The Daily Signal - Conservative Editor Brings a Fresh Perspective to Newsweek

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

It can be very difficult to find common ground in America today. Bitter partisanship feels like the new normal as liberals and conservatives struggle to find even a single topic they agree on. Josh Hammer, opinion editor and host of "The Debate" podcast for Newsweek, decided to do something about it. "Newsweek's idea here is that we are going to be the home for [tough] discussions, and we're not going to shy away from the dicey issues. We're going to talk about reparations for slavery, critical race theory, qualified immunity, to defund the police, whatever. We will not avoid the hard-charging stuff here," says Hammer. Hammer joins this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast to discuss how Americans can find the middle ground in an increasingly divided society.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey all, Doug Blair here. What you're about to hear is a special bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast from our time at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. On today's episode, we hear from Josh Hammer, opinion editor and host of the debate podcast for Newsweek. He joins us to discuss how Americans can find the middle ground in an increasingly divided society. This interview was recorded live at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, so please pardon any excess noise. We are joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Josh Hammer. He is the opinion editor and host of the debate podcast for Newsweek, a research fellow at the Ebnan Burke Foundation, as well as counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project. Josh, thanks so much for joining the show.

Happy to do at any time. Excellent. So let's start out with your work with Newsweek. You write on a wide variety of conservative topics, strongly conservative in your perspective when you write. But you also co-host a podcast called The Debate, where you host debates between politically, disparate people and you attempt to find a middle ground where people start to find they agree. Where did the idea for this podcast first come from? And how do you navigate these discussions in a very politically divided landscape?

So it's tough. So I took over the Newsweek opinion editor of a job a little over a year ago. May 1st, 2020. It was kind of during COVID lockdowns, all that. But when I first interviewed for the position a few months prior to that, they kind of told me about this debate idea. At that point, it was purely just an idea. Literally, they had like something on a bare-bone skeleton the website. There was certainly no podcast yet.

The idea here is that no one in the mainstream media, Newsweek is nothing if not a mainstream brand, is that no one is actually hosting civil discussions. Literally, no one is doing that. I mean, in the mainstream media, there's no one, obviously, outside of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal to begin with, who will even consider publishing, you know,

someone right-of-center conservative for the most part these days. And then everyone else is monopement. politically singularly liberal. So Newsweek's idea here is that we are going to be the home for those discussions. And we're not going to shy away from the dicey issues. We're going to talk about reparations for slavery, critical race theory, qualified immunity, defund the police, whatever. We will not avoid the hard charging stuff here. So the podcast itself launched in April.

I am a conservative, my podcast co-host, Bob Younger Sagat. She is obviously liberal. She's an anti-woke liberal. She's a little bit more of a classical liberal. She hates the new woke stuff. But the idea here is that we don't do a whole lot of opining on that podcast itself. We do. We moderate the discussion.

We take in the direction we want to take it. I'm obviously like the right of center host. She's the left the center host. But we really want this to be about the guests. And we encourage them to have a civil, robust exchange of ideas. And, you know, this podcast's been out for three months. We're getting a lot of downloads. So we think in newsmeet that we've tapped in something.

And we'll see where it goes. We're happy with it. No, I think it's phenomenal to really have a forum where people can come to the center and discuss these topics that are very important because, I mean, as a country, you can't really survive if only one side gets to talk and the other side gets sort of pushed down. So I think it's wonderful that people get to talk. I was reading a piece that you wrote for Newsweek titled The Toxicity of Permanent Outrage Mentality. And something that really struck me in that piece was this phrase that you wrote, the unfortunate reality is that in our modern political and media ecosystem, a permanently aggrieved, outrage, victimized mentality pays well.

So specifically looking at the media, what do you view as their role in fostering the divided society that we're kind of in now? And where do we go from here? What do we do about it? Stoking outrage has literally become a business model. You know, it's funny. We see this most acutely actually in social media in the big tech platforms. There's been a lot of investigative work that have actually shown that Facebook and particular, other other the big tech giants as well, but Facebook in particular, they will literally

kind of manipulate their algorithm to kind of put content in your feed that is designed to kind of while you up. The point of this, obviously, is that riling up, it's not healthy for blood pressure or anything like that, but it does keep people engaged because anger, frustration, these are strong, visceral human emotions. And look, in social media, you know, when we're tweeting out, I mean, it is very easy to just react to something and then just get angry and immediately say that some anodyne not particularly troublesome incident that happened to halfway across the country. Oh, it's the latest instance of racism, white supremacy, heteronormativity, whatever. It's very easy to extrapolate these one-off incidents and make it fit into a broader paradigm. And because humans, we always want to feel like we're fighting the next big cause.

