Why We Changed Our Minds About Politics

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Hello, and welcome to the David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Mona Charon, and we will be discussing things we've changed our mind about since our days as young Reaganites a long, long time ago. My book this week will be an essay on a similar theme, My Early Beliefs by John Maynard Keynes.

in which uh the great English philosopher and economist discusses how his views had changed from the early twentieth century to the time in which he delivered this essay just before the Second World War. But before either the dialogue or the book. Some thoughts about a remarkable development in the week just past.

One of the defining characteristics of the Trump years has been the determination of President Trump and the people around him to turn into instruments of presidential will federal agencies that were always thought of as more or less independent and apolitical.

The Department of Justice, well, it's an armament it's part of the administration for sure, and the Attorney General is an appointee of the president. But there had always been a belief that the actions of the Department of Justice, especially the criminal enforcement actions,

were not dictated for political reasons by the President. Well, that idea has just gone up in smoke in the Trump years. This has been the most nakedly political Department of Justice Perhaps since Warren Harding's uh in the nineteen twenties.

And maybe m the most in history because of the recent event where Janine Pierrot, US Attorney for the District of Columbia, supposedly acting on her own, but obviously acting at the command of Attorney General Bondi, who was acting obviously at the command of Donald Trump. When the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia actually tried to indict six members of Congress, four of them members of the House of Representatives, two of them United States Senators.

For making a video urging U.S. military personnel to obey lawful orders and not to obey illegal orders, which you would think is something that. would be as basic as telling the president of the United States not to take bribes. How could that such how could such a statement be controversial unless the president was taking bribes and unless the military was contemplating illegal orders? So they took offense for that reason, and they tried to prosecute members of Congress.

Now, the speech of members of Congress is protected not only by the First Amendment, like as yours and mine is, but by the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, which puts very severe limits on the ability of anybody to punish a member of Congress for something that the member of Congress said. And yet the Department of Justice tried just that.

Happily, a grand jury completely rejected the charges. There was reportedly not a single member of the grand jury who took this seriously. It was unanimous rejection, a an unparalleled humiliation for the Trump Justice Department. But the litigation of other attacks on those members of Congress continues. At the same time we saw uh in this past weekend.

A really shocking event where President Trump traveled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Bragg has got is is now Fort Bragg again. It was renamed and it's now de-renamed. Um and so Fort Bragg is what we will call it. And at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a state where there's a Senate election in twenty twenty six, a Senate election that may prove decisive for controlling the balance of the United States Senate after twenty twenty six.

President Trump appeared on stage with the Republican candidate for Senate and urged military personnel to vote for that candidate. Michael? Michael. Michael, will you come here for a second, please? He's running for the Senate. And if he gets in you're gonna be taken care of. If he doesn't get in, we're gonna be stripping the military like they always do, the Democrats. The military is, of course, the most important apolitical institution.

Presidents address the military all the time, but they are not supposed to make political speeches, rally speeches, to ask the military to vote a certain way. That's unheard of. That's shocking. It's it's the prelude to authoritarian rule. Now, fortunately, again, as with the rejection of the attempt to indict members of Congress for what they said.

The attempt to mobilize the troops as political actors, that also looks to have fallen flat. Reporters who are present noted that the soldiers, who maybe were warned by their commanding officers, made a point of clapping for the president's appearance. Clapping when the president talked about raising their pay, well that's traditional, but keeping very quiet when the president made his pitch that they should vote for the president's preferred candidate for United States Senate.

But in both cases, these are mere instances of failure, not instant stories of the successful pushback by institutions. But there is a story from the past week that is a much happier story about institutions actually resisting. One of the most important and independent institutions in the United States government is the Federal Reserve. Again, the president appoints members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

But they are not in any way the President's creatures. And the theory of the Federal Reserve, which is created by act of Congress, not by an action of the executive, is the Federal Reserve makes monetary policy based on facts and realities as best they can determine in their judgment and not for political reasons. There have been deviations from this ideal. They've usually ended in catastrophe.

inflations, depressions, and in recent times the Federal Reserve has been generally regarded by all people, Republicans and Democrats, as setting a model of of independence. President Trump has now made some new appointments to the Federal Reserve. He's appointed a new chairman to replace Jerome Powell, the existing chairman. Powell's term expires in May.

And President uh Trump has put forward a nominee, but not content with simply replacing Powell, which of course is his right as Powell's term expires. President Trump has tried to put pressure on Powell to cut interest rates by big bringing up all incredible things, or by preparing to bring, it's not filed yet, a criminal investigation of Powell for some series of nonsense charges. Now the charges aren't filed.

