Ezra Klein: So, we live in this moment when illiberalism is winning, when illiberalism is in power. I don't think anybody really argues that. What has surprised me about it is how weak liberalism has felt in response. I'm a liberal. I'm a like a professional liberal one involved in liberal politics. And I don't think at this moment I could tell you what liberalism's vision is, who its leaders are.

In some way, I feel liberalism never really recovered from the Obama era when it had this grand victory in electing America's first black president when it had this thoughtful, deliberate, and frankly quite popular liberal leader and then it ended in Donald Trump twice.

But Donald Trump is not working out. He is not making people want more of what he is. But if he's going to be beaten, if illiberal political forces are going to turn back, I think you're going to need a liberalism that is aspirational again, a liberalism that has moral imagination again. A liberalism that stands for more than not this. And so I've been on this sort of esoteric personal quest, reading all these books in the liberal cannon, reading all these histories of liberalism, trying to think through like what in this very very long tradition is valuable for us right now.

One of the books I came across in this search is called the lost history of liberalism. It's by the historian Helena Rosenblatt. One of the arguments it makes is that before we ever had this word liberalism, in fact for thousands of years before the word, there was this tradition of being a liberal. And behind that tradition, there was this virtue called liberality.

And people thought this virtue was really, really important. As Rosenblat writes, "For almost 2,000 years, it meant demonstrating the virtues of a citizen, showing devotion to the common good and respecting the importance of mutual connectedness."

Liberality was talked about everywhere. You can read about it in Cicero, in John Lock, in the letters of George Washington. And yet, we never talk about it today. Liberalism as a political philosophy and movement, it completely elbowed out. Liberality is a virtue as an ethic a citizen aspires to meet. I want to be clear. I don't think a rediscovery of liberality is a complete answer to what ails liberalism, but I do think it's one piece of the puzzle. Helena Rosenlat is a professor at the CUNY graduate center. She's the author of liberal values Benjamin Constant and the politics of religion as well as the aforementioned the lost history of liberalism which I highly recommend. Helena Rosenblot, welcome to the show.

Helena Rosenblatt: Thank you so much for having me.

Ezra Klein: So to the extent people think about liberalism today which is let's be real a niche hobby I I think they define it as a philosophy of individual rights of individual expression. You write in your book that the word liberalism did not even exist until the early 19th century and for hundreds of years prior to its birth being liberal meant something very different. What did it mean?

Helena Rosenblatt: That's right. Being liberal really was not just about um believing in a certain or working towards a certain political design. It wasn't just about a constitutional form. It wasn't just about individual rights. It was actually more about moral development and about certain um a certain character development um that they felt was so so very important and that a a good constitution should promote. And and many of them thought that yes, rights are important, but they're important because they allow us to um uh to actually accomplish our obligations to uh they're very much concerned with establishing a good morally good regime. It's amazing how many of the early liberals were actually moralists at heart.

Ezra Klein: So talk me through the early word here. It's not even liberal, it's liberalas or where does this start for you?

Helena Rosenblatt: Liberalism as a word first of all was coined um around 1811 1812 and it was first theorized as a concept. People start talking about what is liberalism? Well, liberalism is this that not the other thing in the early 19th century in the wake of the French Revolution. It doesn't become this Anglo-American tradition until very late in the game. I say middle of the 20th century, does it become an Anglo-American tradition? Um, so this was something very exciting that I found in in my research. Um, so I decided to trace the word and the meaning of the word all way back to ancient Rome, which is liberal in ancient Rome. The the root of the word is liber, right? And the word liber, yes, it means free, but it also means generous, which I thought was so very very interesting. So if liberal were the really the qualities of freedom lovingness and generosity expected of a citizen um liberalas was the noun that went went with it. Um so this was an attitude that was expected of citizens in Rome when you are devoted to the commonwealth to the common good.

Ezra Klein: One thing that was a bit of an epiphany reading your book for me I think a lot of things are missing in modern liberalism. My interest in doing this episode and more that I think are going to come is trying to figure out why liberalism feels so exhausted at a moment that it is so needed and why so many of the books I read about it, some of the defenses I read of it are so aid. They like have no blood in them. But one thing that was interesting here was this idea that liberalism is built on a virtue, not a political philosophy. right liberality and as you just mentioned that the the old definitions of it and and you've have Cicero and John Lock and John Dunn and um but they have some kind of intersection between generosity and freedom but not freedom like we think of it now. So what did freedom mean in this context?

Helena Rosenblatt: It's really about having the freedom to voluntarily become the person that you should be. And this is dropped out of our conversation. We think of liberalism so much as you said being about individual rights and maximizing our choices. A good system of government would help you um give you the capacity to make those good choices that evolved over time. So in the medieval period it became Christianized and it's behaving freely the way God wants you to behave in a generous charitable way.

Ezra Klein: when when when you talk about this conception of freedom, this conception of what it means to be liberal, who are some of the people you quote and what are their arguments?

Helena Rosenblatt: Oh, well, as you can imagine, since you know, it's not a super long book. Uh, so I kind of uh move rather quickly and I have to uh make some strategic choices, but as you mentioned, there's there's Cicero and Senica and these are these are well-known names that have had tremendous influence.

Ezra Klein: What do they say? What is their vision of liberality?

