Global Pundit
Walter Russell Mead makes for a unique college professor and pundit: he holds a BA in English, but no PhD in anything. He writes eloquently and persuasively about international relations, not just on editorial pages, but also in several books analyzing American foreign policy—books that are taken seriously, and deservedly so.
He recently discussed international relations (and much, much more) with economist Tyler Cowen on the latter’s podcast. The occasion was Mead’s latest foreign policy book, The Arc of a Covenant (2022). The book forms the basis for some of the conversation, but not all.
The conversation explores several ideas of interest, for instance, whether Americans enjoy any benefits from having such overwhelming global power. Is there any value to promoting democracy in other countries? Is democracy promotion a useful goal in the Middle East? What is the value of pursuing an academic doctorate? How did growing up in the segregated South give Mead a unique analytical perspective relevant to American foreign policy?
For my tastes, Mead has always been an eloquent analyst of the international political scene. He tells the story well of how we got to where we are on the international scene. His 2001 book Special Providence provided a valuable interpretive lens for understanding the democratic forces of American traditional folkways as they relate to America’s foreign policy approaches, which he termed Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, and Wilsonian (David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America [1989] served as an interpretive framework). The populist Jacksonian tradition, with its base in the interior Appalachian region, would appear to dominate our current times: the native impetus to walk away from the international scene, considered irrelevant to America’s real concerns at home.
The conversation moves along rapidly, as do the Conversations with Tyler in general. A podcast version is here. The video version is below.
I had an ineresting exchange in the comments on the latest episode ("Indicted Again") of the podcast nobody knows exists, "High Steaks," in which Sarah and Steve have a bet on.
A Joe1776 was being, I wouldn't call it exactly trollish, but he was all up in arms about Biden--nothing wrong with that, but he wanted to recruit people to join his outrage by any means necessary, featuring insinuations that if you don't sign on to his particular outrage project with its reading assignments, that means you must be in the opposing camp. It took me several rounds of replies to explain to him that it doesn't really work that way, that (I wish I had thought of this wording yesterday) there are no coercive shortcuts to common ground, which is bigger than his little patch anyway. I may or may not have gotten through, but at least it helped clarify for me that there is such a type and they may not even see why their tactic (making great leaps of assumptions about others, whether they mean it or not) is not going to get them much traction.
Another interesting thing in those comments was that Adaam very graciously accepted some feedback about users' experiences with the podcast player.
Oh, and Sarah forbade me to make a substitution of ingredients in a creamed spinach recipe.
Hello everyone.
I am surviving being on my own at work and home, though my cats are driving me nuts because Rick isn't there...lol...Bill has called me several times to report his progress on the trip and to let me know he has arrived safely...he has gone back to the "other" Bill, who is much more fun, since getting that check for the cars....I told him I liked it....lol
Today is National Flag Day ( an actual Holiday actually), Pop goes the Weasel Day, International Bath Day and Bourbon Day, now I am lamenting not having a decent bathtub with lots of room, depth, with a shelf for putting my bourbon , and bubble bath ready....lol