But the president has been huffing and puffing and uh the Department of Justice has been demanding, has been subpoenaing Powell as if these actions were ready. And at the same time he's brought forward a successor. Warsh looks like a solid B, maybe a B plus nominee. He looks a little partisan. Um that is, he's a Republican, of course, and in Democratic terms, he's always calling for higher interest rates. In Republican terms, he calls for lower interest rates.

He seems to be much more a creature of politics than an ideal Fed chairman should be. But he's obviously an intelligent person. He's got some knowledge and experience. And he's not the cringing sycophant that some of the other candidates for the job that Trump might have chosen were. So given in a

Pretty unimpressive Westminster dog show. He may be the least mangy poodle. Um, so fine, pick Kenneth Walsh. But One of the uh Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina who's outgoing has said I am not going to consider any nominee by the president, meritorious or not, unless we end these fool prosecutions, these sinister prosecutions.

That Trump has instituted against one Federal Reserve governor already, uh Lisa Cook, and is threatening against another, Jerome Powell, because they wouldn't cut interest rates as fast as he wanted. Until these prosecutions are at an end, no consideration of any nominee whatsoever.

And because of the closely balanced nature of the Senate and the rules of the Senate, Tillis may be able to make this stick, and if he is joined by other United States Senators, then there's a real trial of strength to say, The president cannot treat the Federal Reserve as an instrument of his vengeance and policy and his crass ambitions to cut interest rates and try to get some inflationary juice into the economy before the election of twenty twenty six.

No one w will be considered until the prosecutions are ended. That's more than just a defeat. That is institutional counterpoise against the attempt by the president to corrupt institutions. He has successfully corrupted the Department of Justice. He's trying to corrupt the military so far with minimal success, but things may get worse. And he's now and he is attempting against the Federal Reserve.

In the Federal Reserve case there is resistance, and Senator Tillis is doing exactly the right thing, and let us hope that more senators join him. Absolutely no consideration of any Trump nominee to the Federal Reserve until this menace against the existing governors is completely dropped, quashed, withdrawn, defeated, given up, abandoned, sealed forever. Only then And the irony, of course, is that if President Trump doesn't do this and the the Senate continues not to act,

Powell's term continues. He remains as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, even if he's not chairman. He will stay on the board of governors. And the gu board of governors can at that point elect its own acting chairman and it may still be Powell. So the punishment for Trump's attempt to pervert the Federal Reserve may be getting more of what he doesn't like, which would be a fit irony. But the best outcome.

end this nonsense. Ideally replace Bondi with a an attorney general with some integrity, but failing even that, just end these shameless prosecutions, end these shameless acts of intimidation, drop the cases, close them, And then let the Senate consider uh the Walsh nomination on its merits, such as they are. And now my dialogue with Moda Chi.

Mona Charon is a contributor and podcaster at The Ballwork. A graduate of Barnard, she began her career in journalism at National Review. During the Reagan administration, she served as Nancy Reagan's speechwriter. She was a panelist on CNN's Capital Gang in the nineteen nineties and is the author of four books, most recently Hard Right, the GOP's Drift Toward Extremism published in twenty twenty three. She was an early and prominent leader of the never Trump movement and stayed that way.

Mona was also one of the very first people to welcome my wife and me to Washington when we arrived in the nineteen nineties. So it's a double pleasure to welcome her today on the David Fromm show. Mona, thank you for joining. So glad to do so. David, you guys improved Washington immensely. All right. So let me ask you for the benefit of those who

Don't uh for whose memory has lapsed or who were maybe born more recently than some of us. A lot of people were born more recently than we would recapitulating your political uh journey from the start until Donald Trump appeared on the scene a decade ago. Well, I don't wanna b bore people too much, but I um became interested in politics out of a sense of gratitude. My family came to this country at the turn of the century, turn of the last century, I should say.

And I became aware at a young age of what had happened to Jews who were left behind in the communities from which my grandparents had fled. and understood that this was political in nature. And so when I was in my adolescence, Not something I recommend as a fun way to spend your teenage years, but I sort of immersed myself in Holocaust studies and trying to make sense of how human beings could have done that.

And the result was that it made me very, very um grateful for the institutions, the stability, the human rights protection. That the United States affords. And so that kind of made me a conservative. I felt that, you know, some people have said the primary emotional response of a conservative is gratitude, whereas the primary emotional response of a liberal is dissatisfaction, you know, wanting to improve things.

