eating i like to use the first half of my talk laying out the diagnosis that i've done in "commentary" magazine as well, why has liberalism gone awry and what are the defining characteristics of this new illiberalism? and the second epoch article a bit further and offer more prescriptive claims, what is to be done, how can liberals again, i don't mean that as the left but anyone who adheres to the broad philosophy of individual rights in pluralism, restore the promise of open society in this age of illiberalism. i'll draw on my work as an editorial writer for the "wall street journal" and i will probably make more sweeping claims than is appropriate and academic setting. but again if you think, i think they are rigorous and factually sound, but i'm happy to speak to and discuss them further in a question and answer period so let's start with europe, the, te birthplace of liberal enlightenment where i worked. and give you a map. let's start with france. right now the likelihood is that the center-right campaign in france is imploding which means the real two contenders are the centrist liberal candidate and, of course, the far right national front, which has gained adherents and truly growing. i won't make any predictions after 2016. i've learned my lesson i'm not going to make any predictions but i would just say i think he's weaker than a lot of people assume. i think he put himself forward as an obama like candidate for an age of pitchforks and insecurity and anxiety. not a prediction but a warning that i think he is weak. let's then turn to austria where the austrians freedom party which has generally not the origin almost one the presidency and austria last year. and again it's a party that is finding outside of the other, it's finding a new strength and more adherents. in germany the alternatives for deutschland party which you know is increasingly challenging chancellor angela merkel from the right. we'll see what happens with that election issue. in the netherlands they have another politician who is illiberal and has crazy hair, who again in this election could turn out to be the largest vote-getter. in finland you have the finns party which is entered government for the first time on an explicitly anti-atlanticist agenda, meaning opposition to nato and begin the structures of liberal order that we have gotten used to. in central and eastern europe, prime minister viktor or bonn and hungary used to be the exception to the region where he was putting forward a quasi-authoritarian conservative nationalism. he was hollowing out a lot of the democratic institutions in hungary, but again everyone thought he was exception but how increasing across the region you are seeing similar parties taking by which suggest he might be the trend and not the exception. and more depressing and hungary itself the main opposition to him comes not from a centrist party or center-right party or anything like that. he comes from an explicitly neo-nazi come some of these other parties i wouldn't describe that way. i think they are far right or whatever but not -- i've interviewed all their senior leadership and their generally terrifying. increase the government is headed by of the left but it grew out of the lengthy '90s anti-globalization movement movement. with gotten used to him being a normal present on the national stage but i think given those ideological and intellectual origins it actually is part of the sway that happened to be coming from the left. and to underline the conditions in greece come into 2015 election of election the party that came third was golden dawn which has a swastika for its logo. in britain, he wishes his prime minister, but the leader of the party, jeremy corbin, has asked broken apart piece with the third wave market friendly liberal model that was championed bytony blair, and he's taking the party -- staking the party increasingly on markets on anti-athleticism and hostility to nato. and also you had wrecks it was by the way i don't necessarily suggest every brexit voter and leadership of the movement fits in with all of this. i think it's a mark case but at least one strand of brexit drew on this kind of populaces in and liberalism. then across europe various separatist movements are energized trick in catalonia come, northern ireland there are little movements that are worth watching. across the continent opposition to the european union is growing. on the left the eu is seen as a neoliberal vehicle for imposing austerity and tearing back workers' rights in favor of corporations including foreign corporations. but on the right brussels is blamed for blurring national borders and boundaries flooding europe with immigrants and substituting answer bloodless multiculturalism for the confidence authentic natural -- national culture. let's turn to turkey which is on the bridge between europe and asia. the country transition to authoritarianism and a certain new sultanate is really underway, especially since the attempted coup this summer, or in 10in 100 media outlets have n sugar, tens of thousands have either been detained or pushed out of the job. obviously president erdogan is intended to transform the country system from the parliamentary system that they have in place into a strong president to one, of course with himself at the helm. then of course there's russia. russia is in many ways the standardbearer and supporter of a lot of these illiberal movements across europe. it funds them sometimes. certainly helps them deliver the message to its sleek broadcasting network. so having transformed his own country into an authoritarian, president putin has now set his sights toward dismantling the liberal order, consensus in europe. let's turn to iran and the arab world. you might be surprised to even mention these two because obviously they have never been liberal places. they've always been repressive and theocratic and so forth. i'd even there, there are signs of the liberal slogans and ideals that drove the 2009 uprising in iran and the subsequent arab spring being replaced with nationalism in many ways. there have been recent surveys of arab youth that suggests that the increasing one stability, that freedom as a slogan, as an aspiration is no longer interesting to them. in iran that generation of young students and middle-class types who rose up i in the 2009 after the disputed election, they are now demoralized 30, 40 somethings who just want to get on and have more or less made their peace with the system. i could go on, biting can you come in south africa, the philippines using similar ideas and movements