That's the question as me and Brian Katulis join Danielle Pletka and March Thiessen on their American Enterprise Institute podcast "What the Hell Is Going On? Here's their description of our show:
"At the start of 2021, four prominent voices on the political left created the popular Substack ‘The Liberal Patriot.’ Motivated by what they saw as a gap in analyses on US politics and foreign policy, John Halpin, Ruy Teixeira, Peter Juul, and Brian Katulis seek to use their publication to promote a new liberal nationalism on the center-left and a more open-minded and inclusive approach to thinking about political and social issues.
Two of The Liberal Patriot’s co-editors, Brian Katulis and Ruy Teixeira, joined Marc and Dany to discuss their writing, the foundations of liberal and inclusive nationalism, the political conversation on the American center-left, and the current state of modern political discourse."
There's also a transcript of the conversation available. Pletka on The Liberal Patriot substack:
"I have a ton of respect for these guys because they have the kind of discussion about politics and about issues that I think is too often missing. You and I try to fill part of that gap. You and I are both conservatives. The guys from The Liberal Patriot are all big liberals. They're all Democrats and some of them have worked in party politics, but the thing that I really appreciate about all of these folks, two of whom you and I are going to host in just a couple minutes on the podcast, is that they're having a lot of the hard conversations that you and I talk about on the right. Is there a Republican Party beyond Donald Trump? And they're asking. Is this extremist cultural leftism going to dominate the Democratic Party forever? That's a real danger. We should talk about it. Gee, maybe what people are saying on Fox News isn't all insane. And the thing that I really like the most because it is absolutely the ethic that I think we need to have more of, not less of, in this town is....no matter what, I want to listen to people ho disagree with me because I think they have something to say. There's no rudeness. There's no contempt here, no put-downs. It's just thoughtful disagreement."
One of my observations from the conversation when asked what is a "liberal patriot":
"A liberal patriot in our view is someone who adheres to what we take to be the historical center of gravity of the left and of liberalism in this country, which is being for an expansive welfare state, being for universalistic programs to lift up everybody, opposing discrimination on the grounds of race and gender, but not seeking to impose your ideology about that on anyone else, support for free speech and open debate and an active effort to include as many people as possible in your political coalition. You're trying to make as many friends as you can, not to rid people out of your coalition on the grounds they don't adhere to some or other cultural, ideological litmus test. To us, the true left liberalism in this
country that helped build the American welfare state and helped build a political coalition that did all kinds of great things in terms of making this country a better place, a fair place, a less racist place, and so on and so forth. That's the kind of left liberalism that we see almost disappearing. And why do we call it Patriot? Because we believe in patriotism. We're gobsmacked at this point that in many
venues on the left of this country today, it's like out of fashion to be patriotic. It's weird if you're patriotic."
Listen to (or read) the whole thing!
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