And so I I became interested in reading conservative writings. I also was highly aware that wasn't just that totalitarianism wasn't just a phenomenon of the right with the Nazis and the fascists. but that the communists were just as bad, uh or almost as bad, I would say. And uh so I was an anti communist from a young age as well, became a conservative,

uh began reading Bill Buckley in my local paper and then reading National Review, then began to read um other conservative thinkers. I was very drawn to Edmund Burke because he was you know, uh it spoke to me, right? He was a gradualist. He didn't want any abrupt changes that were that he saw as dangerous and possibly um contributing to despotism. And so that's how I became a conservative and

I stayed that way for a very long time. But with the rise of Trump, I saw the destruction of pretty much everything that let me let me pause there. I want to take the story up to twenty sixteen and then slow down. Sure fast. Okay. So where were you in the election of twenty twelve? Uh I was a Romney supporter. And why? I felt that that Obama was a bad president. I didn't agree with a lot of the things that he did. I liked that Romney uh I remember when Romney was asked which industries

the US should be backing as the industries of the future. And he said, I don't know. And he said and no one else knows either. I loved that. Um, you know, that kind of modesty about what government can do or no. I So So you were on board with the conservative program into the second Obama term. Yes. When Donald Trump declared it for president on that June day in twenty fifteen, did you take it seriously? No. Not a bit.

Um and I remember I think it was um the Huffington Post said that they were going to only cover him in their um entertainment coverage, not in their political coverage. And I thought that was about right. you decide or accept that this might be a real thing.

Uh when he continued to dominate the polls, uh when I saw that the um even the grotesque Uh there are a few things that stand out, of course, but you know, the threatening violence against uh protesters at his rallies, mocking a handicapped reporter. uh scorning John McCain's heroism, all of those things that I thought would have disqualified him obviously didn't and I began to worry and then I remembered the primaries in twenty fifteen

really gave me chills that or I guess it would have been twenty sixteen by then. So this is a very full buffet and you can have more than one serving and make more than one trip. But as I hear you talking about your reaction, you are emphasizing in the first trip to the buffet. the human qualities of of Donald Trump. That that that

as you're describing it here, that's what that was the first reaction, the first repulsion. Yes. How did the rest follow? Because you start with a human reaction because since then you've had, as we'll d continue to discuss, a pretty uh dramatic political evolution. But you start you started with a human response that this human being was violent and disgusted. Yes, but he was also the antithesis of what I regarded as conservative virtues. So for example, he encouraged people to believe that

he personally, through force of will, could uh change huge problems, solve huge problems that face us as a country. I thought that was the antithesis of everything that conservatism believed. It was Caesarism. And uh and then of course his all of his various heresies like his attacks on free trade and his racism, which again I thought was the fulfillment of every fever dream of the left that thought

Conservatives were v were all racists underneath that if you scratched them you'd find that they were really racist. And here along comes Trump who confirms this. Ah Um, so I resented that as well. You were one of the contributors to the twenty sixteen Never Trump special issue of of National Review. I I recently went back and looked at that. There are about two dozen contributors. Mm-hmm. Some stray stayed true to their original position. Some flip. Some have just become kind of shifty.

Uh but was was that a moment where you still regarded yourself as a member in good standing of the conservative community? Oh boy, that feels like an a lifetime ago. But you know, here what The at the time we still uh believed, I guess, uh naively that national review had the kind of authority within the movement that we could speak ex cathedra, you know, and and and anathematize

Donald Trump and that people would take that seriously and they would say, Well, look at all these conservatives of longstanding who have stature within the movement and therefore Uh if they say he's not good, then that will that will be crippling for I don't know if we quite thought it'd be crippling, but we did think we had influence.

And we didn't. Well, and that I I should stress that issue was published, I believe, in January of twenty sixteen. So before any Republican primaries. And conservatives had the memory that in twenty twelve There had been a lot of wacky novelty candidates who did who rose in the polls. That's right. And uh you know, date Michelle Bachman, Mary Mitt Romney.

Um and I I think a lot of people in January twenty sixteen thought, you know, that's going to be the pattern here again. Yep. Date Donald Trump, marry Marco Ruby. Yep, that's right. Uh Herman Kane, uh yeah, there were there were a bunch of them and and Ben Carson, of course, also ran in twenty sixteen. And I thought he was

Similar. And I I remember discussing this with other people in twenty twelve that it was a little dismaying to see what was happening in the primaries and saying, you know, the base has some uh some appetites here that a little that are a little worrisome. And in the end they settled on Romney, but it was it it was a a a tell that they were flirting with all those other sort of crazy Candidates. All right. So where were you on election night twenty sixteen? Remember?

Yeah, I was blackout drunk. Should have been Rio de Janeiro. Should have been. Uh yeah, no, I was I was at my computer live blogging and live Tweeting and all that. Yeah. So so when When do you internalize that there may be a bigger set of issues here than just the human reaction to Donald Trump?