rise. so it's worth asking, what is going on here? i think the typical answers, although they are plausible and interesting, are flawed because i think the issue ideas and ideology -- eshoo -- votary reacting to sustain slow growth and dizzying technological change. okay, these illiberal type attitudes are also growing in countries that are growing rapidly. so poland, for example,, the economy is chugging along but voters are turning against liberal order. or it said that the protected class of corporate and political elites have been uninterested in the pain of the unprotected many, and now they're having an long overdue reckoning. okay but when it elites really ever been in touch with the unprotected many? all these expeditions are possiblplausible but none is an ideological account of an ideological phenomenon. to think about it liberalism this way is one of the symptoms of liberalism in that it reduces all entity and ideology to legal and economic issues. it's one of liberalism is line spots. but i think what we're seeing now and that a suspect will be a defining feature of the 21st century is what happens when the capacity of liberalism, to dissolve ideology and genuine entity and social conflict and a stream of commerce and law, reaches its limits when liberalism can no longer do that. and when liberals don't get politics, ideology and entity frankly there do. perhaps taking a little too seriously their own claim a standing above and beyond ideology and politics. so to see this global explosion of trumpism as merely a reaction to social economic and legal developments is to reproduce the same common error. i think some of the people who are the sharpest critics but also the most, more sympathetic observers of these movies are making the same mistake. i think it's more important to go to the set of feelings and ideas that are the work of any real ideology to get behind what is driving it. to look at the policy mix that typically is offered ids illiberal parties and movements isn't that interesting but let's listen. they tend to prefer trade protectionism and social protection more broadly, and to alleviate the anxieties of workers who feel left behind by globalization. they tend to prefer restriction is him and they tend to be skeptical of the structures that since the end of world war ii have governed what we call the west and that produced the liberal order that we are accustomed to. i think what matters more they get others deeper ideological impulses and sensibilities. so what are those? identify three as being the defining feelings and sensibilities behind these movements. one, the restoration of a prouder, more wholesome, more coherent past is one of the main planks. obviously make america great, the slogan itself recalled a time when industrial relations were fair, the 1950s, manufacturing was king and we could return to that. or to talk about hungary, their leaders always talk about restoring dungarees proper national boundaries and they do these feelings about returning communities that were lost in the post-world war i settlement to hungry. and they look with a certain fondness to that era. there is a strand of that i think has this similar sense of returning to a past. so is most romantic framing and again not all think this way but in his most romantic framing it imagines the open sea and not the continent with its petty bureaucrats as britain's once and future destiny. obviously vladimir putin has increasingly presents himself as a bulwark for christian authenticity as against the west doublers national and western boundaries. i will point out i interviewed le pen in 201 2015 and she said something goes interesting. i asked about the transatlantic trade pact between the u.s. and europe and they said what's your objection to it? she said it would mean we would introduce unhygienic american products into europe. i think the interesting bit about that is trade by definition means diamond is him interchange -- dynamism and shifting cultures and his anxiety about unhygienic american products, i think is very telling. it says something. so that's the first plate. i think the second psychological plank or the sensibility plate of this new liberalism is a feeling of collective grievance and a desire for national recognition. so trumpism is defined by a set of grievances against bankers, mixes, muslims, the chinese and so on. ironically in europe it's the u.s. who is often the bogey for these types of movements. so the folks who oppose the transatlantic trade pact will say that i can't american products are unhygienic or we will have genetically modified american food and similar phobia. or take alexander who's often called putin's lawsuit but is more active described as his leading philosopher as it altogether as many direct ties to the crewmen as he sometimes suggest. for him liberalism is another form of invasive universalism that threatens russia and america is at its head. he describes america as the kingdom of the antichrist that should be destroyed, and at one point will be destroyed. when i interviewed him in the wake of trump's election he didn't sound quite so apocalyptic buddy told me liberalism is totalitarianism. and with the trumpet in the white house he said all those reject universalism and globalization have an opening. that is a theological and metaphysical shift that we underestimate. in hungary prime minister orban and your book are seeking to renegotiate the country wartime ability. an interview last year i asked the leader about hunger his role in the holocaust, he readily conceded that yes, uncaring government did have the responsibility but he quickly added, this is a very complex issue because hungary severed a lot of harm during the first world war, a lot of hungarian popular territories were taken away from hungary and transferred to neighboring countries. i will never question anybody's right to commemorate events of the past but identity cannot be built on tragedies. it will inevitably lead to more and more confrontation. you have the sense to only center sense of nationhood in europe and a sense of identity of europe on never again and would happen in the holocaust is some of an affront and there's a hunger for something more. i also think there's a desire, and this is the third blank, the final income is a desire that politics reflects the dark realities of the present time. and i happen to think that this is the area where the liberals really do have a point. the problem is solutions that they have are either irrational or illiberal. but it's what i think liberals again defined as broad