Crossing the Danube with Calum Nicholson – Transcript

The following transcript comes from Saving Elephants podcast episode 196 – Crossing the Danube with Calum Nicholson.  This transcript was auto-generated by Zencastr and while some effort has been taken to reduce glaring omissions and errors, mistakes will undoubtedly still exist.  The original podcast audio should be relied upon for an accurate representation of the actual conversation.

Podcast Introduction

For good or ill, the post World War II era built by the Baby Boomers seems to be rapidly coming to an end.  But what will replace it?  What might be done to prevent global conflicts and bloodshed as the old order begins to break down?  And what should younger conservatives seek to conserve in this era of chaotic change?  Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is Director of Research at the Danube Institute, Calum Nicholson to share how the Anglosphere often misunderstands the way the rest of the world thinks and how that might help us better prepare for what’s ahead.

About Calum Nicholson

From the University of Cambridge bio

With a background in social anthropology and human geography, Dr Calum T. M. Nicholson has conducted original research that reconsiders how we understand the societal implications of climate change, notably in the context of its relationship to human migration and international development.

A former development consultant and Parliamentary researcher, at PACE Dr Nicholson teaches courses on international development, international migration, and the politics of climate change. Dr Nicholson also teaches a well-received course on the political, cultural, and historical significance of social media. He is currently Director of Research at the Danube Institute, and was formerly Director of the Climate Policy Institute.

His new book is entitled Climate Migration: critical perspectives for law, policy, and research.

Begin Transcript

Josh

In preparation for the conversation, of course, I went back through some of the talks and lectures and panel discussions you had given and lot of intriguing things that we could cover. But where I wanted to begin was with your basic idea of the way in which geography changes our frame of reference for global affairs. Now, you, of course, have the advantage, I suppose, of hailing from both Great Britain, Canada, and Budapest, Hungary, and kind of getting a sense of those different perspectives.

Cal

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh

As we were talking in the green room, I'm right smack dab in the middle here of the United States, about as central Oklahoma as you can get, US as you can get. So what is it about, I think what you refer to as the Anglosphere, what do we in the Anglosphere not quite understand about how the rest of the world thinks just based on our geographical differences?

Cal

Well, ah so I think the Anglosphere have something quite unique about their geography and with consequences for their perception of the world and also themselves. And it's something that's really come home to me since I moved to Hungary about four and a half years ago, ah because um the Hungarians are like to describe to describe themselves as the only nation in the world surrounded by themselves. Because if you look at the map of Hungary, so if you look at from space, what you see is a ring of mountains in Central Eastern Europe, the Carpathian Mountains. And that is actually the old border of historic Hungary. But then they lost two thirds of their territory. What is these days most of Slovakia and Transylvania and Romania and a lot of Serbia north of Belgrade and a bit of Croatia and indeed a little bit of Ukraine.

All of this used to be part of historic Hungary, which was lost ah with the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. And so um the Hungarians they are a landlocked country ah surrounded by nations that used to at least in part be part of historic Hungary. And being in a landlocked country, but coming from the Anglosphere because I'm British, but I spent 10 years as a kid in Canada. I realized it's a very different ah frame of reference. And I think it's basically this. I mean, if you think of the Anglosphere, we're basically a series of island nations. Anywhere in the Anglosphere you go, you know when the nation ends, even if you cover your eyes, if you walk, because as soon as your feet get wet and salty, you've hit the end of the country.

And that is the case for New Zealand, Australia, Britain and North America, Canada and the United States. There are two exceptions to this. There is the Irish border in Britain, which or Great Britain, I should say, which is which is the biggest source of political tensions in Britain over the last century. Essentially, there was a lot of the issues in Ireland and Northern Ireland and the IRA and so on to do with the border. And indeed, the reason Brexit was held up for several years was that there was a ah lot of around what to do about that border between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland. Because if they hardened the border and turn it into a hard border, that could lead to ethnic tensions again, or like religious tensions. And so no one wanted to risk that. And of course, the other big flashpoint is the United States Mexican border, which of course is featured very prominently in American politics in the last 10, 12 years. So basically for us, so we haven't really, know when our borders end, but if you go to a country like Hungary, Unlike us, where we have objective borders in the sense with two exceptions, they have subjective borders. You cross the border from Hungary and you're still meeting people speaking Hungarian. And to be honest with you, in as much as the Hungarians often like to say they're the only nation surrounded by themselves, it's actually quite a common issue, of course, ah throughout the world where ethnic groups bleed or religious groups or linguistic groups or cultural groups bleed across borders because borders were largely this construct of post-World War I or post-World War II and decolonization and so on.