You know, he's speaking to somebody, and he's speaking to a lot of people, and he's speaking to a lot of people that you knew and trusted, not and not just the famous base, but to peers and friends of yours. How how does how does that dawn begin to rise?

Well, uh Jonah Goldberg put it best many, many years ago where he had a an article that he where he said it was watching people that he knew and uh believed he understood. gradually become Trumpy was like the invasion of the body snatchers where people that, you know, they just were absorbed into this uh this thing. And so I watched one after another and for a long time it was a subject of grief for me that I watched these people uh that I respected, you know.

f bend the knee. And uh so but I can't I mean it was an ongoing process. It took years. Um and during that time unfortunately I lost many friends. So Jonah Goldberg whom you know well and I know I think less well but and I know He would say, and I'm not going to gainsay this, although I think that these statements can't ever be fully true, but he would say, I haven't changed my mind. I've stayed here and the world has moved, but I I've been constant.

I I certainly wouldn't make that claim for myself. Uh in fact I've changed my mind about a lot of things, some of them in reaction to Donald Trump, some of them in reaction to other things. Where would you situate yourself in that spectrum of saying, I've stayed put, the world has moved and my statement the world moved and I moved with it and against it, but I moved too.

So I there did come a point after the initial shock and grief where I was actually not quite grateful, but at least appreciative of the fact that in my sixties, because of the changing nature of American life, I was forced to reevaluate many things and see it through new eyes and including looking back at my own beliefs and uh, you know, possibly changing my mind on things.

And I felt in a way, I mean, I wouldn't have chosen it, but I did feel like it was a bit of a gift because at our stage of life, you know, people mostly get stuck and rigid. And so I was forced to be a little bit more flexible and I've changed my mind about many things. And there are you look, there are certain things that that I still

you know, believe and and have always believed, but un I find myself without a political party that also believes those things. So let me I'm gonna give you then a in a moment an inventory of things you've changed your mind about and things you have not. And we can do it either you you decide which of those inventories you'd like to catalog first. Okay.

So one big thing is I've always been interested in race relations and racial progress in America. And I um was I wrote uh if I go back on my, you know, work over the decades, I wrote a lot about school choice and about school reform and about uh family formation, other things where I felt that those were the areas to focus on to lift up African Americans who lag behind whites and and Hispanics in on many many social indexes.

But part of my focus was a belief that The worst days of racism were really behind us, that only really kooks and fringe figures were still like old-fashioned racists in America, and that the the new problems were things like, you know, the Teachers' unions were too powerful and didn't allow School girl. experimentation and reform and uh and family structure was a problem.

in the black community, of course, in all communities, um, but it started in the black community with family breakup and that we needed to focus more on building up family structure because that was so important for people's success.

And what I saw in the last ten years showed me that I was really I had underestimated the degree to which the naked racism that had been part of American history and which I was very familiar with, but did not think persisted to this day, I now think that was wrong, that there is a tremendous amount of it.

And that it was naive of me to believe that we had conquered it. So that's one thing. Where are the things that you have not that you feel like I'm still the same as ever? I still believe these things.

So I still um I still believe that free markets and uh uh free markets are the best approach to many public policy challenges. I I still believe Passionately in free trade. Look looking for a party. Oh Yes, that that that that that that is the issue where there is the most continuity between Trump won and Biden. That's right. That's right. And yeah. I had the recent experience of talking to a group of important Democrats. Mm-hmm.

And and saying, I I just want you all to repeat after me the words free trade. And they they can't do it. They can't do free and fair trade. No no. Free trade. Can't do it. And and say tariffs are bad. They say, Well, I'm against dumb tariffs. Dumb tariffs, yeah.

Smart tariffs. There are smart tariffs. And for ideological reasons, for interest group reasons. It's very hard for um Yeah. And I there's a lot of this um if we do move beyond Trump, I I I worry how much the next president if there is a free and fair election in twenty eight H how much will the next president unravel considering how little of Trump won Biden unraveled. That's right. And the tariffs of Trump won Biden unraveled. Yeah, agreed. Uh so so that's one?