Helena Rosenblatt: that liberality is about um reciprocity, exchange, behaving, gift giving and reciprocity is is uh fundamental. You need to know uh you need to be good to one another. Um very much about what they would call, you know, citizenly or I call citizenly virtues, things that make a commonwealth work and and and adhere, you know, stay together. That is not to I don't try to idealize you know these these thinkers either because you know you had slavery in in Rome which is uh so they're talking about a small group a small group an elite

Ezra Klein: I I think this is quite important and it's something threaded through your book um you write at some point that this idea of being a liberal which comes way before liberalism as a political philosophy is designed by and for the free wealthy and well-connected men who are in a position to give and receive benefits in ancient Rome and some other things that that emerge as the book goes on. One thing it makes clear is that if today your problem with liberalism and liberals is you find them to be a bunch of smug condescending elites, that problem goes way back. That's always been braided into the the issue here. Um and that there was like uh like it was a set of virtues that was associated with like the noble born and set them apart in a way that would make them the ideal citizens. And that feels to me actually like a quite profound tension at the heart of the project.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yes, absolutely. Um, you know, they don't even always live up to the ideal.

Ezra Klein: Sure don't.

Helena Rosenblatt: Uh, and but they had that ideal and they talked about it. Um, and they designed an educational system, a liberal arts education, um, that was supposed to cultivate these virtues. um this liberality in elite boys um but there was a lot expected of the elite as well you know so I I don't think it was just mere you know hypocrisy and that um they were an elite but they had obligations I'm writing a book right now about Madame Dal a great uh early liberal and a and a woman a powerhouse such a fascinating woman right at the it was some say that it was in her salon in her drawing room that uh liberalism was invented. Her name appears as a very important sort of power broker and intellectual in the early 19th century and then gets dropped out. Her she is endlessly frustrated by where are the good men? We need some good men. Um just not only to uh pursue the policies that we need but to serve as examples.

Ezra Klein: Uh a question echoing through history right now.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah. Um, I think this is also somewhat inspiring or provocative to think of from our current vantage point, which is to say that one of the problems that early theorists of being liberal are trying to think through is what are the habits, what is a kind of education, what is a form of personal development needed to instill the virtues that will be necessary to hold together complex societies. What is needed to hold together a country or even a city is not easy. I actually think this helps um explain one reason liberals have always been so shocked and uh repulsed by Donald Trump himself. Not just Trumpism or the Republican party, but but him, which is like quite deep in the like the liberal theory and an inheritance I'm not even sure people totally realize that they have absorbed is a sense that to make a country work, people have to behave in a certain way towards each other. And the ways in which he flouts the rules of behavior, the ways in which he acts towards other people are almost separate from anything he believes like a like a profound challenge to to what liberalism what liberalism believes of how you make a society work. I think in many ways he is proving that there was something um important in that. But but this question of how do you instill in a society the virtues necessary to make a society work? Understanding that as an actually hard problem.

Ezra Klein: Yeah. I think there's juice in that today.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah. No, absolutely. And um the the fact that they're elitists, I mean think I think you mentioned that uh liberals throughout their history have tended to be elitist but they demanded a a lot. there were a lot of obligations and they took that extremely seriously. There's a section in in my book where I talk about Lincoln and how much he was admired by liberals who are very uh worried about this this problem of elites uh you know perhaps not uh being able to show people how to behave and to be the kind of leaders that a liberal society needs. And they thought you know at that point they thought maybe a liberal democracy would fail there. there was no real example of it lasting. Um you know the would the American uh example of this exceptional example actually uh work um and liberal and Lincoln showed that it could and he did it in this uh beautiful way that kind of made people uh optimistic about liberal democracy. He was not a demagogue. He did not talk down to people. He raised them up. He engaged in moral uplift and they recognized that and it showed that a liberal democracy could survive if it had a leader like this. They also recognized that it was they those kinds of leaders are very hard to find.

Ezra Klein: What is liberal in the liberal arts?

Helena Rosenblatt: It's the the purpose of the liberal arts uh education is really to form leaders to form freedom loving and moral leaders and giving them the tools uh rhetoric and history and some science for sure but it's supposed to train citizens uh really through engagement with the classics. In the early times, there was a lot of emphasis on being able to speak in public um to speak in a convincing way in public. And this is all really to convince people to uh become citizens and to do the right thing. It sounds terribly idealistic and I don't always want to again idealize them or say these people were were perfect in every way. Far from it. Um but the ideas were pretty beautiful and I think we could we could uh learn something from them.

Ezra Klein: Well, the ideas are the education is such an important part of this book. Other histories of liberalism I've read actually reveal the same thing that when you go back into the liberal tradition, the purpose of education is hotly debated and held at the center of the project. Today, you don't have that discourse in the same way. We talk about whether or not education is working, not so much what it is for. It's almost taken as evident that the purpose of education is to prepare you to get a job.

Helena Rosenblatt: That's right.

Ezra Klein: And that was not the purpose of the liberal arts.