And that's the case in the Middle East, it case in the Central East and Europe, it's the case in many places. And so in a sense, the Anglosphere is kind of the exception that proves the rule on this. But here's the point, is that, you know, because partly because we're island nations and because of the oceans protecting us and because the British Empire was largely a seafaring empire when it was easier to travel by water than land, which of course is why most major cities are on rivers like Budapest and Hungary. That was the easiest way of traveling.

Josh

Right.

Cal

Because of that, we have become, and the Anglosphere become, the world's dominant cultural group or linguistic group. Hence why, you know, the operating language of most international organizations is, of course, English. English is the lingua franca of the world, essentially. and ah And as a consequence of that, it's we've had this sort of geography that's led to, I think, this this geography of objective borders, in a sense, of has led to ah a way of seeing the world that's kind of, it's easy if you're from the Anglosphere to think of like here, there, us, them, in a sense, you know, ah true, false, right, wrong, these sorts of things, to think in a very binary way.

But if you actually live in a place like Hungary, you discover things are much more subject to negotiation, it's much more subjective. Everything is negotiated and there's a much more gray area. And so I think one of the challenges we have is that we have a world, particularly international institutions, that is framed by the sort of metaphysics that is founded in the Anglosphere, which are a series of nations that have had a very binary sort of understanding of how the world is and indeed how it ought to be.

And that that doesn't really translate to a lot of other areas of the world and the tensions they face. And so for me coming to Hungary, it was um I learned a lot about coming to Hungary, being in Hungary. But to be honest with you, by comparison, I actually learned quite a lot about the assumptions embedded into my own frame of reference as someone from the anglosphere

Josh

It makes sense. And certainly I think there's a sense in which, say, here in the United States, we nostalgize, say, the World War II period, because it's easier to say, know, here there would be dragons or, you know, um good guys here, bad guys here.

That sort of simplicity is helpful. And it makes it very difficult when we're fighting like a war against terrorism, when it's hard to know exactly where are the dividing lines. I did want to um bring to this discussion, though, because it occurred to me that while Hungary is a very important, say, test case, the one that's more common or or that I'm more familiar with is the comparison between the Anglosphere and, say, like the Russian Federation or like the differences in in which, you know, because Russia in ways that ah yeah I have friends, we talk about the Russian situation often, and we're constantly confused. Like we get it and yet we don't. Like, why is it they're so obsessed with enemies all over the place?

And then part of is like, well, you look at their history and the number of times they've been invaded. It's like, okay, I get that. But it also seems like, again, from my limited American perspective, that they have a very blind eye to, well, when you invade your neighbors, that creates animosity.

I'm wondering sometimes, like, is there a way for, let's say, the Anglosphere or the Western, well, we won't say the Western world, we'll say the Anglosphere, to communicate its values of nation states respect their boundaries to people groups such as the Hungarians and Russians. I'm not saying the Hungarians are guilty of, like, spilling over their borders and raping and massacring their neighbors. But is there a way that we could, um other than just through sheer force, enforce a kind of Anglosphere world?

And I say this in in in the sense that, like, I recognize America's, whether our power is weakening or whether we're just choosing to exit the world stage, I genuinely fear what comes next in terms of the potential for global conflicts, hegemonies around the world that could, you know, in a post-World War II world, it could get very violent very quickly. And I know it's a big question, but I guess I'm wondering, is there a way for us to impart um our value set of respecting boundaries communicated in a way that makes sense to a people group that doesn't share objective boundaries?

Cal

Yeah, so I think one of the challenges in this, though, is an implied challenge, which is that I think one of the dangers the Anglosphere has is that we are we are so culturally dominant, we've almost had very little incentive to be curious about other frames of reference. Now we can have the debate about which is the best frame of reference, but the reality is that other people simply have different frames of reference. And that's not gonna go away simply because we don't like it.

