Here Comes the Storm
2019-02-21 · Guest: John McGinnis (Law professor at Northwestern University) · 51:11
The Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism
Bob Zadek and law professor John McGinnis evaluate the state of liberty in America, focusing on the “gathering storm” against classical liberalism. They discuss Donald Trump’s mixed record on libertarian values, the leftward shift of the Democratic party and academia, and the long-term implications of judicial appointments versus populist rhetoric.
Topics: Classical Liberalism, Donald Trump, Academia, Socialism, Healthcare, Tax Reform, Deregulation, Criminal Justice Reform, Judicial Appointments, Immigration
Speakers: Bob Zadek, John McGinnis, Jacob (Caller)
The Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism [00:18]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. Thank you so much for listening, whether you’re listening on AM radio in one of my many markets, whether you’re listening live on the web—we stream nationally on the web, our live show—or whether this is tomorrow already and you’re listening on a podcast. Thank you so much for listening, however you are receiving this morning’s content.
This morning I would like to take the pulse of America and take the pulse of our president. We’ll start with the basic question: how are we doing? And how are we doing from the standpoint of liberty, from the standpoint of libertarian values? Are we on a trajectory that would give everybody great pause, great concern, fear for the future of America? Is Donald Trump the biggest threat to liberty since I don’t know when, or is Donald Trump, whether it’s by accident or by design, furthering the principles that we hold so dear?
I was worrying about this for quite some time as I watched affairs of the day in our country, and then John McGinnis, this morning’s guest, was good enough to write a blog that showed me I was not alone, that John and many others have been thinking the same thoughts, wondering and having the same concerns that I have. John wrote a blog that caught my attention. It was entitled “The Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism.” The gathering storm. Now, John didn’t write about the gathering bright sunny day, he wrote about the gathering storm, so one would assume that John is a bit fearful himself. We will find out in the next hour whether we have reason to fear, reason to hope, or reason to just not know what the future holds for us. John, good morning and welcome to the show.
John McGinnis: Oh, good morning, Bob.
Bob Zadek: Now, John, what is the gathering storm? “Storm” suggests something ominous. Am I reading too much into a single word, the word “storm”? What was the premise of your blog posting, and more importantly, what were the thoughts bouncing around in your head that caused you to write that blog at that time?
John McGinnis: The gathering storm against classical liberalism, I don’t think is due entirely or indeed mostly to the president. I think it’s been gathering for some time. Our universities, and particularly our elite universities, the kind at which I teach, are wholly—have faculties that are wholly antithetical to liberal and classical liberal ideas. The left is in complete ascendancy there, and indeed there’s a sort of orthodoxy that—in which our best and brightest students are brought up.
That alone, I think, should give one some disquiet. Keynes said that statesmen—they may think they’re original, but they’re always just parroting the ideas of some defunct economist. Professors, even if they’re not indoctrinating people, as I think many don’t, their ideas still are—have consequences. And so that’s, I think, one reason.
The other reason is—is—I think is somewhat due to the president. I’m—in this—in the blog post you kindly referenced, I think he has done a variety of good things for liberty, and I think we can discuss that more in the program. On the other hand, I think partly because of his persona, he has indeed increased polarization in the country, and it has contributed, along with, I think, the transmission belt of ideas from our higher educational institutions, the movement of the Democratic Party to a more just left party. The Democratic Party has always been, of course, to the left of the Republican Party, but it has not generally been a truly left party, which has called into question, I think, some of the central ideas of the American founding. I think someone like Bernie Sanders running as a socialist, I think that does—is a sea change. He is at the moment, on the prediction markets, the most likely Democratic nominee, like he’s got 20%, 21% chance. Kamala Harris has a large chance. I would consider her not really that different from Sanders. So that is the reason that we have a climate of opinion that Trump has—in some sense increased the polarization and it’s led to this left party. So I’m not so much worried about Donald Trump’s policies, although I have some reservations with some of them for liberty, it’s what likely comes afterwards. And I’m not at all confident that, in part because of his persona, that he’s likely to capture the swing voters that are necessary for him to remain in the White House in 2020.
