Liberty in a Cold Climate with Niall Ferguson (1 of 2)

On February 6 and 7, 2024, the James Madison Program hosted Niall Ferguson for its annual Charles E. Test, M.D. '37 Distinguished Lecture Series. This year's two-lecture series was titled "Liberty in a Cold Climate."
Lecture 1: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy - February 6, 2024
There is widespread agreement that liberal democracy is in crisis at home and abroad. But what is the nature of that crisis and how will it be resolved? The lecture proposes that the era of numerous liberal democracies may be drawing to a close. Most liberal democracies are unprepared for the challenges of a new cold war against illiberal, undemocratic opponents.
Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil, FRSE, is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-winning filmmaker, too, having received an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His 2018 book, The Square and the Tower, was a New York Times bestseller and was also adapted for television by PBS as Niall Ferguson’s Networld. In 2020 he joined Bloomberg Opinion as a columnist. In addition, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of Ualá (a Latin American financial technology company), and a trustee of the New York Historical Society, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, and the newly founded University of Austin. His latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, was published in 2021 by Penguin and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is currently writing Kissinger, 1969-2023: The Player and serving as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

[@notheotherklaus]

Love the fact that we can sit at home and follow these lectures

[@effexon]

no lecture hall can fit 23thousand that this video already has views.

[@ryanmcdonald5351]

Solid principles. This curriculum must be brought to our public schools....

[@dennisfarris4729]

It's all available for the editing and presentation, who's gonna step up?

[@MillerShealy-zo8qe]

Fantastic presentation!

[@mediastudiesnetwork]

Enjoying this ❤

[@maryspencer4274]

Nice to be in the same boat different time

[@lesliecunliffe4450]

It is interesting to note that the Scottish Enlightenment, like the Enlightenment throughout Europe, piggybacks Christianity, notably Calvin's thought and its emphasis on education and literacy, thus confirming Tom Holland's thesis in his book Dominion that the best features of modernity are just footnotes to Christianity.

[@alst4817]

That’s a very generous conclusion. A better evidenced one is that the enlightenment came about as a sometimes violent rebellion against the sanctimony of the Church

[@MrYamscafe]

Niall always at his best when he talks without script in hand:)

[@raymondswenson1268]

The issue of a democratic leader convincing the people to make present sacrifices to avoid future disaster is exemplified by Themistocles who convinced Athens to invest their silver wealth into an unprecedented navy, which was how the Greeks defeated the Persians.

[@psyskeptic9979]

Very good. Note to self: don't hold a clicky plastic cup of water near my microphone when I lecture.

[@brucevilla]

Thanks for Uploading.

[@jenskristiankiilerich]

Brilliant 🎉

[@bearowen5480]

US national debt to GDP ratio was 105% at the end of WWII. Due to circumstances of the post war international economy, that had been reversed by the time of the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations. I agree with Niall that the current situation of 124% is both alarming but widely not understood or appreciated. It is a looming and potentially catastroohic problem for the United States.

[@vecernicek2]

Do you count Canada among the fallen democracies?

[@dennisfarris4729]

One tech breakthrough like cheap safe fusion would wipe out any thought of the national debt.

[@user-rb5ne5hn4k]

Thank you, but I strongly suspect, that the strength of the West is not so much the democracy, as aristocratic traditions (including the U. S. A. also). The problem with say the RF is not the lack of democracy, but the oligarchic trends. Probably, Professor Ferguson was talking the same and just have called a spade a spade. Anatole Zavernyaev.

[@TheWhitehiker]

Starts at about 5.00.

[@robertprawendowski2850]

⭐

[@talesofcanterbury42]

The outcome from the US behaviour is Europe will be nice but assume you are not in NATO and nuclear proliferation in Europe will expand amazingly, because if you cannot trust the US nuclear umbrella. You need your own. Given Congress’s behaviour, it’s hard not to see the genie out of the box.

[@YeahThatsTough]

3 min intro ?

[@roberthumphreys7977]

I see a generation that is not willing to invest in children. Why would I expect that generation to feel any obligation and duty to provide a better world for future generations when many of them do not believe there will be or should be future generations? South Korea is well down this road, as is Japan and much of Europe. The USA is heading there.

[@tb8865]

Worse, the USA is giving away its future to foreigners and immigrants. What is there of value to invest in that will not be taken by strangers from somewhere else in a generation or two?

[@msomayya2828]

Lincoln and grant the greatest

[@Wilmare]

Loved that ass zoom on 59:44

[@bearowen5480]

I enthusiastically agree with Niall in much of his exposition, but I find his use of government's measures to combat global climate change as an example of short term sacrifice to avert a future cataclysm very troubling. There is plenty of compelling scientific opinion that the massive academic consensus that climate change is the primary threat to life on earth is flat out wrong. The hysterical predictions of climate catastrophe by a certain future time, now reached and passed without negative consequence, convincingly put the lie to claims made by climate catastrophists. I find much more compelling the arguments of cooler heads like Bjorn Lomberg and Brett Weinstein who predict that the economy wrecking anti-fossil fuel policies of Western goverments will condemn millions in the developing world to poverty and starvation. I think Professor Ferguson could have found much better examples of short term national sacrifice to avert future calamity than global climate change, such as, for example, a simple 1% or even 5% reduction in Federal departmental budgets, except for Defense, across the entire government. That would cause some much needed belt tightening by the Federal bureaucracies that already waste billions of taxpayer dollars every fiscal year. The looming catastrophe of general economic collapse under the weight of massive government debt could thus be avoided.

[@Nicer2BNice]

I haven’t watched this video yet but you might want to watch what Daniel Schmachtenberger has to say about the fact that solving one problem might exacerbate another problem. Unless I’m mistaken, this is essentially what you’re conveying, and if so, you’re exactly correct. You might also want to listen to what I’ve come up with as a comprehensive playbook to try to overcome our problems as a species. It sounds crazy but just as your observations might sound unreasonable to the untrained mind - they aren’t.

[@mariakatariina8751]

Republics are not democracies, by definition. 28:28

[@whitecrossredground8820]

That's an issue that has been fudged historically. Republics, after all, have traditionally been counted as forms of popular government. The people are said to govern through their representatives. Two issues immediately arise: 1. to what extent do the representatives reflect the desires/will of the people in policy, and 2. what is the proportion of the people allowed to choose the representatives.

[@newdawnrising8110]

Btw no one is talking about equality of outcome. This is the new right wing think tank talking point. Anyone talking about this is working for a think tank like Neil F.

[@msomayya2828]

Uk always has followed a policy of divide and rule they

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

divine central authority unity with substantive human rights choice for international law react to God rule over world, separate from UN government create political situations to take over world from God

[@msomayya2828]

They tried it with America but succeedet with India

[@DavidMorley123]

Too shouty presentation. Thanks anyhow.

[@mariakatariina8751]

Cromwell & heirs genocided illegitimately more than 95 % of the indigenous Irish Suomi Picts. Let the Cromwell sinhogs be forgiven as they have forgiven their debtors, enemies, and victims. INRIX

[@monkgroupie]

Niall Ferguson is a brilliant historian, but not a good lecturer, reading from others more and more and more is not a good lecture. But he is brilliant, so OK.