The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Timothy Snyder: Is Freedom Misunderstood?

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Yale historian Timothy Snyder talks to Steve Paikin about his latest book "On Freedom" - what it is, how it's misunderstood, and why it's our only chance for survival. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Freedom. In his new book, historian Timothy Snyder explores what it is, how it's misunderstood, and why it's our only chance for survival. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and the author of On Freedom. And we are delighted that it has brought you back to our studio here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Thank you. Glad to be with you. Let's do an excerpt from the book to get us started here. Sheldon, the graphic if you would please. In this book you write, I aim to define freedom.

The task begins with rescuing the word from overuse and abuse. I worry that in my own country, the United States, we speak of freedom without considering what it is. Americans often have in mind the absence of something, occupation, oppression, or even government. An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense. That's where I want to start because this notion of positive versus negative freedom will be a new idea to many people watching or listening right now. So what's the diff?

Yeah, well, negative freedom is the idea that it's me against the world, that the only problem is the world. There's a barrier out there. And the dramatic images, which of course come from history and from real experience, are the concentration camp, the foreign occupation, the barbed wire, the wall. And of course, it's right that sometimes one has to resist,

but at the same time that's not enough for freedom. So even when the walls come down there's still the question of who you are. In fact the only reason why the wall is a bad thing is because it's holding you back. And so freedom from, which is where most people stop thinking about freedom, is really just a part of freedom too. Getting the barriers out of the way is just the first step towards creating the conditions where you and I and everybody else can actually say, what do we really like?

What do we really care about? What do we really love? What do we value? How do we want to change the world? That's freedom in the positive sense. Why do you think it's important to make the distinction? First of all, I'm doing a very old fashioned thing here. I'm trying to get it right. I'm trying to get it right.

I'm trying to get it right. I'm not saying what people say about freedom. I'm not talking about how the word is used. I'm trying to say what it in fact is. And I deeply believe that it is the ability to choose among the good things. There are good things in the world. When we're in a condition or a state to choose among them,

then we're free. But the political answer is, if you only believe that freedom is negative, you'll get persuaded that the government is only your opponent. You'll shrink the government, and the government will end up not being able to do precisely the things that it needs to do to help people grow up to be free.

Defining freedom is a different ambition, you say, from defending freedom. How so? Well, in my experience, the one ends up leading to the other. So I wrote a little pamphlet called On Tyranny, which I think we might have talked about a while ago. We did, indeed, yes. Where I was more than a pamphlet.

That was a book. OK, it was a pamphlet in the honorable sense of the word. Where I was trying to tell people what good practices would be to defend what we have. But people rightfully asked, well, what is it that we have? And I think the answer is that freedom isn't something in the end that you can only defend. You have to express it, create it, realize it, spread it.

Right? And so the reason why I think we need a book like this, or the reason why we have to think about freedom positively is we have to get out of the box of just defending things and think instead of opening up a political future. You've got it sort of defined here in five different ways, five aspects to freedom, and I'll just list them here. Sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, solidarity.

In your view, do all five need to be present for a society to truly be free? Yeah. So the way the book is set up, this would take one step back if I could. In the beginning, I say what I think freedom is, which is there are good things in the world, they conflict, you have to think about them. Over the course of a life, as you make decisions, you create character. Freedom's positive that way. But it's also positive politically, because we have to work together to create the conditions where people could

have that kind of life. The things that you mentioned, the sovereignty, the unpredictability, the mobility, the factuality, the solidarity, those are the places where the ideas meet the politics, where real life meets the ideas, and we need as much of all those things as possible and also in order. So by sovereignty I mean the sovereignty of the person because I think when we talk about freedom we have to not assume that everybody is already an adult with property and has their life together. We have to think instead about a baby crying.

We have to think what are the things we have to do from the beginning so that that child has a chance to be sovereign, that child has a chance to have the ability to be free. You had a very funny way of describing that in the book, actually, where you say babies are not born free. They're born hooked up to an umbilical cord and covered in their mother's blood. That's a pretty stark way of looking at it. You're right. But it's the only way of looking at it, Steve.

It's the only way of looking at it. And our whole conversation about freedom abstracts away from that. We just, we assume, I mean, in the tradition of writing in English about freedom, we're assuming that there is essentially a Victorian-age British gentleman with a plantation and perhaps some servants or slaves in the background. That's already built into the picture. We have to not do that. We have to be serious, which means thinking about the way life actually happens from birth

to death and all the adventures in between. As we in Canada look at your country, we assume you are obsessed with it, and we also assume that you think you have it better than anybody in the world. And it may come as a surprise to some of our viewers and listeners that you actually don't think that. So let's do another excerpt from the book here. By no meaningful index are Americans today among the freest peoples of the world, you write. An American organization, Freedom House, measures freedom by the criteria Americans prefer, civil and political liberties.