The Redefinition of Socialism [07:10]
Bob Zadek: Now, John, you are a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. You were editor of the Harvard Law Review, and now you teach con law at Northwestern University, so you have great insight into the academy and its effect upon—and its—how it is populated. Much has been written about the fact that about 75% or 80%—these are informal calculations—of the academy are registered Democrats or tend to be Democratic-leaning. So the presentation of knowledge, the teaching at the college level—a very important level, of course—gives the students a biased view of American history, of politics, of economics and the like.
And you also mentioned that Bernie Sanders—what’s really strange about the word “socialism” is that none of the avowed democratic socialists seem to espouse very much of pure socialism. Socialism has become—has been dumbed down, I think, and perhaps you will agree or not—either point of view is of course welcome—but socialism as a concept has been dumbed down. And it kind of means “free stuff,” which is not at all what socialism is about. In fact, the history of socialism in the world is: yes, it’s free, but there’s also no stuff to go around. So just speak for a moment when you mention Bernie Sanders and you mention Kamala Harris, you use the word “socialism” with them both, and yet it’s hard to find much classic, if we can use that phrase, classic socialism in either one.
John McGinnis: Well, I—so I certainly agree that you might just say they’re really extreme redistributionists and that’s not necessarily being a socialist. They’re kind of socialist in the sense that Sweden once was. But I think at least with respect to some of the issues, what they want to do to healthcare is really have a lot of government control of the means of producing healthcare. So I do see that as a—really a kind of socialist idea. In other words, so the government’s going to be in charge of insuring, and of course that ultimately means the government’s going to be deciding of what—what’s going to be paid for. That’s not just about giving high taxes on the rich and giving free stuff. That’s actually about government control, and that’s—that I think is really bad because of course, I think that’s likely to lead to much less innovation, much less good quality healthcare.
So I do think there is a willingness to interfere with market principles that goes beyond redistribution and giving free goods. And that’s actually one of the most troubling aspects, I think, of what’s going to go on on the Democratic side. Compare that to Obamacare, of which I’m of course not a fan. That was largely a redistributionist: “So we’re going to give you some insurance. If you like your private insurance, of course you can keep it.” Of course that was the claim, although the dynamics suggested otherwise. Kamala Harris was flummoxed by a question where she said, “Well, of course you might not be able to keep your insurance,” because actually her—the bill she sponsored would get rid of all private insurance. And so I do think that’s—that’s a change, particularly because how important healthcare is. And I think healthcare will only become more important as innovation occurs and as the population ages.
The Disconnect Between Distrust and Policy [11:00]
Bob Zadek: What’s really strange about healthcare specifically and other policies espoused by the left in general is the dislike and distrust of government in all forms throughout the entire country is profound. Nobody has much faith in government. The polls simply asking about faith in Congress, faith in government—the country despises government. And yet this movement wants so much more of something which they despise. There is a profound disconnect between the concept of the left, which is government collects money and redistributes it, government runs things, and the inherent distrust of government. Don’t those two concepts crash into each other?
John McGinnis: I do think so, and I do think that’s—that’s one of the rays of hope. My concern is how that intersects with the current president. I mean, most people don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the details of politics. And so largely—and there’s a lot of social science on this—that reelection of the president is a referendum on the president. And the people who don’t pay much attention to politics may not pay much attention to the details of a program that, if they thought about it, they wouldn’t like precisely for the reasons you suggest: that it suggests government. I mean, after all, I have experienced the post office can’t deliver packages to me. How would I want them to be more involved in my healthcare? I think many people had similar experiences.
But the problem is that that’s not going to be their focus. And indeed, this president makes politics more than usual about him. Right? That’s really—it’s all about President Trump in his own mind and therefore, I think, partly in the country’s mind. And that’s what I think gives the possibility that someone like Sanders—I think it is conceivable he could be elected despite the fact that his policies, I agree, some of his core policies are likely unpopular. Now, maybe they wouldn’t get through Congress, that’s—that’s what we could hope for that. But you can do a lot with the administrative state to restructure our country.