Helena Rosenblatt: No, it was not. Today, it's a lot about vocational training, a lot about preparing uh students to get jobs. These were considered uh menial menial tasks for they liberal arts was for the leaders uh in the time. So it was for and and the citizens were the leaders. uh so uh of society in in Rome in medieval period as well it was always about uh something other than preparing you for a job. Isn't it funny that today when people uh try to defend the humanities which are you know under siege uh in many universities u frankly u and they try to advocate for a liberal arts education that they say oh well actually um there's proof that having a liberal arts education will get you that job. So it's it's that whole discussion about what a citizen um of a democracy um means what what it means to be a citizen. What are the values? What is our common language? Uh what does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy? Uh all of these uh questions that are so so important have kind of dropped out of our discussion. People are even embarrassed sometimes.

Ezra Klein: And do you think that's because citizenship is broadly shared now? And so it isn't seen as a thing that people have to work to achieve. Or do you think that's because um that politics doesn't work? People don't like it. People don't want to be told what they have to do to to be a citizen. What is your

Helena Rosenblatt: That's a great That's a That's a great question. Um as a historian, I I always um apologize for saying history is complicated, so usually there's not just one answer to that. Uh terrific question.

Ezra Klein: Just give me the one that best serves my current purposes. Or maybe another way to ask it is at what point in your view did the strand of liberal thinking that was about the cultivation and disciplining of the self drop out

Helena Rosenblatt: definitely it it happened during uh the the cold war let's say I mean this is uh and it's that's pretty recent in in the history that I describe in my book right but this idea of disciplining the self or the or talking about the collectivity about your duties about um any government or state making um getting involved in forming citizens a public education system that forms citizens started to have a a scary kind of ring to it when you've seen fascism and communism and I liberals uh wanted to show like oh we're not that we're not going in that direction um we are uh not about the state forming citizens. Uh we are about individual rights about property rights in particular and I think that really gave probably the impetus uh to something that was probably happening already.

Ezra Klein: What's interesting to me about this is that the critiques you hear today of liberalism go back quite a long way. you have this part of the book where you're describing fights in England in the 1830s and the conservatives uh what they say about the liberals even then is that critics of liberalism accused it of meaning the exact opposite of liberality. They accuse liberals of being selfish, egoistic, only interested in the gratification of their individual desires. So, you know, you're describing this tradition that is focused on, you know, personal cultivation and the liberal arts. So, at what point is this critique that no, you just want to be able to follow your own desires wherever they go and not have any anybody tell you not to? When does that enter into the fray?

Helena Rosenblatt: Right at the beginning. You know, we've um it's been shown that liberalism, the actual word was first a porative, a term of insult. It was uh coined as I said in 1811 but by the enemies of the liberals because of what had happened in the French Revolution and the word liberal when it refers to something political is often written with an accent on the e to show its kind of foreigness. It's something dangerous. It's something it has to do with you know the revolution and we don't want that right? all of this getting rid of noble privileges creating um uh which we would call civil equality isn't that a great thing they would say no that's removing uh the privileges that they had had very for such a long time so that's being selfish that's not being magnanimous um and so they the Catholics mainly Catholic counterrevolutionaries uh immediately started denouncing liberals for being selfish because they were taking away their privileges right I mean they had a whole slew of of insulting terms that they used as synonyms for liberals. Um, anarchists, they're against the family, they're uh sexually deviant, uh, all of this because it seemed like they wanted to free up all the and in some ways rightly so, um, free up all the constraints of the old regime. Throughout the 19th century, the Catholic Church was probably the most powerful enemy of liberalisms. The popes one after the other, you know, just uh spewed, you know, the most vile kind of, if I may say, uh, rhetoric about liberals, about how very bad and sinful the world they liberalism is sin. I mean, there were works there were works that came out like that. So, and I think actually, you know, interestingly enough, today's criticisms, for example, by post liberals and so on, which are many of them are the Catholic actually reviving some of that language and using very old arguments.

Ezra Klein: I I've sat here with Patrick Denine. I mean, not literally in this room, but on this podcast and you know, I was like, well, you know, what is your where is this coming from with you? And he's like one of these post-lberal close to JD Vance and he's like, well, you know, the left wants to destroy the family. Yeah. like I don't think we do but but that is his view of it.

Ezra Klein: Um how much is the tension between the Catholic Church and liberals or liberalism? How much is it around what I think of is like liberalism's first significant political idea? Because so far we've been tracking this almost virtue that is a way for the powerful to think of themselves as developing in a way that is pro-social. Um, if I were to be uh, I think straightforward about it, it's not a way to reorder society. But this idea of generosity towards your fellow citizen begins to flower into an idea of toleration when that is more radical and toleration is a way of reordering society. So can you tell a bit of that story? how we get from, you know, liberality to to actual arguments for for toleration and then how that begins to put, you know, liberals in tension with religious authorities.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah, absolutely. um many key liberals, you know, the this founding group that I talk about in in France, um Madame Dal and Banja Con um were actually Protestants and the Protestants were way over represented in terms of numbers in liberal movements throughout French history. Um and the reason here is, you know, Protestants in France wanted to be tolerated to be actually recognized as citizens, which they weren't, right? Um but um so so this is a key a key um one of the key sort of developments in the history of of liberalism when it moves from being just what we were talking about the virtues of a like a Roman citizen or a or a Christian um nobleman who should give to the poor and be liberal and magnanimous to now you're starting to say that we have to be accepting of of difference and this is definitely to democratize the and you start using liberal uh not to just um define or describe an individual who's magnanimous but a whole society clubs can be liberal because they allow different types of members. Um, religions can be liberal when they are tolerant and and you can understand them. The church, the Catholic church in particular gets gets uh very worried about this uh when you're going to be um uh accepting uh that it's not the one religion.