as possible have a role to play to see how do we rejigger the liberal program so it addresses some of these genuine concerns. the desire that politics reflects the realities of the prices, what do i mean by that means recognition, for example, that bad actors can be transformed and that sovereign nations need to have sovereign options for dealing with these timeless features. the moment that i thought donald trump would win, certainly the republican nomination, was when, that was a massacre in november 2015 in paris where president obama came on and said more or less everything is fine. again he refused to say radical islam, and our strategy against isis is working. it was a sense that there was aa carpet pulled from under you because you think it is just happen in pairs, hundreds of people killed and certainty with which the president dismissed it as it's okay, we'll work on it, and everything is fine. it's not only phobic characters who want to see order amidst chaos. so when you have al qaeda across these ungoverned spaces across the world. you have the rise of isis. you have a refugee crisis. they are not the only ones are concerned about this. and by the late and haphazard responses in brussels berlin and washington. people everywhere including preview wants the order and clarity in a danger and chaos. so that brings us to the second half of the talk, which is if that's the case what is to be done? i'll go back to my opening story which is, i come from iran. my basic life experience tells me that liberal order is good. it's what people, it's almost difficult for me to have to argue for that but liberal order is good. illiberal orders are not as good. i think too many thinkers in the u.s. and europe have begun to concede away the basic santos on the left and right, you see disturbing willingness to say maybe liberalism as we know it has outlived its usefulness or even that may be we are now seeing the hidden flaws that were sewn into the fabric of liberalism at its founding are now coming to light, perhaps good riddance. i also think there's a lot of romanticism and self-delusion about various forms of liberalism can achieve in terms of promoting human flourishing. for example, too many conservative friends who i otherwise might apologize for putin or wax poetic about incident by defending traditional notions of dates and nation against what end quote liberalism. i priestly writer from conservative quarters that his associate with the far left. putin is no angel nor are we. too hideous president say some of those things is astonishing, nightmarish. for personal reasons i have a loathing for this mixture of romanticism and cynicism, because as a set on the audit of the iranian revolution. the mistakes my parents generation made taught me that every attempt to resurrect some wholesome past and orphans of social psalter involve more trauma and unpleasantness that whatever tends to exist nothing that's my basic conservative small sea instinct upon the sub compelled to repeat the first principles that are now under attack. liberal order is good. human freedom is good. i decided to give people the opportunity to follow the dictates their own conscious is good. trade is attractive. but it is equally clear to me that a liberals and again i think in sport to underscore i don't mean to left a progressive but the broad liberal family need to reach some aspects of the liberal program to make sure it survives the 21st century. i began hinting at some of this in the first epic now employed seven broad proposals for how to reject the liberal program. first i think liberals has to stop. i'm on a college campus. i'm thinking a course of last weeks incident at middle very, this inability to name things by their name. so in europe often the sanctioning and censoring of the wrong kinds of speech on islam, integration turns the liberals into folk heroes -- illiberals. so suppressing debate about moroccan immigrant in the netherlands won't make the underlying issue of integration go away which is a real issue and it's not just -- crime rate of moroccan immigrants in the netherlands are alarmingly higher than nativeborn dutch, and that something liberals need to talk about honestly. so don't give the illiberals a sense of occult power or name radical islam. why? i don't mean as a strategic point although there is the larger strategic point how do you defeat it. first you to say what is your fighting. let's set it aside. the prime minister told me if you listen islam has nothing to do with it, people will not believe you. this refusal to not associate ideology with the extremism that it produces results in the fact that the only people who are willing to tell the truth about it are the illiberals and they are not selective enough to say there's islamism as a radical movement that is dangerous, and 1.4 billion global adherents are peaceful and want to get along. it's important to stop with these speech policing because it will not make the liberalism go away. it will only strengthen it. i've only said this but liberalism needs to supplicants of people in the face of terrorism at the threat posed by regimes like putin's. it's which to me frankly, that now in the u.s. the democrats are sounding so hawkish on russia went for eight years they more or less acquiesced as the president made one concession after another to moscow. it cannot be that every terror attack that happens we just say insert fine. there's something going on in these societies where people feel insecure. i feel insecure sometimes. three, i think liberalism must return to the center. here's what i mean by that. the obsession with sexual minorities, these pronoun games at a time when young isis and refugee crisis, araiza putin, the economic anxiety -- the rise of putin -- liberalism for a lot of people has been reduced to talk about bathrooms and whether or not you use a pronoun which is to most people it makes no sense. they look at it and they say these people are not addressing the problems of our time. the new identity driven liberalism that's obsessed again with the language games is tiresome and it will not win elections. liberals need to win elections. number four, i think liberals need to start trying to short-circuit democratic processes when they don't produce the desired liberal outcomes. i'll name a few. the immigration executive order that president obama asked down to essentially stop enforcing u.s. law rather than going through the congress to present immigration reform. the imposition of gay marriage by judicial fiat everywhere across the west. all these things build