So that’s—that’s my concern. And that’s—that’s in some sense my greatest reservation about the president is not his policies—I mean, I don’t like some of them, like his policies, some of his policies on trade—but is my greatest reservation is the way he talks. He squanders the dignity of his office and makes some people dislike him just because they focus on that. And I understand why they focus on that. The president is supposed to act in a—in a more dignified manner than I think the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania does.
Trump vs. Reagan: The Power of Persona [13:47]
Bob Zadek: In that regard, and I don’t want to dwell upon personality—this is not a show on psychology, it is a show about political theory and economics and liberty—but of course, Trump is as anti-Reagan as one could possibly be. Reagan’s policies, when he was elected, of course Jimmy Carter made a mess of the White House, made a mess of Washington to some degree, and Reagan came into the presidency and it was the opposite of Trump in that Reagan won over so many of the voters who would have in general been opposed or lukewarm about his policies, but it was the man, the persona of Reagan who was able to carry the day. So I think Reagan’s election shows dramatically your point about how, for better or for worse—and we’ve given two examples, one better and one worse—how the person of the president can have a disproportionate amount to say about the direction of the country.
John McGinnis: I think that’s right. And politics is a matter of addition, not subtraction. You want to include people, and so you want to have a kind of inclusive rhetoric and a kind of dignity that makes people proud to be American. You talk about Reagan, remember his commercials where it’s “Morning in America,” these very optimistic commercials that made people very happy to be American. It’s very hard to see how President Trump runs commercials exactly like that. And that’s—that’s a real problem. And alas, I don’t think it’s likely to go away because I think he’s, in this sense, too old to change. And after all, this has gotten him to the presidency of the United States when everyone was very doubtful about that in the beginning.
Trump’s Liberty Report Card: The Positives [16:00]
Bob Zadek: Now, in the gathering storm as you imagine it, of course Trump has a role—has played an important role and may if he gets reelected. Give us the headlines, if you will, of Trump’s report card on liberty, on the values that us libertarians hold so dear, which is limited government, maximum personal freedom, economic freedom—a subject that doesn’t get talked about all that much. How is Trump doing? And when you explain how he’s doing on a few specific areas, perhaps immigration, perhaps economic freedom, the economy, taxation, how is Trump doing in furthering the principles? Has he moved the ball down the court for us? If so, what are some examples of that? And has he created a bit of a setback for us? And if you could, an example or two of that.
John McGinnis: Okay, well, let’s begin on the positive side of the ledger. I think in general, his reduction in taxes was very positive, not only in general, but some of the specific things he did. The corporate tax rate made us uncompetitive internationally in certain ways, so that was a very good actual kind of reduction. The elimination—I know in California it’s probably not so popular—of or capping of the deduction is actually very positive because actually what it does is it increases competition among the states. Allowing state tax deductions gives states an incentive to tax themselves high and slough off those costs on the rest of the country because everyone else then pays effectively more because money is deducted from high-tax states.
And so I think that’s great. And you may have in fact heard many of the Democratic—liberal Democratic governors are very upset about that because that makes it harder for them to raise taxes in their own states. And in another way of putting this is that it creates greater accountability in state government. So that’s, I think, a very positive thing.
Another very positive matter has been the general deregulatory structure. He’s made a substantial deregulation in a variety of areas. One area is education that I know of. He’s rolled back some of the Obama rules there that were very unwise. He’s also made it much more plausible to—I think had a more rational in some respects environmental regulatory agenda. So these are all, I think, positive matters for liberty.
Trump’s Liberty Report Card: The Negatives [19:18]
John McGinnis: But there’s some negatives as well. And I think the two biggest negatives are international trade. And I’m cautious there. I mean, with respect to China, China I think is taking our intellectual property and therefore one needs a pretty stern response to them. That’s not a win-win situation when they’re doing that or requiring our companies. And so I think we need to confront China. On the other hand, I find it baffling if that’s the—should be the focus, why he’s not entered into other trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement and why he’s chosen to fight Europe on trade. So those are very, I think, baffling and they’re not good for liberty. They’re also baffling geostrategically.