Ezra Klein: But before we go into the Catholic Church's reaction, I I want to spend a moment on this because from where we sit now in the United States of America, I don't think religious tolerance strikes many people as a particularly radical idea. It is taken broadly for granted. And I'd like you to paint a little bit more of the picture of what is the context into which this argument is beginning to play out and the relationship to you know religion is like a fundamental divide in societies and the stakes are very high for you know people who believe. So just tell me a little bit about what is the situation into which this argument over religious toleration is entering.

Helena Rosenblatt: Well, you know, today we're here very much about, you know, celebrating difference and diversity is a is a great thing, including a religious uh diversity. Um, but what I found, and one might find this somewhat troubling, is that these Protestants that I'm talking about, the early founders of of liberalism really, uh, did not advocate toleration for toleration's sake because they are very uh uh hostile to or disdainful towards what they call superstition and dogmas. So dogmas have held people back in their opinion. Uh the church of course in in France they were in charge of education. They're in charge of censorship. They basically find and you can see this in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations which is really funny is they believe in a free marketplace of religion. So that if you tolerate our religions, they can then um sort of fight among themselves and this is going to lead to a purification uh of religions and eventually people are going to become liberal Protestants like they are or unitarians type um or or deists, you know, have a religion. They're not anti-religious, but the way you please God is by being good to your fellow citizen, by doing good to the to the community, not necessarily praying certain times of of the day or doing certain rituals or believing in certain dogmas um but being good. So you could see also that certain not just the Catholic church but certain Orthodox churches would be upset by this because because uh literally if this is the case, what do you need churches for? you can believe in God and be a good person uh without going to church.

Ezra Klein: I I want to look more closely at something you said early in that answer which is that tolerance toleration in this framing is not just a nice civically virtuous thing. It's not about being polite. That there is a theory here about the marketplace of ideas. Um, one of the other books on liberalism I've quite liked is Edmond Faucets's uh, liberalism the life of an idea I think is the subtitle and he makes more than you do of the idea that central to liberalism is the idea that in a conflictrridden disputatious society that you can turn difference into something constructive through argumentation through the exchange of ideas that tolerance and other things that are built on it freedom of speech etc. that it's not about being nice. It is about this belief which sometimes proves out and sometimes does not go as well as people hope that you can make disagreement not into something that tears societies apart but into something that refineses them and makes them better and helps people find truth and progress and a way forward. How do you think about that?

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because it's a really important um central uh aspect of of liberalism is this kind of optimism. If you accept this kind of uh this toleration, progress will be the result. People will improve, society will improve. We need this sort of battle of of ideas um to refine ourselves and our way of of thinking and uh and there'll be a a better outcome in the future. Yes. So marketplaces of ideas without state interference, without church interference allow these ideas to compete with each other, including religious ideas and this will be kind of a purification process. And yeah, they were very optimistic about the future. Today that's kind of it seems so so naive this belief, you know, in the arc of history, the march of history they talked about the whole time. Um, I mean, they weren't naive and they weren't um silly. Uh, I know one of the the guys who's sort of a hero in my in my book is uh Banjo Con and he said, "We need pleasing illusions. We need pleasing illusions to make us better."

Ezra Klein: Well, also to maybe cut into some of that pessimism, this is hard to do well. Liberalism is hard to do well. Complex society is hard to do well. Sometimes you have failed to do well. Sometimes you failed to live up to your own virtues. Some some of the collapse in confidence uh in that I think is misplaced. I don't think that what happened is all these ideals failed. I think in many cases we failed the ideals. But but I want to get it something that exists in there as a shadow side. One thing that is very present in your book is the contempt many liberals in the 1700s 1800s have for religion or certainly religions that they don't belong to. Right. As you say, backwards superstitious. Um, and this comes right up into the modern era, right? where there's a real feeling among the religious that liberals look down on them, you know, among evangelical Christians and and and and others that they won't even that they try to use a state to change their behavior. Um that, you know, you can't even refuse to bake a cake for a couple that is getting married of the same sex. And so there there is this critique of liberalism that that you see throughout the ages, which is that liberals are tolerant of everything but what they consider to be the intolerant. And if they consider you to be intolerant, backwards, bigoted, then they will bring the full force of the state, if they control it, down upon your head and it creates backlashes. But it is this very hard problem like this paradox of tolerance. How do you tolerate people who don't want to be tolerant? How do you then not become intolerant?

Helena Rosenblatt: I don't know if they ever solved that problem. They were very No, I mean, one has to if if you really get try to understand the world from their perspective. You know, it was really hard to be a liberal most of the time. It was there was such formidable obstacles, such strong enemies um and such intolerance of their views. Uh it really serious stuff to to um think of the Catholic Church coming back into power, the counterrevolutionaries. You know what what would happen to you? So do you tolerate them? Do you allow them to use the free press to uh to uh attack constitutional government? At what point do you censor? We struggle with this today. Um and and they certainly did then as well.

Ezra Klein: What what in your view is the first society or state in which something that we would now recognize as liberalism takes power? When when does it move from a theory outside power uh oh yeah as a political philosophy not as a virtue into something that is being wielded by those with authority.

