Talking U.S. Politics on France’s Radio Courtoisie
I recently was invited to speak on Radio Courtoisie, a French conservative cultural/political radio station, on U.S. politics. For French-speakers among you, you have up to Sunday 3 November to listen!
The other panelists and I tried to focus on America’s long-term ideological trends rather than speculate about the imminent elections.
Hector Burnouf discussed America’s European cultural roots despite a national narrative stressing a radical break with the Old World. He noted that Donald Trump represents a significant turn away from universalism in U.S. politics in favor of a recognition of the United States’ particularism and particular interests.
Gabriel Piniés discussed America’s political (bi)polarization and the fairly non-ideological and heterogenous coalitions resulting from the two-party system. He also described the recent rise of an “illiberal Right” in America, often Catholic as with writers such as Patrick Deneen, who have been critical of “mainstream conservatism’s inability to conserve anything.”
For flavor, the showrunners decided to play “Rich Men North of Richmond,” an appropriate choice given this is probably the biggest political song of the last two years, but also one that made me cringe, as well as a version of “In the Pines.”
I discussed past, present, and possible future influential political ideologies in America. In particular:
The founding ideologies of Protestantism, classical liberalism, and classical republicanism.
The rise of the liberal-democratic consensus; the cycle of rising egalitarianism and centralization followed conservative backlash; and the Wilsonian foreign policy consensus of spreading liberal democracy across the world as a human universal.
The already influential embryonic ideologies of wokism, Trumpism, and the Tech Right, which may develop into more coherent ideologies in the future.
I was pleased I was able to make just about all the points I had wanted to. I will put up an article later based on my speaking notes.
I have a dedicated microphone but listening to the beginning of the show, I think I may need to invest in a higher quality one.