Year after year, about 50 countries, 50, do better than us on these measures. Our northern neighbor, Canada, stands far above us. The countries where people tend to think of freedom as freedom too, are doing better by our own measures, which tend to focus of freedom as freedom to are doing better by our own measures which tend to focus on freedom from. Okay here we are again let's revisit this freedom to and freedom from. Do we understand these concepts well enough? So first of all congratulations on getting one of the Canada references into

the show. Just doing my job. But the serious point is, if you only insist on freedom from, then you're going to get trapped. It's not just that you're not going to think about vacation, parental leave, free kindergarten, child care in terms of freedom, which you should do. It's also that in shrinking the government, you're going to create space for oligarchs, because power abhors a vacuum.

So other people will rush in. Social media platforms will rush in. But in shrinking the government, you're going to create space for oligarchs because power repores a vacuum. So other people will rush in, social media platforms will rush in, they'll control the conversation about freedom. So two things go very wrong if you're only thinking about freedom negatively. If you think about it positively, then you have a chance for children to grow up in a situation where they can learn to think for themselves, control their emotions, have relationships, and have a better chance at freedom. And so the funny thing is that if you talk about freedom

too much and in the wrong way, you end up boxing yourself in. You end up never thinking about it, which is, I'm afraid, the American condition too much of the time. And countries like Norway or, I'll say, Canada, where folks talk less about freedom, may have laid the conditions better to actually live free lives.

You, of course, watched the Democratic presidential convention, where the word freedom was used every 30 seconds, which is unusual for the Democrats. Usually that's the Republicans' game. Yeah. What did you think of all that? That was super interesting. I was actually, for weird reasons,

I was actually physically there. And it's interesting, right, because there's a political move, which is they see Trump dropping freedom, as Trump moves more and more openly to just saying, I'm a leader. I want to die in bed in the White House. That's it. As they drop the word, the Democrats

are picking it up, which is tactical and smart. And they started with a negative definition, because that is American common sense. So they're saying the Republicans will have the government in your bedroom. The Republicans will have the government in your bedroom, the Republicans will have the government on your back, the governments will have the government on your body, and we're going to free you of that.

But then the Democrats are also able to talk about freedom as freedom too, which the Republicans can't because the Republicans are way too much in the pockets of the people who need the government to be small and effective. So the Democrats can talk about freedom too. And you see them kind of gingerly pushing in that direction. It's unfamiliar, but they're getting there. And that's encouraging. So the vice president just the other day on 60 Minutes

talked about the freedom to bear arms, which she does. She boasted about the fact she's got a Glock and she shot it. That's a different thing for a Democratic nominee to say. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm going to not focus so much on the example as on the prepositions, that it's the mental shift to thinking, OK, it's not just about pushing bad things away, but about having good things in the world. And it's consistent, by the way, with the tone of the campaign, right?

So when people are angry and talk about freedom, that's a sign things are wrong. When people are happy and talking about freedom, that's a sign things are wrong. When people are happy and talking about freedom, that's generally a sign that they've got it right. I'm going to do the thing you're expecting me to do now, which is to come back to Canada. And that is, my hunch is there are going to be a lot of people watching this who are going to think, wait a second, Canada, more freed than the United

States? That's impossible. And in fact, we had a convoy of truckers and libertarians and anti-government types, anti-vaccine types, who essentially took over Ottawa by driving all their trucks downtown about three years ago. And they did so because they were adamant that Canada was not as free as our neighbors to the south.

What, in your view, are they missing? I mean, I saw the convoy, but I didn't actually have a chance to talk to folks. So it's hard for me to say at that level. Who are they missing? I saw the convoy, but I didn't actually have a chance to talk to folks. So it's hard for me to say at that level. But I would make the point that freedom is not about impulse. And the way that before the Trump people dropped freedom entirely, the way they swing the whole conversation is that freedom is just about how you feel right this second.

And how you feel right this second is valid. It's not about being right or wrong. There's no right or wrong. It's not about true or false. There is no true or false. It's just about how you feel very strongly right now. And that notion of freedom is powerful. It's persuasive.

It's addictive. It's just not true. It's just incorrect. You can't be free unless you're recognizing other people's similarity to yourself, unless you're recognizing other people's similarity to yourself, unless you're thinking not just about how I feel and how I'm hurt, but you're thinking about what I want the world to be like.