Similarly, I um continue to believe in market oriented solutions to climate change. I I think that the idea of, you know, creating prizes for new technology or, you know, all all these kinds of things that economists have taught us are are effective. That's the direction that I would go. I'm afraid again, there's no constituency for that. Let's see. Uh fiscal discipline. Uh worry about the debt. Again, no party. Um but more deeply I am a

believer in tradition and procedure and law and respect for tradition. So that's the one of the things that I find most horrifying about this populist era that we're in is that uh going back to our earlier conversation about why I became a conservative, you know, it the institutions, the procedures, the protections in law that it took hundreds and hundreds of years to enshrine in our system.

are critical and so uh the the idea that that President Trump is now running roughshod over law and has allies a plenty. in the MAGA movement who already he you know, in his first term he was trying to do it pretty much by himself. Now he has eager allies. They're destroying our system of justice. and civil liberties in this country and they're destroying our international Posture. And maybe I should mention as that's another thing I still believe in. I still believe the United States should be.

The leader of the free world should have alliances, should stand up for countries that are invaded by aggressive neighbors rather than finding common cause with their oppressors.

You you put your finger there on something that I I've really been wrestling with a lot. And I I recently had this conversation with David Brooks. So let me raise it again with you. And I I I don't have I don't have yet a developed view on this was I think about it all the time. So I I don't wanna be glib and pretend this is an easy question. And I at the end of it, if you were to turn the tables, I wouldn't know what to answer. So So that said.

There is a big part of me that wishes that Merrick Garland were right. And Merrick Arlen and Joe Joe Biden were right in their first term approach, which is Donald Trump was this unfortunate error uh that the American people made. They they'd had a pretty good track record of pricking picking presidents to that point. They got one wrong. The electoral college was maybe to blame.

Um and the thing to do is just to tidy up the mess and move on with as little recrimination and backward looking as possible. There's another view, which is that failed. Ah that's Trump came back, the people around him became as he often said of himself, I became worse, he did. The people around him became even worse than that. And we have now a full throated attack on

every American institution, um, the abuse of law. And it's not clear to me you can just dust it this off and tidy up and move forward without serious backward looking and accountability. I I wrestle with that question. Do you have any guidance to offer, or are you as are you as stuck in the predicament as I am? So I guess what you're describing is lustration and I think in order to get to that point, you have to be more advanced than we are. We are still too divided and polarized.

And to even begin to grapple with how do we fix and put back together what's been destroyed. So part of the problem with the Merrick Garland thing was And and the whole approach. They the people who said Trump is a criminal and we have to prosecute him, th they believed very firmly in the justice of that and I understand it. But at the same time, it was done badly, I think, because that New York case really was politically motivated. And it's the one case that they got but it allowed

the MAGA forces to say, you see, both sides abuse the m the uh judicial system for political ends, and therefore when we do it, it's just what was done to us. This is just payback. And so that's a risk when you decide to use the justice system that way. I hope that there will come a time when there's enough recognition across party lines that we've gone off the rails, that there will be an openness to a true

accounting. Uh there are people who are committing real crimes, including the President of the United States right now. The blowing up people in boats who you just suspect maybe drug traffickers is But It's gonna take time and a huge amount of persuasion and and more than the persuasion, it's gonna take more experience of the awfulness.

for the American people to get to the point where they're ready for an accounting. Let me take go back to the very beginning and r and raise something and th this is something I think we share. I think we both came to conservatism in great part because of our Jewish identity, uh, because of our inheritance of mass murder of the Jewish people in Europe. In my case it was

Almost all of my father's f my father's family came out and they they lived and the vast majority of his family were left behind, they died. And had my father's parents made a slightly different decision in nineteen thirty, my father would have been married at about the time of his ninth, tenth or eleven. Um, so that's the starting point, I think, of both of our politics. We come to conservatism via our Jewishness.

The Trump presidency has raised some very special questions, very haunting questions for American Jews. On the one hand, as you say, it's a highly bigoted presidency, a highly chauvinist presidency, and Trump certainly has won the support of people who are increasingly not only outspoken but flamboyantly anti-Semitic. Um at the same time, Donald Trump acted to s support Israel.

to uh win a dis much more decisive outcome in the Gaza war than the Biden presidency or a Kamala Harris presidency. And he's acted uh against the Iranian nuclear program, which is an existential genocidal threat to the half the Jewish people who live in Israel. Most American Jews are opposed to the Trump presidency.

But many of the most active and prominent American Jews are quite passionately in support of his presidency for the reasons I mentioned and for and for others as well. How do you, as someone who's, as you said, began your political journey because of this Jewish inheritance? How how do you make sense of Trump as a as a Jewish woman? That there is a tendency all too common to say, well, whatever else he may be, at least he's good for my group.

you know, and that is not a principal position to take in my opinion. But also I think it misses the bigger importance of what his destructiveness means not just well for the Jewish people among many others, because he is destroying the United States as a bulwark of free nations and strong uh a strong alliance. And so even though for now he has taken positions that uh are seem to, you know, m please the Netanyahu government and and supporters of Israel,

He first of all, he's for sale, so who knows if that will last. I mean, it's never about his true beliefs, it's always about what's good for him and certainly there are many people on the planet who c are have a lot more uh to offer him in that regard than than the Jews do. So who knows how long that would last. but also a secure Israel and a secure Jewish people, depend on moral and and principal leadership of the United States.

