You may be the most hopeful man in America. You mentioned in the book that one of the key components of liberalism is human rights. I am thinking about a lot of Reagan Administration policy, especially in places like Latin America, and wondering whether you think the conservative movement has broadly believed in human rights. I think one critique of liberalism from people on the left is that liberalism is complacent about imperialism, specifically.
O.K., so you’re right to press on human rights. I would single out as the holy trinity freedom, pluralism, and the rule of law. I do refer to human rights as part of what liberals are committed to. You can believe in human rights while disagreeing about what falls in the category.
As you say in the first sentence of Chapter 1 of your book, “Liberals believe in six things: freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy.”
So, I put democracy and human rights there, and I believe it to be true. But there have been liberals in history who are, let’s say, ambiguous in their enthusiasm for democracy. Some people say you could have a liberal society that isn’t democratic. I disagree with that. In my view, democracy is a condition for liberalism. But liberals sharply disagree about what’s included in the category of human rights. You might think there’s a right to an education, as Roosevelt did. I certainly do. And other liberals would say that’s a policy that’s probably good, but there’s no right to it.
Now, on imperialism, generally, the question is what does it mean exactly? If it means that the United States interferes illegally with the activities of other nations, to say the least, there should be a presumption of a very strong form against that.
This debate about what should actually be included when we think about human rights—that wasn’t what was going on with Reagan. The Reagan Administration would laud any dictator that it liked and garland them with praise.
I hear you. So here you have [a clash between] human-rights enthusiasts who are cautious about making what they see as undue compromises for the sake of alliances and others who think that you can make temporary compromises of liberal principles for the sake of obtaining alliances that might insure that people’s rights are protected in the long term. And I feel I kind of have a division of labor within my family on that one, and I defer to spouse.
Your spouse being Samantha Power.
I defer to that human-rights advocate, who is also a realist. [Power became famous in the nineteen-nineties for her journalistic work on issues of human rights, and was seen as an idealist. She later served in the Obama Administration as U.N. Ambassador, and in the Biden Administration as the head of U.S.A.I.D.]
You can defer to her. I was just asking because you put it in the first sentence.
All I meant by human rights was some category of fears that are walled off from government intrusion. If you say, I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, private property, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and I don’t believe in social security, I don’t believe in a right to a home, I don’t believe in a right to be free from discrimination, I don’t believe in a right to education, then you can still be a liberal.
In terms of human rights, I’ve always found it a little bit puzzling, given what you write, and given who your wife is, that you two were so close to Henry Kissinger. Of all the pre-Trump political figures in America, he is the one I think of as in some ways the opposite of liberal, given his behavior toward the rest of the world.
I’ll tell you a story. I wrote a book a few years ago on Star Wars. We invited Dr. Kissinger to my Star Wars book party, and he said, “You wrote a book about Star Wars? Why’d you write a book about Star Wars?” He was puzzled and courteous, but really confused. And then he came to the book party, which was quite generous. He was a busy person.
But, despite his busyness, he came to the book party.
Yeah, and then I gave a talk on Star Wars, and he came up to me afterward and he said, “Oh, I see why you wrote a book on Star Wars. There’s a lot there. It’s, like, about families and it’s about governments and freedom.” The amount of curiosity and generosity that he showed was incomparable. I don’t know anyone who showed that level of curiosity and generosity. And we really got into Star Wars. He just wanted to think about it. I know there are strong views about his career, and I’m hardly an expert on his career.
But your wife is one of the great human-rights experts in the world. I asked you about him being anti-liberal, and your response was that he was very nice to you about your book.
About Star Wars.
It is certainly a touching story. But that’s not totally an answer to the question.
Yeah. Well, I don’t know. What he would think of this book I’d love to know.
But no second thoughts about being friends with him or anything?
I feel generally very grateful for friendship, and he was, when I knew him, a person of immense kindness. Those who think of him as someone who was something horrible or worse, I don’t know what to say about that.
But you could have an opinion on it. You have an opinion on all kinds of things, right?
Well, on him and his role in government, that’s not something I’ve particularly studied, so I don’t know. I know some people who think he was a horrible historic figure. They would say, “Would you be friends with Genghis Khan? Would you be friends with Stalin?” And I wouldn’t be friends with Stalin, so I concede that.
Well, the next time someone brings up a terrible anecdote about Cambodia or Vietnam, I will definitely drop the Star Wars story to show that people have two sides.
Yeah. And I get those who think you shouldn’t be friends with someone who did terrible things. I hear that. I can just say that he was, as a very large number of people would say, though many fewer would say it publicly, an extraordinarily generous friend.
Professor, thank you so much for doing this.
Great, thanks. If we go light on the Kissinger part, I wouldn’t complain, because it could dwarf everything else. ♦