up frustration because people are used to the parliaments and people used to the congress and that's the thing that needs to be done and not through unelected judges or bureaucracies. five, i think liberalism must aggressively promote assimilation, spatial in europe. multicultural anxiety is not all irrational. i live in london. i happen to have been born in a muslim country and to a shiite family and i feel a certain degree of multicultural anxiety in london where dissent is, is is there a common identity to britain? it need not be blood and soil identity but there needs to be some greater thing that defines us. so that assimilation question is key because when you assimilation it eases the anxieties about integration. six, i think liberalism needs to become more comfortable with nationalism. nationhood, belonging, this flows from the previous point but nationhood belonging shouldn't be just the domain of the far right. in europe a lot of times you will see this crisis of things i'd point out among both the nativeborn population and the emigrants. because there isn't a sense of what does it mean to be german jan just a set of procedural norms that are very nice, better liberal and good, but there has to be some other sense of identity. among some people driessen to the far right in the search for identity, and among muslim immigrants the search for identity drives them to islamism sometimes. so procedural is him is not enough. i think liberals need to be able to talk about nationhood in a comfortable way. i can vote at the markup. could then the far right. but that doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt it. seventh, this is probably the more philosophical point but i i think liberalism needs a sense of purpose and moral authority. some account of evil and fallenness. increasingly the reactions to world events, to the care, to economic anxiety, when you talk to liberals there is not a deeper thing. i can't think of cohesiveness, ever having a place in which our conversation about evil, about the irrational, someplace where those are contained, then the west judeo-christian heritage. if you think about is of happy discuss them by donald c any other. i recently did an interview of the austin cargo he made a similar point. when the west we discovered is judeo-christian heritage it will discover the truth about itself, you know, things that a good about the european union or things that are good about liberal democratic societies harken back to the judeo-christian heritage that we have inherited. so those are my seven points. so to conclude i do think that liberal civilization has proved far more resilient when threatened by an adaptable forces in the past. its institutions have a remarkable capacity to adapt. as a set of legal norms of economic principles and more important as a cultural force i think liberalism still remains overwhelmingly dominant. liberal ideas but limited powers of state and inherent rights of citizens have expanded internet every corner of the world globe since 1776 and liberalism has vanquished every significant rival fattah stood against it since. and a succession of liberal powers even to this day have presided over world order. so the liberal ideas in the century, and my bet is it won't, it has its most attended peoples natural inclinations toward freedom and towards the dictates of conscience. in order to thrive in the 21st century, liberalism needs tougher liberals. i will stop there, and thank you. [applause] >> leletty just a word about q&. thank you, sohrab ahmari. very interesting, very thoughtful, very bold. must have stimulated some thoughts and questions. we will move into the q&a. the madison program has a little tradition, had it for many years and which is to invite any students in the audience, whatever level you're at in your studies, to ask the first questions. so let me invite students to raise your hand. our microphones if you just hold off until someone puts one in your hand. write down front here. thank you. >> why don't you identify yourself? >> hello. i am a sophomore in the chemical engineering department. i'd like to ask this question that i know you focus most of your talk on the western civilization, but regimes of liberal democracy spanning the far east, both in south korea, there's been a bernie sanders person who wants to see better relations with north korea. we're seeing this creep up again in china come in the philippines as you mentioned. are the set of solutions that you presented the same for those countries, or do we have to apply a different approach in the series? >> a very good question. my solutions are geared towards the developed world and the western democracy. i think my diagnosis tends to apply in places like the philippines with the rise of the other developments that you sent. but what that looks like in that context i think it will be different because the department stage are different. there is a really integral tradition in some of the places although there is advanced certainly in japan, south korea and the like but elsewhere there isn't one. so the answer is to work at a ground up. it's, frankly, i think it senses when the same spaces of a because they are now more than ever that are questions about first principles. i think that's healthy. people asking what should society be like a fashion we organize society in a way? in the western and in the area that you point out there is this pedagogic opportunity for liberals to make the case of what free society is about all over again. hope that helps. >> other student questions? weight in the back corner there. if you will identify yourself, please. >> thank you for this talk. my name is jonathan. i'm a senior in the woodrow wilson school of it seems that modern illiberalism thrives off the problems of liberalism especially compared to the '90s we have the narrative where there was an ideological end of history, so on and so forth. my question a is to what extento you think modern illiberalism are characterized both coherent ideology? if i get to what extent you think they might apply just beyond mere opposition to liberalism? >> that's a very good question as well. i think they actually are far more coherent than people give them credit. again, having interviewed some of the leading far right thinkers and politicians in the west, these are ideas that they'vtheybeen developing for ag time, and they have a sense of opportunity now because they think that liberalism is under question like never before. you're right come in the '90s there was a challenge. the only other alternative ideology