Highly recommend this podcast in which @MatthewSitman discusses the illiberal turn that many American conservatives have openly taken since Trump's election. This is one reason why the stakes of the upcoming election are especially high. wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…
@MatthewSitman By "illiberal" what I mean is "beyond the parameters of the Lockean liberal political framework within which the nation's political culture has generally operated since its founding." As in, "maybe legal proceduralism is overrated." Or "shouldn't religious values shape policy?"
@MatthewSitman These US conservative illiberals have much in common with the right wing populist nationalists who have risen to prominence & often power in places like Hungary and Poland. One of Europe's leading illiberal populists, Marine Le Pen, spoke at CPAC in 2018. washingtonpost.com/video/world/ma…
@MatthewSitman Back in 2016 Michael Flynn (before he was fired and then pled guilty) met at Trump Tower with leaders of Austria's far right party, a party whose lineage, like Le Pen's in France, traces straight back to the Nazis. businessinsider.com/michael-flynn-…
@MatthewSitman While Trump is the blunt figurehead of this illiberal drift in US conservatism with his attacks on immigrants, on the press, on virtually all of the nation's institutions that might check his power, the GOP more broadly has seemingly been willing to follow him down that path.
@MatthewSitman Josh Hawley is someone who is often cited as being the future of the party. As I discuss in this thread, there is much that is troublingly illiberal in the way he sees the world.
@MatthewSitman But here's the thing, if illiberalism lay in the future of the GOP, it's also important that we recognize that it's been a not insignificant feature of its past as well.
@MatthewSitman Twitter is not the place to engage in an extended of political culture and political philosophy so I'll wrap up. This piece by @SamAdlerBell does a great job of laying out the stakes of this conversation about the history and future of liberalism.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell The real reason I came here was to address the question of why "the Ukraine stuff" & Russian interference in our election poses a risk to our national security (as the impeachment articles claim). It's because Putin's Russia is a global force for the spread of illiberalism.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell Illiberal states lock up political opponents. Illiberal states have state media that seeks to sow confusion and a post-truth environment that conduces to the benefit of an authoritarian leader. Illiberal states allow journalists they don't like to "disappear."
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell Illiberal states are almost always kleptocracies as well in which political power and economic power are combined. The law is used as an instrument of rule and political favor, not as a neutral arbiter before which each person is equal.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell The worlds illiberal autocrats are some of Trump's closest friends these days it seems--from MBS to Erdogan to KJU to Putin to Poland's Law & Justice party to Duterte. Meanwhile, the GOP is eagerly endorsing the illiberal MAGA political culture that celebrates great leader.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell Many of the world's liberal democracies and our traditional allies, meanwhile--Canada, France, Germany, etc.--are at the top of Trump's sh*t list it seems.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell I for one am not in favor of living in an illiberal, authoritarian, kleptocracy in which large numbers of my fellow citizens think there is no such thing as truth (apart from what the leader says) and in which law is just a tool used by the already powerful.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell If US political culture moves in that direction, then I would classify that as a threat to our national security in that it would mark a radical break from the norms of liberal constitutionalism that has marked the republic since 1789.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell Trump and his family, of course, understand none of this. They are just greedy and power hungry narcissists who see any institution or person who tries to hold them accountable as an enemy that must be defeated. Putin is trying to use them for his own ends, ends they don't grasp.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell But where the Trump's are novices and ignoramuses when it comes to matters political, the GOP establishment is not. Their willing complicity with all of this illiberalism is unforgivable. There are plenty of conservatives who see what's happened to the GOP, & they've left it.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell The ones who have remained inside the Trumpist fold were either illiberals themselves already, or are just too far down the rabbit hole to come back out. It's hard to see the GOP pulling itself back from the illiberal cliff.
@MatthewSitman @SamAdlerBell In 2016 Mick Mulvaney, Trump's current chief of staff, said this about DJT. It would give principled, limited government conservatives like MIck a chance to prove that they really do believe in checks and balances. I guess when it came to such principles Mick just "got over it." 