So let's leave Israel aside for just a second. What Trump is doing to poison the social conversation here at home to allow in these voices to to r to really mainstream people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. That is deeply frightening. That's where we live. And uh it is opening the door to the kind of Yeah, there's there there's a lot of left wing anti Semitism, but frankly the right wing variety still scares me a little more.

because it is it is truly Nazi like in its uh ferocity against Jews. Yeah. L let me push back on that just a little. And again, I say this in a spirit of uncertainty, um, not in a spirit of argument. Uh, the polls look pretty bad for Trump and his party at the moment that we speak. Uh who knows whether that will continue.

Who knows whether Trump will try to find some way by by fraud or by force to seek a third term? He says so, and I I think by now we should take those warnings seriously, although the body does fail us all in the end. Trump's running mate and the presumptive front runner for the twenty twenty eight Re Republican nomination, assuming there's still a constitution in twenty twenty eight.

is J.D. Vance, who's very cl uh very close to Tucker Harlson. And I will argue this with some of my more, again, Israel oriented Republican friends, but I think is clearly not a friend to either the Jewish state or the Jewish people.

On the other hand, if assuming there is an election and JD Vance is the Republican nominee, he will be running against a nominee from a party where that just vetoed the most plausible looking running mate for Kamala Harris because he was Jewish and because he wouldn't renounce his support for Israel and wouldn't um hedge his condemnation of anti-Semitic outbursts on American college campuses.

And where important voices in that party are saying that the test, their impos most important test for their support in twenty twenty eight is Holocaust inversion, that they are looking for a nominee will say that the perpetrators of the attempted annihilation of Israel on October seventh, twenty

uh twenty three, um that those those attempted perpetrators were the victims of a Nazi like genocide, and the victims uh who fought back in self defense, they were the Nazis who committed a genocide. And that For important parts of the Democratic Party, going to be the litmus test for their candidate in 2028. It it's great that everyone's so interested in the shoes that the shoe won.

I I sometimes wonder why did we have to be so fascinating? You know that that old saying there are only two kinds of people in the world who are fascinated by Jews, Jews and anti-Semites.

Well, oh yeah, but it turns out that there may well a lot of people are fascinated by juice. So so how do you make sense of this? Is that you may you may given life and health and the and the continued existence of the United States Constitution may be called upon next time to make a choice between someone who is backed by

domestic anti Semitism and someone who won their nomination by making some kind of deal or arrangement or truce with those who do Holocaust inversion against the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Yeah. It's very, very difficult time for the Jewish people, honestly. Um, it is uh, you know, we I I think we were born at a time after the Holocaust when anti-Semitism was at epic low rates, um, because of the Holocaust.

And that is over. Uh, our children and grandchildren will not be living in that world. They'll be living in a world where it's it's come roaring back. And uh you're right. I mean the uh the problem on the left is considerable. But it's untested as of now. So We know that the anti Semites are very close to power on the Republican uh side, as you say, with uh J D. Vance is very close to Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens is a huge influencer m and uh yeah, all of that.

On the left, it is for now the precinct of the the hard left progressives. it's untested as to whether that will become the dominant strain in the Democratic Party. We'll see. Uh that that would be very, very worrisome. Let me, as as we wind up, t take you back to the beginning.

And ask you, if you as you look back on the political views that you had in the earlier part of your life, do you now feel regret or do you feel like i I got benefit from it even if I don't hold to all of it these days? Um got benefit from from what? From the things the the things I believe between age twenty and age forty. Um I regret those things. Or I

I don't regret them because they're part of uh I couldn't be where I am and in fact there's some value to them. Do you No, there's certain there's certain things that that I am proud of from that period. I I was uh a firm anti-communist. I think it's a great boon to humanity that communism is uh largely uh a thing of history now. And uh and there are many, many other many other issues that that I think conservatives were right about.

But the world has uh the world has changed. Conservatism that the conservatism that I signed up for is completely gone. There's no coherent set of ideas that is held by a movement or a par far less a party. now uh that is recognizable. Yeah. I I mean I again this is something I I may be projecting my own thoughts onto you. I this is a question I've been wrestling with a lot. I've been thinking about it. I've been working on a memoir for a long time and I've been wrestling with these questions.