And so I think one of the biggest dangers we're facing in the world is less that the world is complex, is that sometimes within the Anglosphere we fall into, I think, um the naivety or perhaps the hubris of thinking the world could be otherwise, that it could be simple. And I do think one of the biggest dangers, honestly, to some of the stability is not necessarily um the attitudes of China or Russia as such, though, of course, it's very complicated. I don't want to say that too strongly. But I do think sometimes ah a sort of Manichian worldview, a very sort of binary worldview, a very sort of us and them worldview, which is quite common in the Anglosphere, almost an evangelizing idea of that we are simply right. And it could be it could be more of a conservative or sort of a sort of neoconservative view of about nations and states and so on. But it could also be the progressive agendas that you've seen inculcating into um into the UN and USAID and these sorts of things, this sort of evangelizing tendency to go and say, look, we are right and you need to become civilized. um I mean, it's something that ah I have to say is that speaking as a Brit, I mean, back in the 19th century, of course, the Brits were going off to various places with other Europeans and saying, you know, you're a bunch of savages and we need to civilize you in some way. And um and there was a kind of evangelizing sort of hubris to that in some ways.

Josh

Right.

Cal

But what's interesting at the moment is that even in Europe, sometimes the way America comes across is it's saying to us, you're not very civilized, you need to civilize yourselves. And it's and often that was coming from the, you know, and say more, well, it was coming from both sides. I mean, under Biden, for instance, there was a lot of this sort of progressive orthodoxy saying you must adopt these types of progressive positions on various issues.

But also, you know, now, to be honest with you, the Americans are also coming now and sort of lecturing Europe about what they should do. At least there in that case that they have ah a purpose in doing it because America is the biggest contributor to say NATO. So they have some leverage on that, they have a point in a sense. But the but my broader point here is that I think the project of if it's about if it's about telling other people to adopt our values, I think I'm not sure how far that will go because it's simply objectively the case that that there are other values and we no longer live in this unipolar moment. We live in a very multipolar world. And we have to accept that we no longer actually have the power to change that. There's too many other poles of power, China being one, of course.

But I think in the context of that, the most important thing I think the Anglosphere needs to learn again to do is to actually listen and to understand the context. And so we need to kind of cultivate something that's been lost in our culture, I think, which is a sort of constructive humility. um There's a great my favorite quote is from ah the four quartets by ah Elliot and it goes ah The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility is endless and I think there's some wisdom in that as he noted because ah there is a ah There's one epidemic we still have it's an epidemic of hubris everyone thinks they have They think that the answers exist, that we can discover them and we can act on them for the greater good. And presumably these advances are in our own image. And I think there was a period for a few decades where we kind of thought maybe that would work. Maybe the nineties after the collapse of Soviet Union, I would suggest it's, it's, it's no longer the case. The world is too complex. We have too little control over, over its fate in a sense.

Josh

I appreciate what you're saying, but let me press into this a little bit because I, in my mind, there's kind of two things going on here. One is the hubris of the West, um you know, kind of, or I'll just say it as an American, sort of the, I'm from America, I'm here to help, right?

Cal

Yeah.

Josh

I'm going to come in and fix your broken country because we know how to how to do things. I recognize obviously the folly of, say, the Wilsonian left, Defending democracy. I recognize the folly of the neocon, even though I think that's a misapplied term, but the George W. Bush, you know, putting democracies in the center of the Middle East, um I also recognize that it's probably impossible for, at least here in the United States and probably the entire Anglosphere, for us to completely divorce ourselves from the Protestant notion of good versus evil. We have to see ourselves as the good guys to a certain degree.

So I guess what I'm suggesting is, okay, even with all those limitations, and even if it is true, and I think it is, that hubris is a huge problem and we ought to cultivate humility. What is the limiting principle but beyond just saying, look, it's not so much I'm trying to force my values on the rest of the world. It's that I want to avoid World War Three?

