The Myth of Left and Right with Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis
Listen now
Description
My guests today are Hyram and Verlan Lewis. Hyram and Verlan are brothers. Hyram is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, Idaho, and Verlan is a political scientist at Harvard Center for American Political Studies. Together, Hyram and Verlan have written a very interesting new book called "The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America" ​​​​​​​In this book, they challenge the widely held belief that the political left and right represent two distinct philosophies, liberalism or progressivism on one end and conservatism on the other. Instead, they argue that people on the left and the right are more like sports fans. They are born into a particular tribe and then they adopt the random assortment of beliefs that tribe currently holds. Now they acknowledge that there are such things as political philosophies, like libertarianism, for example. They just think those philosophies have nothing to do with what we call the left and the right in everyday speech. In other words, the words left and right do not name philosophies. They name arbitrary tribes that then invent convenient, but false stories about what their philosophies are. That thesis is the topic of this conversation and I think it's very interesting. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too.
More Episodes
Josh Szeps interviews me at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne, Australia. Conversation topics include: indigenous land acknowledgments, white guilt, the relationship between white guilt and the enlightenment project, Hollywood’s progressive bias as seen in movies like The Woman King and Hidden...
Published 09/07/24
Published 09/07/24
Glenn Loury reflects on his memoir, Late Admissions, and the process of recalling his life experiences. He discusses the powerful and galvanizing experience of reliving his past, including memories of his mother, admiration for his father, and personal struggles with addiction and infidelity. The...
Published 08/09/24