That there are things that when I look back on the world of of my early political views, things that I thought were important. that were the defining thing that uh as you say, anti communism, free markets, free trade. And that turned out to be something I cared about, but that most of the people I was associated with turned out they never cared about very much at all. And then other things that I dismissed is

irritating or not awkward or embarrassing or marginal paranoia and bigotries and conspiracism. And that turned out to be really important to a lot of the people I was formerly associated with. Uh on the other hand, I I do sometimes think There's something that the

The reason for the prominence of the never Trump Republicans in the anti Trump coalition is not just their novelty value. I mean everyone likes a a a conversion story, but also that I think there's something important that that we bring and that is A sense of that it that this is a group that has a un uh a unique sense of the uniqueness of what is happening now. And So y I'm sure you've seen often in the comments you get from readers or viewers or listeners They'll say something, aha, you know.

We warned you that this was all when Dwight the moment Dwight Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson, Trump was the inevitable outcome. Absolutely. All the time. No, he's not the inevitable outcome of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and

George H. W. Bush and George, he's different. And we're we're here to tell you that as people who liked all those people, he's different. And that's something and and we can t and because we liked all those people, we can tell you how and why he's different in a way that The typical commenter who's blaming Dwight Eisenhower for being the start of the of uh Donald Trump can't tell.

Well, yeah, the uh the people who um are kind of th and I'll I'll say this. I I think they're kind of smug and they say, you know, this was always conservatism and this is just the the full flowering of all the things that conservatism always was. I say that is absolutely not the case. I can cite for, you know, one thing that pops right into my head, for example, David Duke. Ran for governor of Louisiana. The president of the United States at the time was George H. W. Bush. He said,

we want no part of him, even if he's a Republican, even if he gets the Republic, that's not who we are, et cetera. That was just normal that we that the party would uh and the movement would reject That kind of thing. Today? They'd say, you know, he's he's anti warm. Make make him the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Exactly. He's got the mission. And he's got he's got a lot of par he's got a lot of marriage guys who make it.

make perfect recruits for our new paramilitary force. Exactly. He can start making those videos for ICE. Yeah, no, it's really sad and pathetic. But anyway, but the but that is different. And yeah, we're we're here to report that uh we lived through it and we would not have tolerated that kind of thing. We left when this became the party. So you know, it obviously wasn't the party in two thousand.

Realistic circumstances where you can see yourself reimagining yourself as a Republican and a conservative again. I mean, obviously there are fantastical circumstances, but realistic circumstances where you can imagine yourself feeling at home again. Uh not until this whole generation dies off, and since I'm gonna die off before they do, no. Um because the party has been uh the

the the Republican Party and the Conservative movement have both been so deeply corrupted. Yeah. And uh so no, I c I cannot imagine. Um But I do hope that the Democratic Party, um, you know, there there is an argument that in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties.

when the neoconservatives who had all been Democrats some of them remain Democrats, but uh When they moved toward the Republican Party, they brought with them a way of thinking and s and ideas that were incredibly rejuvenating for conservatism. And possibly the migration of some former conservatives into the Democratic Party can do the same thing. That's maybe a little bit

Fanciful, but I hope so. And and if you were to say, What what what are the gifts? What are the things that they might bring with them, like the Magi? Um the appreciation, so I'll tell you one quick story if I can. I was at a meeting with a bunch of people who were who span the spectrum but have leaned heavily left.

And uh and we were talking about uh how elections are run in this country and you know, before the advent of Trump there were a lot of liberal reform bills and things that wanted to centralize election the way we run elections in this country. and uh limit the s power of states to control it. And so I remember chatting with this person who actually

Anyway, um and uh he said, you know, I said th the fact that the constitution gives this power to the states looks pretty good right now, doesn't it? And he said, Yeah. So, you know, the some of those um limitations on what government power can do. which are sort of a uh our birthright as conservatives, we're c we're we're suspicious of government power. Unlike liberals who always think only of what it good it can do, we're very imbued with no it can also be really, really dangerous.

So maybe we bring a little bit of that perspective to policy making. Tell us at the end, finally, about the work you're doing now. What are the things that in your personal work you think are important that that get you up in the morning? Well, sometimes it's hard to get up in the morning because the news is really depressing. Um

So w okay, so while you're there in bed, putting the covers over your head and thinking maybe this was all a terrible dream Yeah. Um w the the the voice of conscience that says, No, you have to get out out out and doing what is what is that voice?

reminding you of it is remembering how important just, you know, Orwell's line about, you know, duty of intelligent men to State the obvious, uh keep saying it, being unafrad to say the things that a lot of people in mainstream media and uh around yeah certainly in the business world and in many of our institutions, people are afraid to be honest and tell the truth.