And the other, I think, large—it’s more a missed opportunity—is to do any reform of entitlements. As you know, entitlements, particularly old-age entitlements, are on autopilot. They’re getting an increasing share of the federal budget. They need to have some reform. You’ve got to get some bipartisan agreement on that. Again, that goes back to his persona. He probably couldn’t get it even if he wanted it. But that’s an area of missed opportunity. Of course, in that respect, he’s no different from the previous president who did nothing on that in that respect either. Even President Bush did not do anything, indeed in some sense increased old-age entitlements. So he certainly hasn’t been good in that respect, although how much can one expect given the track record of his predecessors? I don’t want to be too critical of him.
So I give him one, one and a half cheers, two cheers for liberty, particularly when you look at the alternative. If we had a President Clinton now, we’d have battles for higher taxes, we’d have much stronger regulation, we’d have an education department that’s less friendly to school choice, which is a very important question of liberty—how one can educate one’s children as one wants. It’s just, I think, as I have a three-year-old, I think as I think go forward, is just one of the most important liberties in the country. And to have a monopoly from the public schools is a real concern, I think, about liberty. Betsy DeVos has been a real warrior in this respect, and Trump gets a lot of credit for appointing people who are somewhat outside the box and really paladins for liberty. So that would be an area that I would really spotlight, because of course that’s also about the next generation as well. And having a variety of K-12 institutions allows for, I think, a much wider view not only of educational methodologies, but even of viewpoints about the world. And that’s certainly what we need, given the left-liberal orthodoxy that our educational establishment is entirely in the grip of.
Criminal Justice Reform and the First Step Act [22:52]
Bob Zadek: What you didn’t mention, I guess you just didn’t get a chance yet, but an area that gives me great hope is the movement, and it’s somewhat bipartisan although in fits and starts, is in criminal justice reform. Rand Paul and Cory Booker, perhaps before Booker was running for president—maybe he will continue to emphasize this—but they were moving forward together. Cory Booker, of course, is quite on the left, a candidate who’s happened to throw his hat in the ring to be president, and Rand Paul, we know who he is, of course. They joined forces with a very interesting first step in criminal justice reform.
And I pick criminal justice reform because when one distinguishes what makes government special, well, government is the only organization in this country that can lawfully use force to accomplish an end, and the only organization that is allowed to deprive us of our liberty, to lock us up for a really long time and take away our property. So criminal justice reform is where the government takes away our liberty and takes away our stuff. And criminal justice reform has always been, in my mind, quite important and somewhat unnoticed because other affairs captured the attention of the media. But Donald Trump—now, he wasn’t a moving force, but he did sign the bill, and it was signed under his watch. The First Step, a small first step, but a first step nonetheless in criminal justice reform. And he deserves, I think, some credit for that, don’t you agree, John?
John McGinnis: Some credit. I mean, I tend to think that most presidents—I think this would have actually been on the desk of most presidents, Democrat or Republican, and almost all of them would have signed it. So I—but I’m basically sympathetic. I agree that it advances liberty. I would only note one note of caution. You’re absolutely right that this is an awesome power of government to put people in jail or to take their money. On the other hand, in some sense, it’s unlike some of the other excesses of government. It’s a core function of government. And some of the harsh criminal penalties were in response to substantial crime increases in the 1970s and 1980s that may have had their source in the decline of social norms. We seem to have a decline in crime, and so I think absolutely there have been excesses of those punishments as well, and not a recognition that the most important thing is to punish criminals with kind of certainty, not to give them sentences that put them into old-age homes. So I applaud this. I applaud this. But I’m just not confident that Trump is—unlike his tax reform, I agree that it surely was written by the Ways and Means Committee, but it was essential that Trump be president, not a Democrat, and maybe even some kinds of Republicans would have been much more reluctant to sign such a substantial tax bill. So that’s why I give him somewhat more credit in that respect than for the First Step crime bill, which is a very good bill.
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I’m spending a wonderful hour talking to John McGinnis. John is a professor of law at Northwestern University. He’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. We are talking about John’s recent blog, “The Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism.” Should we all be drinking our Kool-Aid, or is there reason to be optimistic or to be concerned or at least to be wary? We’ll be discussing lots more about where the country is going from a libertarian standpoint. Is there grounds for hope or grounds for fear, or both, when we come back in 30 really short seconds. Please stay tuned.
