Robert Kagan on American Anti-liberalism, from the 1920s to the 2020s

Conversations with Bill Kristol

Is today's anti-liberalism a new phenomenon in American politics? What might earlier eras in US history have to teach us?
To discuss these questions, we are joined, again, by Robert Kagan, the historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Drawing on his new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again, Kagan argues that we “don’t realize that the [anti-liberal] movement we’re looking at today has been visible in every generation since the founding.” Kagan draws particular attention to the 1920s, when anti-immigration sentiment, white identity politics, and sympathy for authoritarian figures were prevalent in America. Kagan notes that the MAGA movement can be understood as a part of a long history of anti-liberalism that runs counter to the tradition of the founders, yet remains endemic to American democracy. Liberal democracy in America thus needs to be fought for and cannot simply be assumed.