Helena Rosenblatt: We have it, you know, famously in 1830, um there's a revolution that brings what's considered a liberal uh a liberal government into power and uh it it unfortunately fails in the 1848 revolution in France 1830. Uh what happens in the French Revolution, it's the rise of the bourgeoisi. It's the fact that the no nobles um the the privileges of the nobility are overturned and you have uh you know rule of law civic equality and actually you know Marx talks about this um communists uh talk about this as being the bourgeoa kind of revolution and and how terrible it is because it became very quickly um considered a selfish regime a money money-driven machine.

Ezra Klein: Let's stay on Markx for a minute. What is his critique of liberalism?

Helena Rosenblatt: Liberalism is really the rule of the bourgeoisi. Yeah. It's middle class, it's money. If you look at France, he also was really much looking at France, right? Everybody's looking at France. What's going on with the success of revolutions? It's like a laboratory of political ideas, right? So this is a a bourgeoa revolution to them and it's and it's liberals who carry these ideas forward. And but what happens in Mark's thought is of course once they become take over power, they're going to exploit the workers and uh just make more and more money and exploit the workers until they will rise up and you'll have the communist revolution and the takeover. But the thing is that there's no way around it. You you need the liberals to take power. You need the bourgeoa in Marxist in Marx's view. So he's not anti this precisely. He's just this is this is the motor of history.

Ezra Klein: Where does liberalism begin to become interested in or associated with the actual redistribution of resources in society from the rich to the poor? where does it become connected to social welfare states and you know when you talk about FDR and that later liberalism right and a lot happens between you know what we've been discussing in there at some point this moves away from just being uh a set of approaches to a marketplace of ideas or you know individual virtue and it becomes connected to a view that power needs to be redistributed and money and security need to be redistributed when does that begin to happen

Helena Rosenblatt: right so you're right in the the Early liberals were really uh mostly concerned with a um uh creating a political system um getting rid of the divine right of kings and having constitutional representative government with guarantees for individual rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion uh and private property rights. um rule of law obviously very important but as they're also uh pragmatic people and over time with the industrial revolution with urbanization they see new problems arise right the idea that there is poorerism a new word that that's invented at the time that means people are stuck workers are stuck in poverty and what to do about it some people start saying listen just uh deregulation isn't working for these people they're stuck And with our core values of generosity and freedom lovingness, obviously this is not these people are not free. Um they're not a able to morally refine themselves or to contribute to society in any meaningful way uh morally or intellectually. So uh government now needs to now needs to step in first with factory legislation and such and eventually with some sort of in tax distribution and so on.

Ezra Klein: There there is an interesting dimension there that I think you hear less of today which is a connection of a social welfare state everything from education to healthcare and on and on as being not just a matter of justice maybe not even at all a matter of justice but instead a matter of uplift. you're trying to create the conditions for a capable, educated, productive citizenry. And and something you see in a lot of the early arguments about it is it it is not you see less of the argument, at least in in my reading, that society is unfair. Um that's more sort of how you know I would you know argue for a lot of these policies today and more of the argument that this needs to be done because it is the only way to have a citizenry capable of participating in liberal democracy you know able to fight in your wars right like it's a a question of building the capacity of the citizenry it's very very concerned with like the uplift of the individual.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it strikes me also um that factory legislation uh at first uh for example uh again in France was uh you know when it came to women you know shorten the workday make it a little less harsh for them. Why? Um because they'll have better breast milk. They it's it's uh they'll be healthier and they'll produce healthier soldiers. basically boys who will fight in wars. What I want to say there is that Germany suddenly starts to play a big role. Um their thinkers they had thinkers who said that this whole idea of free markets and less effair were great theoretically but weren't working in practice right now. And what you need is to actually study um the workers and demographic patterns and prices and uh salaries and so on and come and and see what's actually going on and then devise policies accordingly. And these ideas um were uh spread through to uh and were written about their ideas were translated and and talked about in England and France. But one of the really critical moments not just about ideas um great articles and and theories being developed in Germany it's also there the power of Prussia right so it was a big shock the prank FrancoRussian war was a huge shock u Napoleon III thought he could have a little war with Prussia make him um you know give him some glory and some popularity and lo and behold the exact opposite happened. The Prussians won very quickly and it was a shock. It was a shock to one to to everybody that France meant to be the the most powerful country in Europe could be defeated like this. And they start to ask why. And they start thinking, well, guess what? German soldiers are uh vaccinated. Um they're much healthier. Their their railroads work.

Ezra Klein: Germany is very early to have a state-run healthcare program.

Helena Rosenblatt: Exactly. And this catches on again. And it's because of you know

Ezra Klein: but it doesn't come from the liberals initially. I mean Bismar is a key key mover here.

Helena Rosenblatt: Exactly. And that's it's an interesting uh twist that sometimes the um influences on liberalism are not necessarily from within. The first Napoleon is is what made people like man the early liberals say like we need something so that this never happens again. We need constitutions that stop somebody like Napoleon, a demagogue, a dictator from um from coming to power. And then now it's Bismar, but look at his policies. Look what he's doing to the population. They're healthier. They're stronger. They're more patriotic. This is really when there was what's called what came to be called a new liberalism. And they called it that, new liberalism in England. Uh where uh a a group of people started to say, "No, we need to learn from the Germans and we need some government intervention to help the workers to spread the wealth." um and that the uh government has an important role to play in the economy in a just and and liberal um polity and this is you know so they learned their lessons the hard way that way.