after communism was making some headway with islamism but i think no one in their right mind i think would say let's impose an islamist society. so now they're offering a real alternative. they have thought it through, so for example, le pen draws on the work of his french philosophers associate with what's called the new right in france. it stopped through and it's based on some degree of communitarianism where they say liberalism freedom isn't real freedom, that we're atomized, we're unhappy, and we feel economically insecure, we feel displaced geographically. the people among us for the newcomers in the immigrants, they are not even happier. there's a natural place for them and it's over there. they thought to these questions and so i think there's more coherent. with trumpism i think it's different. it's a lot more shoot from the hip so not all of his instincts by the way are liberal. what i'm saying, i set aside trumpism which i think is different. but in europe it's very coherent, thought through philosophical. >> another student question back there? then we will come over this way. >> thank you. i am a senior in the economics department. i think you would mentioned that we're in a pitchforks and flings era, and you specifically said that, so macron as a unviable candidate in this kind of pitchforks. also you said in poland the economy is chugging along and yet they are turning illiberal. i sort of see that we are in the study shall are unequivocally at a time that is much better than anytime in our history. so i'm wondering what is the cause for this change in perception to believe that we are in this pitchforks and? do think it's a grassroots movement or is it lead conspired spark and fueled by people vying for political power like le pen from the far right or don't come over here in the u.s.? >> i'll start by challenging your premise. i don't think everything is good. i think that there is real insecurity in europe on the streets we think that at any point something could go kaboom. there's a strand of liberal triumphs attends him if you sit on fox or whatever with a just lay a data, just judging by xyz indicated, everything is good but that's not all that people think about and live by. so therefore it's both. in other words, there is real anxiety, but there are also people who thought through how to address this anxieties with a political program, and that you are commingling and interacting together to create the current illiberal ascendance. >> other student questions? back here. >> thanks for the talk. i heard you say something about elites, a good little joke in there. one of the things that i was asking myself during her talk is the role of your audience and the concerns that you raise. we are here at the university. what is the role of the academy in addressing the seven points that you laid out? or has academic voices just been crowded out or discredited by the concerns that you have raised? >> an amazing question. all the questions are amazing. i want to be a good guest. [laughing] but man, there's a lot of nonsense in the academy. so to start with, this should be a place where, not this, but university should be placed will be can talk about the islamists issue. the integration issue, and yet increasingly the conversation isn't even being had. so let me pick another university rather than this one. so brandeis, d.c. the really disgraceful dis- invitation where they invited her, students protested, they withdrew the imitation and said but you can come back but it would have to be a dialogue. all sorts of other speakers. to single her out. in so many ways she is all that is good about the promise of immigration and have liberalism because she stands for frankly a form of feminism that you think in academia it would be embraced come and yet to treat her that way pics of the conversation on not being had. i see the university from the outside at all i see is like the new bathroom thing. you know? there so much going on in the world. anyway, that's basically i don't think it's contributing unfortunately. although there are bright spots and exceptions, this program being one of them. >> yes, in the blue shirt. >> i hunter, a freshman plan to make in politics. my question was at the very beginning you mention trumpism the right afterwards mention sandersism. i think we look at bernie sanders on this platform. is more moderate in finland, thedenmark, a lot more moderate than their politicians. do you think it's really fair to compare sandersism to trumpism? that's a false equivalent maybe. >> those politicians in europe are having trouble winning elections. they cannot pay for their welfare program. they are in trouble. i guess as as a socialist in te u.s., obviously the program he can put forward, there are political limits on it but there are not in europe. i think the site to me he is one of them is when he said do people need 21 brands of deodorant? you know, that's the sort of 1930 socialism where, why can't we just have one brand and so the isn't so much competition? what are we doing with all this deodorant? there's a real profound point there which is, my colleague wrote a great piece about, yeltsin was visit to texas supermarket, and that his sense of astonishment at what consumer society had achieved. this is either in the early '90s or the late '80s. i think by suggesting that our dynamic capitalist system is producing too many different kinds of deodorant, i just pick on that one example, there so much more, suggest that his kind of illiberal, i kind of, a certain strain of american socialism blended with a kind of crunchy granola gentry left that place in places like vermont but that doesn't make it any i think any illiberal. >> i spent a year in moscow about 2 25 years ago and there s no deodorant. [laughing] other student questions. patrick brown. >> takes. patrick brown, an amassed a student at the woodrow wilson school. i was wondering if you talk about the role that religion plays in this discussion? on the one hand pope francis might be one of the most leading figures of liberalism in some ways, but then in france people are saying that traditional catholicism is exploiting resurgence with some of the populist movement movement sizeg if you see religion as playing a role in advancing our helping the events of illiberalism? >> i think religion is the best defense against illiberalism. again i would go back to the judeo-christian tradition. why? because it allows you to see the other person, especially endowed with rights as you can empathize with them in the sense that usually brotherhood across