[Commercial break omitted]
Principles vs. Transactional Politics [29:36]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show of ideas, never ever the show of attitude. Thanks for joining me this Sunday morning with my conversation with John McGinnis. John is a professor of law at Northwestern University School of Law. He’s a professor of constitutional law. He has written a blog that captured my and lots of other people’s attention called “The Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism.” John expressed some fear in his blog about the future for classical liberalism in this country, and we are discussing the future generally and specifically how the Trump presidency has and will affect the future of classical liberalism and liberty in America.
John, an observation I would like to offer to you to comment on is: Trump has been described frequently as being transactional. And by that I mean it’s kind of a placeholder or a substitute for pragmatism. That is, making decisions on an ad hoc basis as opposed to a decision based upon a core set of values, a creed, eyes on a political system in the larger sense. And I think that’s certainly true for Trump. There’s no indication of what he believes as a matter of principle. We know how he believes about an issue or two because he’s quite outspoken about that, but there’s not a lot of thought behind his expressions of his opinions. He doesn’t support them with a principle, he just reaches an opinion.
And that leads me to be concerned about the loss in this country of founding principles. In the public debate, whenever one sees a debate, whether it’s a political debate, whether it’s conversation among friends, there’s very little reference to America’s first principles. They seem to be lost in the wash. Am I reading too much into the events of the day? Do you sense that same loss of core values? People seem to be concerned about what they’re going to—what’s in it for them, what they’re going to get, and not so concerned about adherence to founding principles. And the founding principles are, if anything, what makes—what gives American exceptionalism its power.
John McGinnis: I think that’s right. And Trump’s—really, again, to compare him to Reagan, which I think is an excellent comparison. I mean, Reagan from ‘76 to ‘80 went around the country writing speeches, as we now know, trying to imply Hayek’s ideas and things of that sort. Trump, of course, his background is transactional. He’s a real estate operator from New York. What could be more transactional than that? So his background is completely—so it can’t be surprising that he’s transactional.
Judicial Appointments as a Source of Hope [32:12]
John McGinnis: Nevertheless, I do think there are two things—and I absolutely agree with you, he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t have that inclusive focus on principle that Reagan did. There are two matters that give me a little hope, shoots of—green shoots, as it were. One is that it may have been transactional, his decision to commit himself to essentially appointing judges who will read the Constitution as written, originalist judges. And that’s important, not only because they’re more likely to get decisions right, but there’s a long theory of the Supreme Court that goes back to the early Republic that in some sense the justices are Republican schoolmasters. In their decisions, at least if they’re originalists, they recall—they call the country to its founding principles. Alas, many of our justices have done the opposite. Right? They write Roe v. Wade, which is something out of—made out of something out of nothing and take away powers from the states. But insofar as they follow the original principles and articulate them, they are a great ally—they could be a great ally in teaching and imbuing the country with those principles again. And Trump gets enormous credit, certainly for the appointment of Gorsuch, who’s turned out to be great. We don’t know yet about Kavanaugh, but I think there’s reason to believe he will at least be quite good in this respect. And so that’s—that’s happy.
The State of the Union and Anti-Socialism [33:34]
John McGinnis: Then also, I thought Trump’s State of the Union address was a much greater improvement on his inaugural address, his most recent State of the Union address, precisely in that it captured some principles. He talked about the danger of socialism and the importance of freedom in a way that he really didn’t talk about in his inaugural address. So it may be that he’s learning on the job and recognizing, maybe just because it’s a political necessity, that he has to articulate some of the core principles of the country. And I think that’s very important because in some sense, for the first time in my lifetime, I think that a lot of these principles are completely up for grabs. So Trump is a little better, actually, than I thought he was when I wrote that blog post because of the State of the Union and his appointments of justices are truly the best of any—and judges in the appellate court and the district court are the best of any president, even better than those of Ronald Reagan.
Bob Zadek: John, I have a very short clip that explains and explains to the audience what John is referring to in his comment.
Donald Trump (Audio Clip): Today, socialism has bankrupted the oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty. Virtually everywhere socialism or communism has been tried, it has produced suffering, corruption, and decay. Socialism’s thirst for power leads to expansion, incursion, and oppression. All nations of the world should resist socialism and the misery that it brings to everyone.