Ezra Klein: So how then do you have this weird split that makes so much of the conversation about liberalism confusing today where you have a liberalism in much of Europe that means lz fair that means that you are in many cases opposed to the law for state and you have a liberalism very much associated with America maybe coming from Germany that it's the exact opposite they agree on you know things like free speech and and and you know some other dimensions around rights but you do have liberals split into two streams. One of which is profoundly skeptical of the government and sees the government as the source of much tyranny and the other which sees the government and a more generous government as the guarantor of a kind of freedom.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah, that's right. What happens then is in in England the eventually uh the new liberals kind of win out and they drop the new and they're just called liberals, right? And that's what happens in America. They don't call themselves new liberals. They start calling themselves first progressives and then liberals. Wilson actually there's a moment you can see where he's saying calling himself a progressive and then he switches to liberal. It's quite interesting. In France they never make that move. So liberalism without any descriptive term before it means uh the less a fair liberalism small government liberalism. And today in most of the world um that's what liberalism mean right it's sort of left right of center free markets small government whereas in America colloquially it tends to mean big government nobody says therefore big government but more interventionism more of a redistributive state bigger role for the state

Ezra Klein: who in your view are the most important American liberal thinkers if you're if you're thinking of a cannon of American liberalism

Helena Rosenblatt: well that's interesting it well that's interesting I mean you you of course have to talk about John RS um and he comes very late in late in the so I think more than thinkers I mean there's John Dwey who's very who's very important particularly in his you know educa liberal education there are people like uh I mention um that I wouldn't call them great innovative thinkers I mean John RS obviously great philosopher of the 20th century but on his caliber or on the caliber of of of of John Lockach or John Stewart Mill. I don't I don't see any. I hope not. You know, American uh intellectual historians aren't going to like email me like crazy saying that I'm being unfair, but I I don't think uh America was notable for its liberal theorists until uh quite late in the game. We do have great liberal leaders. I mentioned Lincoln. I mentioned

Ezra Klein: this is underplayed in our own tradition.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah. Um, and I'd like to say more on this because I actually think great liberal practitioners in some ways to me are more interesting than great liberal theorists. I find it to be a problem with American liberalism that it is so obsessed with John RWS and people thinks that's people think that is because I don't like John RWS and that's not quite it. I just think that um in terms of something that is a hopefully a popular and public philosophy uh somebody whose central work is fundamentally unreadable by the public does not really make sense as a as a foundation for that and he's not the foundation for that right Frederick Douglas Abraham Lincoln Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah. Um John Dwey I do think is actually quite important here. But FDR, you have really remarkable liberal leaders in this country. Many of them I mean having uh written remarkable things about how to think about liberalism. Many of them coming from outside the halls of power. I think liberalism is often most interesting when it is in a tense relationship with power. But I I'm curious how you see that that tradition and how it altered what American liberalism became and and and is.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I think that's wonderful. But if you look at them at the people um I look at at the very beginning, you know, there wasn't this great divide between, you know, the great thinkers and the great um political leaders. I mean, somebody like they were very pragmatic earlier. They're

Ezra Klein: Crow is a political figure.

Helena Rosenblatt: He's a political figure. Benjamin Michael Stone becomes a a deputy in the chamber of of of deputies. Uh John Stewart Mill uh runs for office. Uh so there isn't this and and you know if you read the speeches if you read some of the speeches the the wonderful speeches people were making in those days you know drawing on Montescu and and Lock and they're they're draw you know they're reading the stuff as well. So there wasn't maybe this great um divide between intellectuals and practitioners and

Ezra Klein: what does that tell you in America? What was different about it it here? And maybe it's worth starting actually with the founders. I think there's a a lot of interesting um you know I think there's interesting argumentation over how much to think of the the American founders as inside the American liberal tradition as in tension with what later becomes the liberal tradition. Right. There are obviously claimed by all sides here. How do you think about the the founding and with its profound internal contradictions around freedom and human bondage? I I've become more and more interested in in American political thought and institutions and history. Uh unfortunately because of the way um disciplines and uh concentrations work, I'm more of an expert on on European history. But what I've read about the founding and about the founding fathers and what was going on there just fills me with enormous respect and gratitude. And I think you know I would you know for for the wonderful work that they did being both thinkers and actors and uh Franklin and Jefferson came to Paris and were very much interested also in in French matters and vice versa. Um the American constitution influenced early liberals because uh you know they thought it was an amazing amazing document. Um, and maybe that's the thing that's so wonderful is to to to see exactly those things coming together, the ideas and the practices coming together in the in the founding fathers to produce this amazing document.

Ezra Klein: That's a very glittering answer. But but I think a critic of liberalism would say that what good is your liberalism if it can include slavery in its founding constitution? or in more of the European case, what good is your liberalism if it is so interwoven with colonialism?

Helena Rosenblatt: And I mean there were many, you know, people who certainly believed in many liberal ideas we're talking about here who made space for both of those practices within their liberalism, right? Um well, I don't mean to again idealize these um out of proportion. These pe people these are early liberals and liberals have never been perfect. They're uh often suffer from the same prejudices, the prejudices of their time. There are um exclusions there.