Cal

Yeah. Well, I mean, on this, ah I mean, I think first of all you know, it's the old adage that, you know, the road to hell is paved good intentions. I mean, I think we can, you know, there's a crucial kind of point in all this, which is that, you know, ought does not imply can. I mean, just because we think we ought to do something doesn't mean we can do it. And we get so caught into thinking about um what we ought to do and how the world ought to be that we don't necessarily begin for how the world is. And indeed, in the context of what it is, what actually can be done realistically. um And the problem is that, you know, I think that we've also got a sort of an epidemic of sort of, you of sort of idealism and you know the thing is the problem with idealism the opposite of idealism is not pessimism it's simply realism and we've got uh and I think what we're coming out of is an era where because we thought the world could be written in someone's image presumably our own um we still ah have this idealism that is framing how we think about things in the anglosphere but uh but the reality is uh more tricky if you don't have as much control over it. And I do think that if World War III was to kick off, which seems you know entirely possible, quite honestly, yeah, but my sense is that it will be, ah the inciting factor is less likely to be the inherent complexities of the world is more going to be where we meet those complexities with ah a narrow framework, like a rigid framework, or a more sort of idealistic framework. And we say, well, this is our hard line. And if people don't agree with this, then, you know, Dr. David Bowman- If you're with us you're against us and my worry is that within the angles, we have that type of. David Bowman- Frame of reference that's still deeply embedded into our institutions and our education system and our culture and our politics and our rhetoric and the one thing I have discovered is that. ah you know, especially being in Hungary the last few years, that that there's, there are always multiple perspectives on a given issue. I mean, and the Hungarians, like history is kind of taught Central Eastern Europe to be quite humble because, um you know, the vicissitudes of fortune are vicissitudes. I mean, they're out of your control often.

And they've been run over by history multiple times. And it breeds a sense of caution. And I think that in the Anglosphere, we've been kind of inoculated from some of the realities of how people have to rub along together by the fact we're surrounded by oceans. Essentially, we have these natural borders that I think has led to, you know, a different sort of metaphysics and politics that I'm not sure will stand up in the face of this new multipolar reality. And in the context of that, I think one of the, as I said, I think one of the biggest dangers we face is less the inherent complexity of things is where we beat that with an assumption it could be otherwise. I think that's the so in a sense, we I think we need to just manage our own, maybe not expectations, but our own presumptions of how the world is and what we can do with it.

Josh

There sounds like maybe what you're alluding to is a sort of um unknowing about what the future holds, but do you have a certain sense of an inevitability of, let's say, global conflict in in the near future? And I'm asking this from perspective, you know, I'm starting some of these questions like, There is hubris embedded in it, don't get me wrong, but sort of the notion of could something be done, and if so, what is that thing we ought to do, and what mindset should we cultivate, and what action should we be taking to, say, reduce the chance? Obviously, there are always actions and mindsets that can reduce the chance of conflict, but is there a sense in which we're, let's say, fooling ourselves in the anglosphere to the degree to which we have control over this, and it's almost inevitable?

Cal

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, my own sense, and of course, it's just my sense. I can't really speak for anyone else. But um my sense is that if a big war comes again, a global war, it will not be like the previous one where it was kind of ah a big ideological conflict, um you know, ah fascism, you had communism, and then you had the capitalist West and the Cold War obviously is a continuation of this. And um I mean, there's a great argument to be made that actually the real story is not World War Two. It's everything from the Bolshevik Revolution until the collapse of ah perhaps of the Soviet Union.

Josh

Right.

Cal

And that is actually the big conflict. And World War Two is just a flashpoint within that context. So taking that sort of ideological competition, I think it's a bit different to now because I think what you had after World War Two and certainly after the end of communism, is you had a raging conflicts that in some ways had a local element, for instance, in the Balkans, and a lot of post-colonial stuff, the drawing of borders and slicing up of places like Kurdistan and so on. And um you had a lot of these ah conflicts that that sort of settled, in a sense, almost because people were exhausted. I mean, everyone got tired of fighting. Things settled for the time being. My fear is that these old tensions will reopen like poorly sutured wounds um around the world. And the reason they've not done so far is that the entire world, from its trading systems and its shipping lanes to everything, exists under the umbrella of American power. The, what is it, 12 18 aircraft carrier groups all over the world. And they always, say they they're the local, but they're the policemen on site.

Josh

Mm-hmm.

Cal

But as anyone knows, you know, yeah on a normal day when things are peaceful, if you take the analogy of a policeman, if you have a town or a city, they have a police force and the police force are enough to keep everything fine under normal circumstances. But if suddenly there's a ah big riot or something happened, In a flashpoint, there's never enough policemen. There's always things that are going to happen. And when the policemen are preoccupied with one thing, they can't go to the other thing. um And I do think that as soon as you have one or two things kick off, and then the Americans are very split, but actually having to engage in certain spheres, then suddenly that's the opportunity for everyone else to kick off their own thing.

