Thoughts on the Past, Present and Future of Diverse Democracies

Guests featured in this episode:

Yascha Mounk,  senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. As a public intellectual, he is widely known for his work on the crisis of democracy and the defense of liberalism. He is a regular contributor to The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. Yascha is also the author of 4 books, the autobiographically inspired Stranger in My Own Country, The Age of Responsibility – Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State, The People versus Democracy – Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, and most recently, The Great Experiment – Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, published earlier this year.

GLOSSARY

What is the Replacement Theory? 
(00:3:20 or p.1 in the transcript)

A demographic conspiracy theory popular among white nationalists in the United States and Europe that speculates that falling birthrates among white, native-born Christians, together with a growing population of nonwhite, non-Christian immigrants, whose arrival is believed to be encouraged or orchestrated by globalist elites with the goal of undermining national identities, will, if unchecked, result in the decline of white European culture or its dominance. First recorded in 1900–05 as a medical term; current sense dates to 2015–20; partly based on L’Abécédaire de l’in-nocence (The Abecedarium of No-Harm, 2010) and Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement, 2011), books by Renaud Camus, French novelist, white nationalist, and conspiracy theorist. Source:

What are the salad bowl and melting pot theory? 
(00:37:33 or p.10 in the transcript)

The salad bowl model is a metaphor for an inclusive, multicultural society. The idea of a melting pot is a popular metaphor, but it emphasizes the unification of parts into a single whole. The salad bowl concept focuses on individual cultures and proposes a society with many distinct identities. The salad bowl model is the most common concept in Canada and suggests that the country is becoming more cosmopolitan as more people migrate to the country. However, unlike the concept of a melting pot, the salad bowl concept is not homogenous. The concept is more politically correct, and it promotes a society that has many pure cultures rather than a single, unified one. The salad bowl concept also suggests cultural integration. While the melting pot concept promotes a multicultural society, the salad bowl model encourages different cultures to coexist. It juxtaposes the various American cultures, instead of blending them into a single, homogeneous culture. This model emphasizes the need for shared culture and is more politically correct than the melting pot model, which implies that ethnic groups might lose their culture. Source:

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