I think that's probably the thing that they're missing. Because the way the freedom conversations swung in the US, again, before Trump dropped it, was away from we have values we can talk about and towards everything I feel right now is valid. And I'm going to listen to my oligarchical leader, because he's very good at expressing those hurt feelings. How would you go about convincing

those who believe in the immediacy of freedom that you've just described, that there's a little more to it than that? I think talking and showing, this is the thing. Like freedom isn't necessarily about the dramatic, right? Like I cite dissidents from the 70s and 80s and friends of mine who went to prison for what they thought and that might sound dramatic, but the things they thought were I should be able to have my own tastes, I should be

able to have my own principles, I should be able to live a normal life, I should be able to love the things I love, I should be able to meet other people who have the same kinds of tastes and principles and values and form groups with them That's what freedom is really about It's not about being alone and angry and when you're alone and angry That's a sign that the thing that you're experiencing is something besides freedom and you might be on the road towards something worse Freedom is when you can honestly admit that you care about things that are maybe a little bit unusual or different than what other people care About and freedom is when you can find other people to do those things with.

And the way we make ourselves free together is just by creating the foundation where we as individuals can go off and do these things. Freedom is light. Freedom is relaxed. Freedom is authentic. It's not angry and aggrieved. Which country does it the best in the world by your indices? That's a great question which nobody has yet asked and I don't know the answer to that.

I honestly do not know the answer to that. I would say that there are places in the US where people do it very well. For example. Right. So well, there are like, so I would say that, I would say Boston, Massachusetts does it pretty well in many respects. I would say there are cities in the US which do it well, in the upper Midwest.

But in terms of my own personal experience, I would say that Austria, there's a discussion of childbirth in the book. Austria is a country which lays foundations for freedom. But the mistake that the Europeans make, which is a different mistake, is they don't describe these institutions in terms for freedom. But the mistake that the Europeans make, which is a different mistake, is they don't describe these institutions in terms of freedom.

It's always equality, social justice, national solidarity. Whereas I think that what one ought to be able to do is say, well, the TTC should be better, because then we would be freer people if it were. These institutions are there so we can be freer people. The Americans, I think, have it right in talking about freedom. They just do it the wrong way. The places where I feel free, just to be fair,

don't necessarily talk about freedom enough. So the Nordic countries do it very well, but I don't think they're talking about freedom enough. Boston and Toronto often get compared, so I'm going to follow up on that. Boston famously has, I don't know what, 50, 60 universities there. Are they a big piece of why you believe

the city is a free place? That public transport, the fact that sporting venues are actually inside the city, little things like that. But yes, and education does really matter, because it's a very simple point, Steve. But if you take an infant and you leave the infant by the side of the road, just an extreme example, but unfortunately it happens, that child isn't going to grow up free.

They're all the things that child needs and they're not just physical, right? They involve love and attention and time and past a certain point that love, attention and time takes the form of education. So education is part of becoming free. So yes, absolutely. Depending on who wins your presidency on November 5th, how do you see freedom either advancing or not come January 20th? I think it's a very dramatic difference.

I mean, freedom, it'll be kind of a test of the things we've been talking about. Because if freedom really is just about people doing exactly what they want to do, well, we know Trump is going to do exactly what he wants to do. He's going to put his political opponents in prison. He's going to let the people he likes get rich. He's going to let countries he doesn't like, like Ukraine, suffer. He's going to let countries he likes, like Russia, do well. He's going to do exactly what he likes.

Is that going to bring us a freer world? Obviously not, right? Whereas the Harris people do seem to have the right idea, I think and hope or want to think, that if you make the institutions better and that you can do this, then you can create a country where people have a better chance for freedom.

And empathy is a big part of freedom. And they, that is, Walls and Harris, seem to have empathy for other people, but also for other countries. So I'm going to say we'll see, but you know what my answer is. My answer is that if Trump wins, it's going to be disastrous for the things we're talking about. And with Harris and Walls, I think

we're going to have a chance. I will follow up on Ukraine, because this is a country that you deeply care about, and you have spent a great deal of your personal and professional life helping. And you wrote this, I guess, in Ukraine as well. When you spent all of that time on a train in Ukraine, in part writing this book, what did you learn

from Ukrainians about freedom? I'm glad you asked it that way because it's not so, I mean, in this book, a lot of people are helping me. And one of the points of this book is that you can't actually write a book about freedom all by yourself, because that's not what freedom is. You need other people to tell you where you're wrong. And if you're a free person, you can do that.