You know, I remember I'm talking about this earlier today, there was an Atlantic essay, The Atlantic, in like 2014, 2015, right around the time the Supreme Court gay marriage stuff was being litigated. And there was some essay where someone was comparing the gay marriage fight to the Selma, Alabama March, which, you know, is somewhere between abhorrent and just patently ridiculous. But the point here is that every person feels the need to strive for what they perceive to meet justice. And when someone is saying that this fits into a broader worldview of injustice, we naturally gravitate toward that without necessarily thinking clearly here. So it gets rewarded with retweets with life because people like to fit these idiosyncratic one-off things into a broader worldview, even if it's not a very good match.

But look, you know, when I'm editing pieces in Newsweek, I am trying to intentionally use strong arguments, both in my own writing and my editing. But I like to avoid hyperbolic language that's designed simply for shock value, because that's not necessarily going to accomplish anything good, I think. Yeah, I think that that's important, too, to sort of, like, what is the end goal here? Like, what are we trying to actually do? Is it trying to make people upset, or are we trying to actually inform them about the news? Right. So I wanted to move on from your Newsweek stuff to actually your panel here at TPP USA. One of the things that you talked about was the different conceptions of the term freedom, right?

So there's the more libertarian view of freedom, which is, I can do whatever I want, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody versus a more traditional kind of founder's vision of conservatism with restraints and you live a life of virtue. I was wondering if you could sort of expand on that idea for our listeners and sort of come down on which you believe is the best way for conservatism to go. Yeah, so it's funny. So my basic thesis here is that what we now call conservatism or what we have called conservatism for a while now is very, very libertarian in nature.

There are parts of it that are kind of inherently conservative. Those are kind of like the more nationalist strands, the more kind of like immigration restrictionist strand. There is some real conservative content there. But this notion that freedom is just the ability to kind of let every individual kind of maximize their full potential. It's the infamous mystery passage from Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 Supreme Court case, where Anthony Kennedy and the abortion case is basically saying that the definition of freedom is to kind of define your own existence about the mysteries of human life. This is kind of a certain strand of enlightenment liberalism,

taken to its real extreme logical conclusion here. But there is a differing view as to what freedom and liberty actually is here. The founders themselves disagreed about this. I mean, there were some kind of more enlightenment-centric thinkers among the founding generation, people like Thomas Jefferson, probably the chief proponent to that. He was a real enlightened guy for sure. But there was a totally different line of thought here. George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, much more traditionalists

in how they viewed kind of the relationship between human liberty and the powers of the state. I mean, in George Washington's first inaugural address, it's a beautiful, beautiful speech. He speaks quite eloquently about the imperative if you actually want to make good in your community, in your nation. It starts in the home. It starts with building a family.

It starts a private morality. The preamble of the Constitution itself, something I very frequently cite, it lists seven enumerated ends of governance for this American experiment that we also love. They are all kind of oriented towards justice, the common good, Blessings of liberty. By the way, that's not liberty as an end unto itself. It's the blessings

of liberty that we're actually trying to pursue here. So the more traditional conception of freedom is basically that we will never actually be truly free unless we are living in constraints inherently oriented towards the common good. And then ultimately what our various religious traditions teach is the highest good, which is God. Yeah, no, I think it's definitely fascinating to look at the two conceptions of liberty and freedom that we have, obviously, in a in a post sort of like, you know, traditional conservative post-Trump world as well. So one of the things that that actually brings to mind

is you did a really fascinating virtual event with the Notre Dame Young Republicans where you talk about the origins of conservatism from sort of post-World War II, Buckley, that sort of traditional school of conservatism to the post-Trump period of new fusionism. What do you think that new fusionism and post-Trump conservatism looks like?

So, you know, the fusionist consensus, like when it kind of arose with William Buckley in the 50s, 60s, we have to remember it was kind of a time and a place, right? It was in reaction, of course, to the Cold War when the Soviet Union was literally an existential threat. We were trying to find a way to unite moral traditionalists, free marketeers, and national security hawks under one kind of partisan umbrella. Ronald Reagan, obviously, ultimately kind of with the culmination of that. But in year 2021, we're facing some of the same problems, but a lot of different problems here. And, you know, my fellow conservatives, some of whom will just kind of thump their chest and say, you know, if it wasn't this way in the Reagan Bush-Nand-Din-4 platform, I will never consider it.

I'm strutemending a little bit, but like there are some people more or less kind of say that. That just can't be the way that we approach conservatives in the year 2021. We face totally different challenges. The rise of China, obviously, is the issue of all issues. It affects literally everything, immigration, national security, our political economy, opioid epidemic in Ohio and the Russia. It affects every issue. Immigration, identity, politics, obviously this collusion between the government and big tech. We're just facing a different set of issues than kind of the Soviet Union and domestic inflation crises that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush face.