various identity boundaries. it's because of your shared heritage, where you come from. and unfortunately, what i would say is, especially catholicism in europe has been pushed in so many places into an alliance with the far right because of a very strident secularism. catholicism and christianity more generally meet ideologically over there. the same, i made the point that there are some conservatives who i profoundly respect, but who see the stridency and, frankly, the bowling out of religion out of the democratic of the square in the west and they say, well, look at putin. he stands up for russian orthodoxy. we need not drive those people, those thinkers over there because they know that putin is a thug. it doesn't take much to realize his opponents keep ringing their head near a gun some out keep having accidents and eating dangerous key, or drinking dangers of tea. they know that but they sense liberalism has gotten so aggressive, i get on issues that are so foundational to what christians believe, and people of faith generally, about gender, about relations between sexes and other things, and they have been totally delegitimize. who was there left to speak to them? it did that be the far right. in france it's unfortunate because he was having, he was beginning to meld a responsible still within the center program of the center-right with his catholicism. it still turned out he has an ethic issues that collapsed him. >> other student questions? have we exhausted them? okay, let's open it up. back here. yes, wait for the microphone. >> i'm nick currie, a phd student at cambridge in international relations. i was wondering about russian active measures and how much of these trends the attribute the fact that might be related to the fact that the west is engaged in a hybrid war and isn't fully aware of it? and when you study the doctrine of hybrid warfare, a lot of the things that are happening in terms of influence operations and other things are exactly consistent with their playbook, and the incidents at cambridge and oxford and other places where revelations have recently come up that there's more activity than expected. what my question is, how much do you think this is a matter of the russians exploiting pre-existing trends or how much they think they're actually driving those trends? >> another excellent question. so rt, vladimir putin spends about $300 million a year on rt. we spend about $700 million a year on voice of america. but rt is incredibly relevant in our conversation here in a way that i don't think the oa is that effectively more, it hasn't been for a while, since the cold war. so absolutely there are things the russians are doing with the funding of rt, with sputnik, with loans allegedly to some far right european parties and other influence operations. i think it's dangerous to think that the illiberal ferment that we're seeing now is just a russian conspiracy. i think the democrats in the u.s. are going in that direction rather than asking what are we doing, what program are we offering? should we rethink some things, of saying it was just russia. and it is at the same in europe. yes, he is doing all of that, but i'm convinced that with other things are going on, most notably the refugee crisis in europe and the wider terrorism that's spinning out of these ungoverned spaces in europe, even if russia were not there, that these anxieties would boost far right parties here so again, liberals need to get better at a company, and winning elections, at persuading people. of course, the west should combat russia's influence peddling operation. but that won't answer this deeper question. >> other questions? down front here. >> i'm david forte with the madison program. most of the organized illiberal groups tend to be on the right, and you have characterized the response of liberals as being silly or irrelevant, such as what happens on campus. but maybe what's been happening is that we've had generations of illiberal leftists who have actually gained control of the leaders of power within the bureaucracy, within the independent agencies. what you are seeing is the in game of their illiberalism as they begin to isolate and castigate people with whom they disagree. >> ya, i tend to agree with you. i think i did touch on that in the main talk when i said that the liberal, categorized the agents well, the sense of institutional capture, this since there is something an in e nordic countries that they call the opinion corridor on any number of issues, especially the most hot button ones that of immigration, assimilation and islam in nordic countries. there's a narrow range of opinion that is acceptable opinion, and there's a social punishing mechanism if you bring it alternative viewpoints, sort in the mainstream media that's within the opinion corridor is where you'll see the point of view and the range of opinion. all of that, yes, i agree. it's a bit of the illiberal left getting a bit of a comeuppance. spirit let's go over here. >> thank you very much for an excellent talk. i'm a retired pharmaceutical sciences comes to my background is biochemistry so please excuse this is a very naïve question. i'd like to return to a question that was asked before about the gentleman in the corner. and that is that from my understanding we actually are living in just about the most peaceful time in world history. we tend to forget that three generations ago europe, the united states and japan were involved in terrible, terrible, horrific atrocities. i was here at a panel discussion last year on the danger that isis might present to the west. it was, i believe it was a james mattis a program. the speakers did not agree and everything but they did agree on the fact that isis does not and cannot present an existentialist threat to the west. i can present a terrorism threat. so in your response to the previous questioner, you said that there is a real feeling of anxiety, and that i believe is absolutely true. but quantitatively, we are living in just about the most peaceful time in world history, and there's a lot of fear mongering that is being done in order to drive that anxiety. what can we do to effectively counter that fear mongering? >> so let's talk about isis and let's talk about jihad-ism. a strong map the places that become completely destabilized. iraq and syria no longer exist as coherent nationstates. across swaths of africa that are ungoverned areas, some of them constantly being reclaimed by more legitimate forces, others not. these places, also we should mention nigeria, which has this local rom insurgency, mention