Samuel Moyn 🔭 Profile picture
Aug 24, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
1/ Today my review of Eric Posner's interesting "The Demagogue's Playbook" posts - check it out and retweet! thenation.com/article/cultur…
2/ On one level, the review "interrogates" Posner's version of American history - his first attempt at writing history I believe - though I leave the details to the professionals.
3/ It's a revival of Richard Hofstadter, but without the complexity-an elitist history of the crackpot masses. But, I claim, it is refreshing that it is entirely open about its priors and may reflect the broader incidence of antidemocratic belief.
4/ But much more is at stake than the past, for "all history is contemporary history," i.e., a political act. And my main interest in the piece is understanding one intellectual trajectory Donald Trump has induced.
5/ (In passing: should I write a general history of the Resistance? Regardless, the intellectual history of the Trump era is fascinating. Can't wait for @CarlosLozadaWP's version.) simonandschuster.com/books/What-Wer…
6/ The central questions I pose are: Why Eric Posner's apparent flipflop under Trump, as a revealing moment of the slow breakup for the "four horsemen of the apocalypse" of the 1990s-2000s? And, equally interesting, why the centrist flipflop to embrace him?
7/ These questions require long answers, but the partial one I give is that, for Posner, his trajectory is more continuous than not: "Even once you realize demagogy is a risk, you do not act to contain unaccountable and unchecked power; you just pray that elites wield it."
8/ This didn't get into the piece, but it is worth nothing that Richard Posner also defended minimalist versions of democracy, and has seemed to move in interesting directions in the latter part of his career. hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…
9/ Anyways, check it out, and let me know what I missed.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Samuel Moyn 🔭

Samuel Moyn 🔭 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @samuelmoyn

Jul 28, 2022
1/ The work of editors, even the greatest, is often unrecognized and unsung. I feel terrible about what could have driven Chris to take his life and for his family for their loss. In tribute I just want to acknowledge how much I personally owed him.
2/ He had a project, and it was to make what @washingtonpost readers get to see a little more pluralistic as times change. And I knew him as someone who especially wanted to query complacency in our politics, foreign policy, and law.
3/ He first reached out to me dissatisfied with the liberalism pro or con debate. What if the best response to anti-liberals wasn't to circle the wagons but to reimagine the liberal creed under pressure? washingtonpost.com/outlook/were-i…
Read 9 tweets
Mar 22, 2021
Endless war thread! In #Humane's last chapter, my centerpiece is Barack Obama's extraordinary National Defense University speech on May 23, 2013. (Preorder "Humane," since now is when it counts-links at end!) us.macmillan.com/books/97803741…
What made Obama special was that he was the best critic of his own policies, though-in an absolutely immortal moment that I believe defined the presidency morally more than any other--"heckler" @medeabenjamin pushed him offscript that day. obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-offi…
More in the book on the moral stakes of the moment-its insights soon relinquished-but of special note was Obama's remark that "a perpetual war" including "through drones or Special Forces" alone "will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways." He was right.
Read 11 tweets
Sep 24, 2020
1/ There is a difference between due caution or salutary fear, on the one hand, and self-confirming and -fulfilling paranoia, on the other. Whether we stray from one to the other is up to us.
2/ Compliance with the framing of journalists and obedience to cues are choices. Events should compel our mobilization for sure-but a lot depends on how to frame them and seizing the initiative in doing so rather than living in the contrived reality of our enemies.
3/ True: Premonitions of a chilling end can activate and mobilize. A lot of democratic work has been inspired by the surmise that, without rhetorical and real endtimes thinking, democracy would end.
Read 8 tweets
Sep 9, 2020
1/ Thoughts on @MadKhosla's provocative claim at the end of today's oped: "The legitimacy of courts was never built on popular authorization from the people. It was built on the promise of keeping representation in check and protecting the people from the extremes of politics."
2/ It is a descriptive or prescriptive claim? Unclear. And what kind of legitimacy was built either way? It seems like normative legitimacy is meant. But it would be interesting to find out to decide what is at stake in challenging judges today. nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opi…
3/ To begin w/, it is really credible that we would want to root judicial power entirely beyond popular authorization? Madhav's adviser Richard Tuck might have something to say about that-at least insofar as we would want to trace any forms of "government" back to "sovereignty."
Read 7 tweets
Aug 8, 2020
1/ Another thread on our Supreme Court reform piece. Thanks to @beccarosen for editing it!
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
2/ It reports the arguments and findings of our underlying new paper - check it out! (And thanks to @Mark_Tushnet and untaggable others for comments so far!)
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
3/ Our central analytical contribution is intended to be to group imaginable reforms into two types: "personnel" management reforms, and "disempowerment" reforms. We then go on to canvass the desirability, legality, and feasibility of the reforms.
Read 10 tweets
Aug 8, 2020
1/ The first of two threads on our new piece on Supreme Court reform--please check it out!
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
2/ For me, this topic arose when @YaleLawSch students responding to a ... difficult semester at the school banded together to study the Supreme Court and alternative imaginable reforms to it nytimes.com/2018/09/26/nyr…
3/ This was an exercise in democratic constitutionalism - but one that started by refusing the premise that the institutional form of the Supreme Court is fixed and democracy is best conceived as mobilization and countermobilization in its shadow.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(