Bob Zadek: Now, John, that was right out of Hayek. It was so interesting. That was the first time that Trump drilled—in my knowledge, drilled down to a principle in support of his policies. And you’re exactly right, John, it gave me great encouragement that perhaps there is a “there” there, and that is a source of great hope. And it surprised me, but it delighted me as well.
John McGinnis: Yes, well, we just have to hope it continues. But I think one reason to think it continues is exactly what you said earlier, that the idea of giving the government more power is not popular, and that really is a core idea of socialism. And there are people who proclaim themselves socialists on the Democratic side. And so I think this is just for reasons of politics and opportunism a very useful line to take. And therefore for Trump, if opportunism and principle coincide, he certainly won’t oppose principle.
Why Academia Leans Left [36:54]
Bob Zadek: We have a couple of callers, John, I’d like to take. Our first caller, Vince, let’s speak to John if we can. Vince, are you there?
Jacob (Caller): Yes, Bob. From a libertarian point of view, when you consider what happened to Trump in his first two years, President Trump and the Republicans had an opportunity to have something of a Lochner-type moment. You know the Lochner case, 100 years ago. Some people say that caused that Triangle Factory fire that caused so many women to lose their lives jumping from windows to save their lives. What about the Molly Tibbetts, the student found dead in a cornfield? How does that relate to the border and getting control on internal immigration situations like E-Verify? E-Verify could have saved Molly Tibbetts if it were enforced. Why didn’t the Republicans consider that E-Verify could help safety of Americans from coast to coast? Why couldn’t they have done the E-Verify to have that kind of safety feature throughout the whole country?
Bob Zadek: Jacob, my response: first of all, it was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that gave birth to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. It was around 1920, if I’m not mistaken. That dealt with workplace safety and had little to do with immigration, but it did give birth to the important Garment Workers’ Union. That was simply a case of companies not being required to manage their workplaces in a safe manner; the doors were nailed shut so the workers wouldn’t take breaks and the like.
As to the Lochner case, our listeners out there probably are familiar with Lochner. Lochner was a Supreme Court case decided in around, if I’m not mistaken, 1913. It was a case that basically came out four-square in favor of economic liberty, a topic that I had hoped to cover with John this morning. We simply, as we always do, run out of time. The Lochner case and the Lochner era that it spawned was one that said basically individuals ought to have freedom of contract, individuals ought to be able to contract to work for as long hours as they want, at whatever rate they want. It was in response to a New York state statute that limited the number of hours that bakery workers could work in the country. And they did that because immigrant bakeries were working for very long hours and were competing successfully against the large established corporate bakeries. And the Supreme Court said New York state cannot limit the number of hours somebody wants to work if they’re willing to work for those number of hours. It came out four-square in favor of economic liberty. The Lochner case was important because it was the beginning of the end of economic liberty, which are second-class liberties in our country right now. We have minimum wage laws and the like that simply limit freedom of contract. So Lochner was important, didn’t have much to do with immigration, although the immigrants were those who were working hard.
But Jacob, thank you so much for your question. I always appreciate it. And I want to take this opportunity to thank my guest, who is now hopefully on his way to the airport, John McGinnis, for his thoughts on the gathering storm. John, I’d like to ask you one question before you go. Jacob asked about academia. How is it that academia—college, university level, and maybe extending even down into high schools these days—why academia has gone so far left so quickly? It seems so imbalanced, and I wonder kind of how it got that way and why.
John McGinnis: Yeah, I’d attribute it in part going back to the Vietnam War and the tremendous alienation that caused in some people, and they found refuge in the academy and in many sense they’ve been in control and now are really in the position of bureaucratic control, presidents of universities, and they’re appointing people like them.
Moreover, there’s just this general fact that people—there’s something called “The Big Sort” that goes on in the country now. When people have choice, they like to be with people who share their views. And so there’s a kind of natural tendency for institutions to go one way.
