Arthur Brooks: belief

Transcript context

…I would say it’s mostly unfortunate. I consider myself a classical liberal. I think there’s been negative emotional contagion from a number of very bad events, some of which were partly random. Say that 9/11 actually happened, that COVID came along when it did, and if a bunch of bad things happened, the Great Financial Crisis, that’s less random. People turn to worse ideas, and we’re suffering under that, and then it spreads, and then negative ideas lead to further negative ideas, and people become less happy, and that leads to worse policy, and we’re stuck in this rut. Now I never expected classical liberalism or classical liberal Republicanism to be that dominant anyway. I’m not that surprised. I see it as a return to some features of, say, late 19th-century America that I feel never went away. I’ve never liked them, but I think it’s maybe what we really are. There was this odd bubble. You can debate when the years run, but something like 1980 through 2016, that seemed quite normal, but that was an illusion. Now we’re back to the real state of things. Interesting. Yes. You’re saying, I think, that Trumpism is an equilibrium and Reaganism was a disequilibrium, and I’m saying the opposite. Exactly. On much of the rest, we agree, and in terms of what we want, I think we agree.…

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