And so those of us who have been foolish enough to lose all our friends by telling the truth in the past um can continue to tell the truth and maybe i as we see it and uh maybe that still has value. Mona Charon, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks so much to Mona Charon for joining me today on the David Fromm Show. As mentioned at the top, my book this week is actually an essay, My Early Beliefs, by the great English economist John Maynard Keynes. Since Mona and I spent so much time discussing our own political evolution, I thought it might be interesting to turn to what is maybe the most famous such discussion ever written, and that is Keynes' essay, pu uh which he delivered as an after dinner speech in nineteen thirty eight.

Keynes graduated from Cambridge in the early part of the twentieth century, and in nineteen thirty eight he and a group of his Cambridge friends gathered together for dinner to look back on the changes in their lives over the past third of a century. Keynes delivered this paper talking about the way that he and his friends had changed their minds about important issues. In the last bit of this essay, which is only thirteen pages long.

Keynes reflects on one of the important shocks that came to him and came to his friends since their undergraduate days. Now, the early part of the twentieth century was, if you were an Englishman of bourgeois background, as Keynes was and as his friends were, a time of extraordinary security. Those of you who have recently watched on your own or with children the Mary Poppins movie will remember George Banks, the patriarch banker singing It's good to be an Englishman in nineteen ten.

And so if you came from John Maynard Keynes's background, so it was. It was good to be an Englishman in nineteen ten or nineteen oh nineteen oh four or five, um, when Cain when Cambri Keynes was at Cambridge.

Um but in the interval between their undergraduate days and nineteen thirty eight when the essay was delivered as an after dinner speech, in that interval the world had passed through the First World War, The Communist Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of fascism, inflations, depressions, and net was now in nineteen thirty eight on the edge, very visibly, of a second and even more terrible world war.

The age of security that Keynes had grown up in was gone forever. And a lot of Keynes's thinking and work in his later years dealt with the shock to the sensibility of someone raised in that secure world of Edwardian England. uh dealing with the new world of communism, fascism, wars, inflations, depressions. And so I want to quote from the later part of the essay a passage that I think resonates with

Through the ages to our time now. He's talking about this group of friends and their influence, and he says of them, in short, we repudiated all versions of the doctrine of original sin, of their being insane and irrational springs of wickedness. In most men. We were not aware that civilization was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and the will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skillfully put across.

and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom. We lacked reverence for everyone and everything. It did not occur to us to respect the extraordinary accomplishments of our predecessors on the ordering of life.

as it now seems to me to have been, or the elaborate framework which they had devised to protect this order. As I look back, On my early beliefs, and the beliefs Mona and I discussed, I realized that we came Mona and I, our political evolution can be described by exactly the opposite direction. We began, as young conservatives, in my case as early as the 1970s, very aware of, as Keynes put it, of that civilization was a thin and precarious crust.

What we were not enough aware of was the flip side of that. And just as Keynes had to discover the power of order, I think Mona and I, I will I won't speak for her, I'll speak only for myself. That those of us who were conservatives then and are less conservative now.

I don't think we were aware enough that it wasn't just order that was needed, but also the justice and fairness that caused that order to be something a little bit more, than to quote Keynes again, something a little bit more than the personality and the will of a very few. that the order that we valued so much gained its power.

because of a broad consensus based on the personality and the will of a great many. And the way to get that great many to back the order was through a sen a sense of most in most people, of many people, that the order was just And that if the order was ever felt to be unjust, unfair, to favor only that very few whom Keynes described, then it would have to be maintained in ways that were harsher and more tyrannical than the order that we valued and that we remembered.

I think we all go through evolutions in life, and that's one of the tragic blessings or one of the blessed tragedies of growing old, is that you you get this critical distance on what you thought before and what you think now. And maybe the Maybe the outcome that we're all groping to is to say, how do we hold on to things that we thought were true what that w we were young, that were correct intuition?

when we were young, and how do we enrich them as we get older? Uh that is the topic that Mona and I have spent our time together discussing. We've spent so many years of our of our lives working together on. I'm very glad to have had her today to discuss this working out with me on the David Fromm show.

Thanks so much to you for listening and watching to the David Fromm program. I hope you will subscribe and share this program widely, that the success and continuation of the program depends on your subscriptions and your sharing. As always, the best way to support the work of this program, if you're minded to do that, is by subscribing to The Atlantic, and then you can support the work not only of me, but of all of my Atlantic colleagues.

Thanks so much for joining me today on the David From Show. See you next week for another episode of the David From Show. Bye. This episode of the David Frum Show was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Andrea Valdez. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards. Claudine Abaid is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm David Frum. Thank you for listening.