Ezra Klein: But how did they grapple with this? I mean, we've talked a lot about freedom here. How did they grapple with this?

Helena Rosenblatt: Uh um how did they grapple with this? I think there were I mean, other people can speak more intelligently about the US Constitution and the the position, the slavery within the document and say that this is really a question also of compromise. It's a horrible thing to imagine, but I think there was uh debates going on there and and pol politics going on that are unsemly today. And uh you have John Stewart Mill saying absolutely uh atrocious things about how desperatism um how desperatism is okay when you're dealing with barbarians or something. Talking about British imperialism in India. You have Tokville who was okay apparently with burning silos um in in Algeria. that lock you know awful stuff but at the same time um these uh people were then from within this was not a liberal position I would say this is as many people were saying you are betraying your own principles and conservatives were also for even perhaps even more so for for colonialism imperialism it's horrible to say but racism was rampant um sexism was rampant um if anyone was against it, if we can, we don't, you know, they were liberals basically.

Ezra Klein: Well, this is the other side of it too where there's a lot of liberal abolitionism. There obviously is like the long effort among liberals to expand the franchise, you know, to women and and and and then to um you know, people of other races and you know, a lot of fights over immigration. You have this interesting moment in the book where you say maybe the first use of uh using liberal as a noun somebody signs an anti-slavery pamphlet a liberal right it is a tension.

Helena Rosenblatt: Yeah for sure. So the thing to remember is that for example when it comes to women uh no you know liberals did not really lobby for women's uh suffrage until very very very late. they were not um you know at all for for giving women the vote until it was almost forced upon them. But on the other hand, the women when they did fight for uh admission into uh political rights, they used the terms of liberalism, they went to the guys and they said, "Hey, you know, you're not living up to your own principles. You're like an aristocracy, an aristocracy of of sex. You're acting like death spots. um we want to participate, we want to also be citizens, we can have the virtues of citizens. So they use that same language to say um we have shared responsibilities and we bring something to the table, something liberal. So they use the language and I think that's also true with Frederick Douglas um uh and uh other uh groups that have been prejudiced against and even uh subordinated and oppressed that they can use the language of liberalism, use the lofty notions and the ideals to argue for their own rights and their own uh capacities.

Ezra Klein: What what is it in liberalism that what ideals in your view? What thoughts or principles or or or shared values create this kind of time bomb aspect of it which you see go off repeatedly in history where um you know you go back in liberalism and the terms of liberalism get argued to blow up the constraints of the last liberalism. But as we said at the beginning of this conversation, this begins as a quite aristocratic ideal. Eventually, it becomes in many cases a philosophical weapon to expand the terms of inclusion and and and freedom. What is it that does that in your view?

Helena Rosenblatt: Well, you know, ideas don't travel in a vacuum. So, I would always say that the facts on the ground change. um socioeconomic pressures, uh the yeah, changes in the economy, wars, all of this creates conditions, creates conflicts, creates crisis um that liberals then have to confront and deal with. And and that goes to, you know, everybody's talking about the the crisis of liberal democracy today and the crisis of liberalism. Well, there there's been a succession of crisis. Liberals have had to confront. Liberalism was born in crisis, the crisis of the French Revolution. And so when these moments happen, when there's extreme tension, when there is new problems, uh it can throw liberalism sort of off its kilter for a while, uh all sorts of uh debates, uh occur, become more heated, um confused. Even there have been moments in liberalism's history where they literally start and I have lists of articles, what is liberalism? What do we stand for? What is true liberalism? No, that's false liberalism. And they have these debates. And as I said before, that can weaken that can that can weaken the movement, but it can also bring strength uh to it, allow it to evolve uh these this conflict, a battle of ideas, brings out something new that really responds to the crisis that's on the ground.

Ezra Klein: Are there specific moments in liberalism history that this moment reminds you of?

Helena Rosenblatt: I've even started to think about the original crisis uh you know the crisis of of of Napoleon's desperatism the uh liberals had had such high hopes for establishing a liberal uh regime based on constitutional rule and uh representative government with these uh rights uh protecting the individual and then the revolution went uh derailed into this horrible period of the terror and eventually was kind of they thought that Napoleon would come and and save the revolution. So there was a lot of hope that this charismatic figure who claimed to want to save the revolution was making all the right noises. He was going to bring peace to France. He was going to bring back order. He was going to protect all these things liberals had fought for so hard. And then instead he became this despot and a demagogue. and uh he um used wars, you know, to divert attention to what he was doing at home. He um gave gifts to people. He lined the pockets of his friends. Um he uh flattered people um gave them uh power that uh but but at the same time that he amassed power in his own in his own hands. This was profoundly demoralizing um to uh the early liberals that I'm talking about who had this lofty notion of what uh freer, better, more moral, more humane world would look like and look what it um derailed into.

Ezra Klein: So what did they learn from that?