I took the book to Ukraine because folks in Ukraine were talking about freedom. And I think they got several important things right. One of them is the positive thing that we talked about before. They use the word deoccupation, which is interesting. So we deoccupied this village. That doesn't mean everyone is free.

People are going to be free after we clear the rubble, restore the bus service so that people can have normal lives. Ukrainians are a little bit obsessed with the trains. They think a town is free when you can run a train to it and back again. That's when it's actually free. But the other thing has to do with values, going back to the very beginning.

A lot of folks, not only in North America, but in Europe and around the world, agreed with the Russians that when Russia invaded, the Ukrainians would flee. And they didn't. And why didn't they? Because they weren't just following impulse. The impulse would be you run from superior force. But maybe if you're a free person and you've lived a life following values you get to this thing

called character where being a free person actually means you don't follow impulse. You actually have to stay and do the thing that you feel like you have to do. Freedom is about that and in talking to President Zelensky and other people that helped me with this definition as well. I do, since you've mentioned his name, have to point out that on the back of the book, okay, John Meacham gives you a blurb, that doesn't surprise me, he's a well-known historian, and Applebaum, again, no surprise, there's Volodymyr Zelensky's name, the president of Ukraine, on the back of your book, blurbing, on why he likes you and this book.

How did that happen? It was actually, it happened in a way which speaks kind of incredibly well of him. So I have talked to a number of heads of government and state for various reasons. And generally, they're affable and charming and generous. But I've never had quite the situation that I had with President Zelensky, which was,

this conversation when I met him was a couple of years ago already, at the beginning of the war. And I came in, and the Ukrainians were on a counteroffensive. And they had just won back a lot of Kh ago already, at the beginning of the war. And I came in, and the Ukrainians were on a counteroffensive, and they had just won back a lot of Kharkiv region. But interestingly, he didn't want to boast about that, which would be, let's accept a sort of standard politician. He didn't care about talking about that.

I had a few political things I thought I needed to explain to him. He already more or less knew what I wanted to tell him. So he looked at me and said, well, Professor Snyder, what do you want to talk about? And I said, which is, by the way, not something heads of state usually say. And I said, I want to talk about the philosophy of freedom.

And he said, just like this, he said, OK, let's talk about that. And then we talked about the philosophy of freedom for two hours. He did not know that's what we're going to talk about. He was not prepared. He was not briefed. But he was willing to talk about his life, about his intellectual influences, about his

education, about Shakespeare, about the dissidents, all things which were wonderfully interesting to me. And it seems like, and aside from the things that he instructed me about, like the business about character we just talked about, I also had the feeling, OK, this is a free person. I mean, if someone is actually president of a country that can say to the other person, what do you wanna talk about, and then actually go for it, that's a sign of a free person.

How shocked are you that the former star of a situation comedy on Ukrainian television is really the clarion caller for freedom in the world today? I was maybe a little less surprised than other people because he always had that thing even before the war that he didn't want the big guy to push him around. That was always clearly present. And then a second element of this is, as you know very well,

communications are also a reality. And someone who is good at communications can be someone. That's, I mean, for Churchill, I mean, Churchill was also a spectacular comms guy, right? So that is part of being a war leader. But it's some, you know, one of the things he said to me, I forget whether I quote in the book or not, is everything is in Shakespeare.

That studying theater, thinking about theater is one way to understand human character and tragedy and difficulty, and it's also one way of seeing the overall shape of a situation. I tend to think that's helped him. Let's finish up on this. You pray, obviously, you have worked for a Ukrainian victory, pushing the Russians back, maintaining territorial integrity, giving freedom to the Ukrainian people. What does that actually look like?

What does victory look like? It looks like, well, the hard part is, the part that I think North Americans have trouble recognizing, Europeans too. Somebody has to lose. There's not a third way, there isn't this magical thing called negotiations where you know Some nice person says hey, why don't you negotiate and the Russians say oh, why didn't we think of that?

You know, they're there to destroy they're there to annihilate the Ukrainian state. That's what they're there for They have to be stopped and they have to understand they're not going to succeed at any time in doing that And so the Ukrainians have to win in that sense Whether that means pushing every Russian soldier off and win, what it means is that Putin understands that he's lost or that fighting more isn't going to help him. And on the Ukrainian side, it means European Union membership, NATO membership, which

is something that I hope Canada would put the shoulder to the wheel on. And it means a European future. And it means, at the the very least the political aspiration, the legal recognition of the territories that belong to Ukraine. We do love having you on this program because your writing is fabulous

and you give us a great deal to think about. So thank you for making the trip to Toronto and we appreciate having you here. I'm glad it worked out. On Freedom, Timothy Snyder. Thanks. Thanks, Steve.