afghanistan which has a genuine, both the taliban resurgence and an introduction of isis. afghanistan and its afghan expression. so i think if you're living in those zones, your knowledge affidavit and thinking my life is pretty good. no, they're enough there but i think the danger from jihad-ism in its various form isn't that they could obtain made a weapon of mass destructio distraction y be an existential threat to a western nation state, although that's not something we should rule out and the help secret agencies everywhere are about to it. but the danger is that, the danger comes from the fact that by making people feel insecure, if you are in large urban areas in europe, you are constantly worried about the next ak-47 that's going to go off of the next -- that itself is a date in the sense that it tries people to embrace harsher and harsher politics and turn to illiberalism. it's not the scale like okay, if we were to quantify the threat not compared to two decades ago what would it be? it's about the fact that people feel insecure and bats, sure, i mean, i think the way to do it is not to combat peoples perception. it's to combat terrorism and to bring order to ungoverned spaces in the middle east and north africa, and also to limit the flow of refugees. 1 million people is hard to absorb for any part of the world, especially people who come from a very different culture and from very unfree societies. i see this as an immigrant from a society like that. to absorb a million is too much. i can, i think quantify it is not the answer or thinking of it as people are just miss perceiving things. i think it's a reality. >> down front here. >> .. rejected and donald trump was elected and i think it's a bit simplistic to say it's a tradeoff from republicans to democrats and back and forth and it's simplistic to say we're moving left to right. imagine for a moment at that time donald trump is in office for eight years. how big a seismic shift could we have in the next presidency in which direction could it go? the three i just mentioned could not be any more different from one another. >> i'll just refrain from answering that. eight years and i don't even know what's going to happen in a month because this presidency is so dynamic and intense. driven partly by his tweets and his personality, driven partly by the -- tends to thrive on a certain kind of chaos. i cannot imagine what -- what i worry is that you will get a very sort of sanders-esque left, so identity driven, hostile to markets and i think what is happening in the dnc right now, again i watched this from the outside because i don't cover domestic politics but it's cause for concern that certain kind of democratic centrism is disappearing, near extinction species. can imagine what henry jackson would be in today's democratic party or even -- under the obama administration. just so far to the left. and those trends to my mind -- maybe you disagree but those trends are on the left are also accelerating. >> visiting fellow with the program. sort of just answered my first question which is about the trajectory of the opposition to the trump administration in this country, and because you were describing that this trend moving left. if that is the case, i think you made a really good case for a kind of centrist liberal jim. what's the -- liberalism. and what this vehicle for that. and the surprising thing about the comments on the current situation from a general reporter, your remedy has included nothing about economics. i think the discontent that fuels both the trump phenomena and the sanders phenomena cannot by disconnected from the collapse of the industrial economy, joblessness and large parts of the united states and so on. so those two points. >> i think you make a fair point. probably didn't put enough emphasis on the economy, but the fact is we have had the weakest -- talking about the u -- the weakest recovery since world car 2. it's not acknowledge for thous to average growth at 2% a year. people point, for example to the unemployment rate. it is quite low. but that's just because vast numbers of people have exited the work force. labor force participation rate dismal. you're right. and by the way, when the -- i do agree with this point and this may be sound economically reduction but when the roast pie is going, then anxiety about immigration and well father comp -- welfare competition are alleviate, not solved but alive yeted. so you make a fair point. don't if answered your first question. >> you make a great case for the -- [inaudible] >> i am seeing it elsewhere. the u.s., paul ryan represents something like that. and the house leadership, which i hope will shape the administration's agenda more than the other way around. but in europe, you do see some world leaders standing up so tony blair is one example i'll name where he clearly doesn't want to come back into politics as such, but he is just started to say -- you see it in the op-eds and other places where these people are saying, we need to restore the liberal sense or something has gone wrong and i note that blair also makes the point that when liberalism is reduced to bathroom and pronoun obsessions, it doesn't win. so, i look at -- i don't look at parties so much as what are some establishment figures starting to do and to rethink. there's much more to be done. >> let see. judge miller with his hand up right there. >> thank you for stimulating talk. would it be fair to say that a major factor in the ascendancy of irliberallism is due to the influx of muslims? >> i don't think that's the case in the u.s. think the u.s. has had historically fax ability to make people assimilate and it's partly because our welfare net is so loose that -- of europe. i think that the refugee crisis in particular is -- was probably the biggest boon to these parties. when angela merkel threw open europe's doors and started taking them in, in vast numbers. i'll tell you what. i traveled with the refugees and did a feature series, and i am very simple -- sympathetic. as an immigrant i can never be anything but sympathetic towards other immigrants bus eventually -- about eventually when followed the refugees in turkey before they arrived on the islands in greece, the round called the balkan corridor. syria, iraq, afghanistan, good to turkey, then a bus down to the boats that take them to the greek islands. and i lived actually, frankly, for five, six days, with refugee safehouse, and what i will say is that it dramatically changed my view, where i thought sympathetic to refugees, i think a lot of them are escaping genuine