Helena Rosenblatt: They learned that uh you needed certain safeguards in place. This is really when you get like liberalism as a um constitutional uh uh way of thinking uh balance of of power, separations of powers, uh individual rights, freedom, how important freedom of presses is, how important freedom of religion is. Napoleon used religion, you know, to to uh Buttress's power. Uh so uh all of these constitutional uh ideas really came together then and they you know it happened again and again over the course of the 19th century that you'd have these very clever charismatic figures who could speak directly to the people. I understand you. I represent you. It I don't need these we don't need these representative institutions. We don't I because I speaks directly to you. I am you sort of I mean that's what a demagogue does and that's what populism is right is that you don't need the intermediaries and they were very worried about this and the system they came up with constitutional liberalisms was meant to make it impossible but that also made them really think more than ever that we needed an educated citizenry. We needed uh the intellectuals needed to step up. newspapers needed to step up and educate the public as to what it means to be a citizen of a liberal regime of a liberal form of government. um they wrote articles. Madame Daly wrote novels in which she was um you could see her trying to foster the right kind of moral inclinations. By that I mean compassion, generosity, socialility, understanding, understanding of shared responsibilities that you needed to educate people to this because without it without an educated critically minded, alert citizenry, you can easily the people will fall prey to uh unscrupulous actors, demagogues. was on their minds the whole time because they saw how vulnerable those liberal constitutions could be. They really depended on a morally educated, civic-minded and educated and alert citizenship.

Ezra Klein: I take the current crisis of liberalism to be not any one crisis but but but a couple of things and this is a non-exhaustive list. One is that liberalism in its modern American form became associated with power and with the status quo and with reigning institutions as opposed to being seen as a challenge to them. So the more fed up people got, the less liberalism looked like an answer because it was increasingly people who seemed sort of comfortable with how society was working. I think another crisis is that individualism has gone very very very far. Uh and I think the internet and social media and algorithmic media and the fracturing of what we know and and our bonds from each other and the weakening of civic institutions and religions and you know labor unions and you know all these things that that you know Bob Putnham and others have documented. I think that there is a like a like a crisis of individualism that has become a partially a crisis of meaning, but I also just think requires different ways of thinking about freedom. Um, and I think liberalism in its modern form is very very skeptical of individual responsibility and communal obligations because it has seen those used for oppressive reasons or used to sort of push people out to the margins of society or to blame them for things that have been done to them. But it also has left it with very little language. Um, in which to talk about something that is not just individualism. Maybe on the question of individualism, something you describe in the book is that at other times liberals actually were quite averse to that word and they preferred individuality or one I I like more personhood. I I'm curious why they preferred those words and also what you see in that that might be relevant to today.

Helena Rosenblatt: So yes, uh they shied away from that word. Individualism um really had an meant was kind of a synonym for them to selfishness. It's it's um uh and and Toqueville you'll see uses it that way I think in democracy in America. It's it's just again it's an ism. Isms are very often pjoratives and individuality is more uh about you know becoming the best person you can be uh developing yourself your capacities of flourishing individual flourishing. individualism today we're have become very much a narcissistic society unfortunately I think the more choices we are have that's that's better um it's it's about you know I don't want to go on about sounding horrible about us today but I do feel that we're become very inwardlooking and narcissistic

Ezra Klein: and and what parts of the the sort of liberal past do you think could be helpful in renovating an answer to that.

Helena Rosenblatt: I really think that people are uh looking searching for meaning. You mentioned that and I think that u in order to go forward we we can draw on this uh history that we have and think and and kind of recover this this moral language of of character of shared responsibilities of uh moral moral improvement. looking at all these things that we have now that our um people before us for centuries didn't have and think of them as ways to see if we can improve ourselves uh develop our capacities and do good for everyone. You know, it's funny when I talk this way. I'm I'm constantly aware that I must be sounding silly somehow. And it's a reflection of the cynicism that's in the culture, right? Why is it somewhat embarrassing to speak about making our improving ourselves and and uh doing good for society, keeping the common good in mind? There's something uh funny there. And I and I think that's that's a shame.

Ezra Klein: Well, also isn't there though a a a question of well, who gets to decide what the common good is and what happens when we disagree?

Helena Rosenblatt: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's that's the that's a danger. But that's why we have to uh come to a gather at least and discuss it and come to some kind of I think I think people come together. they kind of can uh agree on things that are good for everyone.

Ezra Klein: I think it's a good place to end. Always our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

Helena Rosenblatt: Okay. Um I am always uh I'm always um influenced by in such a good way uh the work of Sam Moy. I don't know if you know his his work. I think he's coming out with a new book that I'm looking forward to. But I would like to recommend liberalism against itself which really picks up on some of the themes also from my last chapter and it's about cold war liberalism and sort of why we went wrong in the cold war, why liberals went wrong. Very interesting. Um the second one is a is a fun read um which is Alex Leferber's Liberalism as a way of life and it's just uh delightful basically telling us that we're all liberals whether we know it or not. Uh he he draws on uh comedy shows and TV series and sort of uh just just just a lovely uplifting book. Um, and then, uh, last but certainly not least, is thinking with machines because we haven't had a chance to talk about AI, but everybody's talking about it now. And if there's so many books out, but if um, you want to read one book, I think that's the one. It's Basant Dar. Um, it's a story of his life um, with AI. He was one of the first to teach it and to bring it to Wall Street. And so he talks about it's its um evolution over time and the good and the bad, the risks and the benefits. And uh full disclosure, he's my husband. I'm I hope I was allowed to do that.

Ezra Klein: Liberals always scratching each other's back. Helena Rosenlat, thank you very much.

Helena Rosenblatt: Thank you.