So no one's really defined what a quote-unquote new fusion necessarily is. In a different column I referred to as kind of the coalition of the unwoke. I kind of view the woke ideology, this intersectionality, identity politics. They're kind of all synonymous with one another. It's multicultural. I use these terms kind of interchangeably. This is effectively the new Marxism. In fact, my Eminberg Foundation colleague, Yaron Hazoni, who's the president of

Emorybanksburg Foundation, wrote a fabulous essay at Colette magazine last August, right around a year ago, called The Challenge of Marxism, where he basically kind of looked at the intellectual history, and I thought it quite definitively showed that this woke ideology, this authoritarian, substantively horrific woke ideology is basically just Marxism without the economic element. It's the exact same thing. So some of the same paradigms are still there,

but we're facing different issues and we have to be willing to adapt to them. Sure. Actually, and on that note, I do think that that's an interesting point to make is that there is a new threat. There is a new set of issues that conservatives have to face now back in the past. It would be the Soviets, or the USSR.

are. Now, I'm actually curious, in your opinion, what is the biggest threat facing conservatism and what is the solution? Well, the biggest threat facing United States of America is the rise of communist China. I mean, that's the geopolitical issue of up the century as far as I'm concerned. I mean, it literally stretches across everything we possibly do, right? I mean, corporate America, obviously, is kind of in the tank for this. We obviously have all seen the LeBron James and the NBA and those guys are doing. But obviously, I mean, like Nike, Disney or they're involved in Xinjiang. Just horrific. But look, I mean, Donald Trump, to his great credit, was the first president, and Richard Nixon went to visit Mao Zedong in 1972

to actually challenge this bipartisan neoliberal consensus as applied to China. You know, the thought process was, if we open up China to the world, did we economically liberalize, they will politically liberalize. You know, the jury is in, and that failed. It just totally failed. The Chinese Communist Party today, you know, we're still not sure obviously how COVID started. It looks to me like it started in the lab, whether they like intentionally bioengineered it is a different story. I'm not necessarily going to say that they did, but they might have. But this is a truly horrific authoritarian regime. And we need to like realize that our trade policy, our national security policy, our political economy. I mean, I agree with kind of a lot of this kind of like new

intellectual thought into kind of more industrial policy measures. Let's make ourselves more self-sufficient as far as critical supply chains are concerned. Let's get some semiconductors here so we're not reliant on the age of Pacific reason for semiconductors. These are just some like common sense things that we'd be thinking about, but a lot of it really is kind of downstream of China. On a domestic frontier, look, I personally view the rise of big tech as very similar to the rise of the late 19th century Robert Barron's. I mean, Josh Hawley in his new book writes about this quite prolifically and a great length.

But if you look at the New York Stock Exchange, the five large market cap companies. Let's see if I can do this. It's literally it's Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. Not in that, not saying that order, but those are literally the five. Those are the five largest. That's crazy. And like, these companies, they control the current public square. For better or for worse, they literally do. And if they are effectively acting as kind of the ruling classes, what I refer to as the ruling classes, private sector enforcement arm, increasingly as it appears a buyer, interacting is effectively just a de facto government adjunct of the actual state itself.

We need to do something about that. That is not okay. And I think the time for people on the right to just take a very hands-off approach to that, I think that ship is still. We've got to be willing to kind of get in there and take action on that front as well. I think that's a very interesting point. So unfortunately we are running a little low on time, but I would like to give the last word to you. The way I try to end these interviews generally is to give the interviewee the last word. And what if somebody was to take only one thing from the last word? And what if somebody was to take only one thing from this interview. If they were to take the kernel of truth from this interview, what would it be? And then a little more specifically, if a young conservative was maybe

listening to this, what should they keep in mind as they are going through their political journey? Yeah, I love that. So on the first part of your question, I guess my party message would be, from my perspective, there's been a big conflation on the American right in a lot of circles over the past two, three, four, whatever decades, where we conflate enduring principle with idiosyncratic ad hoc policy. We have principles. You know, I would recommend to the listeners podcast. I mentioned him earlier, but my colleague Yaron Hazoni wrote a fabulous essay in 2017 for American Affairs Journal, What is Conservatism? And he really kind of traces the intellectual history of conservatism, would highly encourage that to listeners. But the point here is that

Conservatism is a term that goes back to English common law, goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, Edmund Burke, obviously, William Blackstone, many of the great common lawers. We have an idea what conservatism is, and it is a longer, more enduring, more intellectually, robust tradition than, you know, necessarily being synonymous with whatever the Reagan Bush-1984 platform is.

So my party message, I guess, would be to continually think about what conservatism is and get comfortable with the fact that there are enduring truths, there are enduring principles, that our politics necessarily has to be orientedism. to pursuing, but because, like I often say, you know, we are, you got to know what time it is. I mean, like, the left is crazy. The left is unkinsed like we've never seen them before. We are over 100 years into this Woodrow Wilson, progressive, you know, a crazy experiment, basically, distorting everything. If we want to save the Republic here, we've got to be very

confident in our convictions and our principles, but maybe a little more pliant or flexible in the means. I would encourage that, you know, all the young listeners, the college students, to just keep on thinking about that. Think about what we want to pursue and then be a little more prudential, a little more pragmatic about the means to get there. I think that's fantastic advice. That was Josh Hammer.

Josh is the opinion editor and host of the debate podcast for Newsweek, a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation, and as well as counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project. Josh, thank you so much. Thanks so much. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members

of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate, Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.