Month: May 2022

Ezra Klein

I’ve had a good opportunity here to push you on your thinking here. Is there anything before we end that you think is crucial to your thought that we didn’t cover, or didn’t cover well, or that as a representative of a corrupt managerial elite, you want to push me on?

Patrick Deneen

Well, I guess I — and sometimes it reminds me of our earlier conversation. I think maybe we — in part, we inhabit slightly different worlds, or reads of the world, because I tend to have a very — at least a modest view about the role that policy can play. I think it has to play a role, and an important role. But I also think that unless that there is a healthy culture, and we might differ on what that would look like, but unless there’s a healthy culture, any number and amount of policy in the world is really not going to suffice

And the conundrum that I constantly confront is the question you just asked, which is once the culture has decayed to a certain point, can anything in a sense revive something like a healthy culture? And you might disagree that — you might think that we have a pretty healthy culture, and all we need is the policy to help shore it up.

But if it’s the case that our culture seems to be in some condition of dire straits, or at least a condition of decay — will politics save us, I guess would be my question, especially because so often when I talk with you, you go instantly and directly to questions about, what is my policy on this, that, or the other? And my approach tends to be, do we have the philosophy right? Do we have the political philosophy correct?

And if we have that right, sort of policy and culture will follow. And if we have that wrong, any particular policy approach is not going to save us.