Americans have been comparing ourselves to the Romans since 1776 and before yet the decline of the rule of law and our republic is not inevitable

Yascha Mounk sits down with sociologist Frank Furedi (In Defense of Populism) on The Good Fight to debate whether modern populism represents a legitimate democratic correction against technocratic elites or an existential threat to liberal democratic norms.

It’s a compelling discussion on populism and its place within the liberal democratic order. Towards the end, Furedi makes a notable point on how the classical concept of tolerance has shifted:

What I really worry about at the moment, and I go back to tolerance all the time because I think tolerance is the key issue of our time, is that people in government have invented expressions that are fundamentally hostile to the ideal of tolerance. Take, for example, the expression that people in the British government use: “zero tolerance.” They think the idea of zero tolerance is a really positive goal to achieve. They do not realize that if you get rid of tolerance, because that is what they are really getting at, even though they have a more interesting way of expressing it, you give tolerance itself a negative connotation. So many people I talk to, instead of upholding Pierre Bayle’s and John Locke’s liberal ideas of tolerance as a wonderful achievement in a world where people used to kill each other if they had different views, regard it as something that can be swept aside by the people who are meant to be liberal.

Sharing this primarily for the insight it offers into how career national security officials and policy insiders think through these issues.

In this episode, former Biden administration national security officials Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer interview China specialists Jessica Chen Weiss and Julian Gewirtz regarding the Trump–Xi summit, Taiwan deterrence, and bilateral AI safety risks.

Setting aside whether one agrees with their specific policy conclusions or the institutional assumptions of the Washington professionals, it serves as a valuable primary-source look into how senior figures analyze strategic competition, structural trade-offs, and where DC consensus on China is currently holding or fracturing. Worth a listen as an informative window into the mechanics of high-level foreign policy discourse.

Francis Fukuyama reflects on his shift from AI skepticism to taking existential and systemic risks more seriously, contrasting the outlooks of tech accelerationists and AI doomers.

In The UnPopulist's ongoing discussion of Supreme Court reform, Gregg Nunziata writes that it "will sap precious political capital from more worthy reforms and lead to greater political polarization."

Season 3 of Lib & Learn is here! Following the departure of Hutch and Imreallyimportant, the show welcomes new co-hosts Ryan Geddes and J.J. McCullough joining Pisco and Soypill.

In this premiere, the panel breaks down Trump's latest polling drops, the White House press pool fallout, AI policy and the political vibe shift, and recent Texas polling.