hardship but that assimilating these people, unless the western receiving countries have a fairly strong assimilation program, language acquisition, job training for economies that don't need that many service laborers and these forks north qualified for much else -- not qualified for much us and a values triche which is this us how we are and how you behave ask you have to adapt to we were norms of conduct. this is really difficult. really difficult. especially as you say you have in europe you have europe's native muslim communities, where there is a lot of -- a lot of these case the patients and grandparents were relatively well assimilated but out of, a., desire for identity, b., the islamism's rising strength as an intellectual and real force in the muslim world, the younger generation, the ones who are the first generation, the second generation, are being drawn to radicalism. it's very tragic but i think no doubt that's been a factor. in the refugee crisis more than anything. >> so we can get everybody's questions in in the next 15 minutes, i'd be grateful if you would follow judge miller's example of brevity. it's not bluntness but brevityity for sure. >> i'm a resident of the princeton area mitchell background is consultings. my concern is the tendency to put things in boxes and call them things, liberalism, ill liberalism. when i -- looking at what is going on, first in the united states, there are similarities that are going on in europe but i would see it in a little bit different light. i would see it that a significant number of our citizens have lost a perceived control of their lives. for example, i think professor debton has opportunity a tremendous job in terms of showing what this plight of the lesser educated, the high school graduate and undergraduate whose parents thrived in our society. i won't go through -- >> you mean with the mortality rates? working class -- >> put that is a symptom of something. it's not a cause. won't go into details. in the european situation, and what happened with brexit, it has some of the same characteristics. one of. the is you have -- one of them is in the european union you have a governmental system that iting extremely remote from the people who are living within those areas. you also have a situation that extremely remote system decided to let all the muslims come in. so i see it as an issue that is very much living in very turbulent times, technology is changing, and i'm going to shut up. but from the standpoint of what is going on, there may be some basic issues that we're missing. >> the democratic deficit of europe, i will join you anytime in saying that the european union governs to much. there's too much of it. every time i deal with one aspect i'm amaze thread is an entire building devoted to whatever, and i favor the remain side in the brexit debate because the rope was the basic idea of the free trade and the free movement of goods, services and people, is good. and europe is in many ways thriving thanks to the interconnection so i didn't think it was worth serving up britain's economy and all the supply chains that are there, and the institutional ties and so forth, especially when britain couldn't be anymore the council of europe to advise them so say please govern less, make this rules bugs they have the more anglo-american common lay extra tradition opposed to the european overregulation. something new comes about the european instinct to create a law contrasting ours. the european union, if it is to survive needs to shrink. it's become -- it is become this remote, permanent, undemocratic institution. it can do a lot of good but just -- there needs to be a lot less of it and shouldn't be this tendency -- if poland elects a conservative nationalist government, let's sanction it from a european level. why? the people are allowed in national parliaments are more attuned to the people. stay out of their way in some ways and just do this -- just facilitate free trade, should be europe union's role and not this larger super national, transnational effort which people are rejecting. >> down here. >> i'm jenna story from the madison program. some people say that liberalism and democratic pull in different directions, individualist and collectivist, and liberalism is a limitation on political power, and democracy would be political form in which power is not necessarily limited. is this the way you see the problem and if so are we looking for a balancing moment where we maybe acknowledge the liberal side of things too much in recent times and need for liberals to acknowledge their dependence on the democratic side of things in our world, or do you see things in a different way? the end of you talk you suggested the liberalism needs to articulate and i wasn't sure if that's the prior conception of a kind of balance or motive between liberalism and democracy or a different situation. >> it is more than liberalism needs a new spirit and story that is confident, responsive the world now and forth. that wasn't related to that. i have heard the case made that somehow in our time, after -- certainly since world war ii, dib recallism and democracy are becoming decoupled and that's what this problem is. i think there's something to it. think that the autonomy minded liberalism and it guess with identity politics as well -- are getting democratic backlash, but i do think -- i worry about the democracy side as well because a lot of these parties have a tendency when the come to power do a blitz of retaking the institution and they would limit their other side's power, and in hungary's case or turkey's case or erdogan, to different degrees, are taking on not only liberalism but democracy as well by hollowing out institutions in a way you could say hungary is a competitive democracy in name but it's very hard for other parties to in a fair way make their case. likewise in turkey. yes, is turkey a democracy? czech? yes, but mr. erdogan has sold -- his illliberal aspect as undermine the -- democracy is jut form but not content. i hope that answers your question. >> in the middle. >> thank you. good talk. i'm tompile, a local resident and a maybe of the great class of '76. you write words for a living. you live in a world of words. if reflected on how the relevance of language and in my view the hijacking of language, resize language, that i think lee -- >> you can watch the last few minutes of the discussion online. c-span.org. search for prince top -- princeton. coming up, comments on donald j. trump to the nra and its lobb

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