And finally, I think there’s this aspect to it. For a lot of people, their political opinions really aren’t that important to them, and it’s costly to be a conservative in the academy. And I’ve watched actually as some people who I thought were somewhat conservative just go along with the crowd because that smooths social relations. And so those are some of the reasons that the academy is so—we have such left-wing orthodoxy in the academy. I’d also note the big push for “diversity” in the academy. That also pushes the academy to the left because the groups that are essentially preferred are on average more left-wing than the groups that are not preferred. So I don’t see it as the most important reason, but that’s yet another reason.
Bob Zadek: John, I found myself smiling when you mentioned diversity. And the reason I was smiling was the universities cry out for diversity and they use that for justification of a number of policies that I find abhorrent—affirmative action type policies, taking race into consideration in admissions, a whole other topic. But when we talk about diversity on college campuses, there is a strong movement for diversity except for diversity in ideas. And it’s astonishing to me how the utter hypocrisy of racial diversity is good, philosophical diversity is horrible. Am I making a correct observation? Because you have spent much of your career in the academy, so you speak as an insider, I speak as an outsider.
John McGinnis: I think you’re right. I mean, I think diversity, frankly, was a word of convenience for much of the academy. They didn’t want to use the word “affirmative action” as people started to understand what it was and as it is—preferences for one group over the other. That is obviously something you don’t want to state. So I see it as a kind of word to hide what they’re really concerned with, which is preferences for certain groups rather than actually diversity of ideas. And I think the proof of that is exactly what you say. There really is, with few exceptions, very little interest in viewpoint diversity. In fact, in the legal academy, conservatives are published at a higher rate, they’re cited at a higher rate, and that suggests discrimination because that means that—and yet they’re not often at top schools. That suggests that there is even discrimination that goes on against conservatives, let alone any kind of affirmative interest in them, which you would expect from a real interest in diversity.
The Complexities of Immigration Policy [41:44]
Bob Zadek: Now, the last—I know, John, you have to leave in a few seconds, but one last topic I’d like to get your thoughts on is the topic of immigration, where to my view Trump has been on the wrong side of the issue. Perhaps there is a kernel of common sense in what he is doing, but if you could give him a report card on immigration. And of course, libertarians generally support open borders—“let them all in,” as I have often expressed it on my show. I don’t really mean that, but that gives the sense of it. But how is Trump doing on immigration and what do you see for the future of our country in that regard?
John McGinnis: Well, there I think we may see a slight difference or only difference in viewpoint. I mean, I certainly favor a lot of immigration myself, but I don’t favor open borders. I mean, I do think that this country depends a little on somewhat on its culture, and you just can’t let 100 million people come into this country. We really couldn’t assimilate those people into some American ideas that are an important infrastructure, I think, for our liberty. So I’m not in favor of illegal immigration, and I think it’s correct that we need to stop that.
Unfortunately, I think often Trump’s rhetoric goes beyond that, sometimes unfairly to demonize people who really of course are coming here for sometimes for very good reasons, even if they come illegally. And then he’s just totally mistaken not to try to increase immigration of people who will be real innovators, who will help AI and things of that in the country. That’s just a total mistake. And finally, like Obama, I blame both of them in some sense in this respect. We need to have some compromise in immigration so we have a structure in which we have very generous immigration but have—we don’t permit simply illegal immigration. Because frankly, also that’s just not a politically viable policy. That’s going to lead to backlash and anger against legitimate immigrants. So that’s my view there. I’m not happy with Trump’s policy. On the other hand, I have to say I’m a dissenter from the idea that it’d be a good idea to not have standards for immigration.
Bob Zadek: I agree. And John, I respect the fact John has to go to the airport right now. We don’t want John to miss his flight. This is Bob Zadek. I’m thanking John McGinnis profoundly for giving us an hour of his time while he’s traveling. One can follow John McGinnis at @joldmcginn on Twitter, and he also writes for the Federalist Society. You can find his work there. John, I’ll be back to my audience, I’ll be back in 60 really short seconds. Thanks again, John, for giving us an hour of your time on this Sunday when you are traveling. Please stay tuned. I’ll have some closing thoughts when we come back.
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Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek of the Bob Zadek Show. Ideas, not attitude. Information, not talking points. Thank you so much for all my friends out there spending an hour with me this Sunday morning. I’ll be back next Sunday. Please enjoy the rest of the week.