And so the worry is that what you'll have... least in my head, is you'll have a concatenation of localized conflicts of people taking the opportunity of Americans, of the American umbrella, in a sense, being distracted. Because the truth is, you know, they always say America is the world's policeman, but, you know, the policeman still can't be everywhere. They've got these aircraft carrier groups, but, ah you know, you can't actually engage tactically. There's still not enough to actually engage with all these conflicts. And so it only really works as a, what's the word, not a precaution, is a deterrent. It's a deterrent system. But if things actually kick off, then suddenly other ones will kick off. And so um my sense, it will be a really unfinished business kicking off in different places. It could be China and Taiwan. It could be the Balkans. It could be somewhere in the Middle East, various things.

Josh

What is the general sense you get, probably less from Canada and the United Kingdom and more from, say, voices in like Hungary, of their views of what a world in which, because here in the United States, um, you know, this was one of the critiques that I'd often had of Obama was his, we're, we're leading from behind or kind of trying to embrace a post-World War II order. What does that look like? And it's certainly one of the critiques the left has of Donald Trump of, well, he just buddies with Putin. You know, he just sees the world as spheres of influence and that's Russia's area, that's China's area. And here's our area. That's why we're talking about taking over Greenland because it's on our sphere of influence, if you will. Both of these approaches appear to be kind of an acquiescence to the idea that, well, this thing can't keep going forever. So what do we here in the West do? What do we here in the U.S. do? We're eventually going to have to pull up our tent stakes and just take care of our own. Is that general idea seen as something to be celebrated among the rest of the world, or is it something to be feared among the rest of the world?

Cal

Well, it's a tricky one because, um of course, there are people who support it there's people who don't. But I think what it really amounts to ah is actually something quite apolitical, which is simply change. Now, people can interpret that change in different ways. Some people may celebrate it. Some people may lament it. but ah But the truth is the change of any change, and it could be anything in life, is that change creates uncertainty. And um and sometimes one, you know, is the old idea of better the devil, you know, but because, we you know, at least we know it may not be perfect. But I think that we don't you know, the world is complex and there's always a ah concatenation of unintended consequences when anything changes, particularly geopolitically. So, um you know, obviously that one of the things I think has happened with ah with Trump is that, um you know, the way I describe Trump is that, you know, he's ah like, I think his supporters see him as ah as a phoenix rising from the fire sort of thing. But you can also see him as the fire.

And the thing is, though, but my point on that is that If he is the fire, you know, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, to use the analogy of a forest fire, obviously forest fires are a touchy subject. Right now a lot of cities are burnt down, like in California, um huge damage. But the truth is with the forest fire, David Vogelpohl- Is forest as far as a natural part of nature, because when you have dead brush build up, then the fire burns off that dead wood, which creates fertile new soil from which new growth can come right. David Vogelpohl- The problem, the reason these forest flyers are really dangerous is that people are not clearing the dead book brush or they're not having small controlled fires. Vogelpohl- And so when you so therefore the fuel builds up and up and up and then when you have a fire it's a massive conflagration.

And I think what's happened with Trump is that over the last few decades, you've had a sort of all this this dead wood of the sort of post-World War II order and indeed the politically correct culture domestically and all this stuff built up and about like dead dry dead wood, a big tinderbox. And Trump is basically just ah a big burn through this. But the problem is there's so much of it built up. There is the danger of the fire getting out of control. So I think the people who condemn Trump and says the fire, they need to recognize that a fire is actually a healthy thing to have. The people who praise Trump and say, this is great, wait just be careful because it may burn everything down. So one has to be a bit careful.

So the point is that um change is always disruptive, but sometimes change has an inevitability. And I do think that if you take a more sort of broader cultural view, and my background is social anthropology, David Sloan- that's very ah interesting that culture the world, and very era we've just lived through and seems to be coming to a close now. David Sloan- The I mean I could talk about it for a minute, but it's you know if you look at the culture post post World War two. all these institutions are built then which are now being questioned the international development regime of which usc id was an example began as ah as a ah a type of politics during the Cold War, obviously because you couldn't have a hot war because of nuclear weapons. So how do you get influence? Well, by other means, and you gain the influence over the newly decolonized countries. And so international development was ah was always a political project. It was never an economic one or a moral one. It was inherently political. And so all these types of things, some of them were Cold War phenomena and the Cold War ended 35, 36 years ago. And so they've continued on because institutions always have the logic of their own perpetuation and consolidation. So they've continued on. But across the entire culture, we've been living in like one generation's culture since 1945. I mean, if I can just add something on this just to illustrate what I mean by this and how crazy this is.

So in 1992 and coming to power in January 1993 was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was born in August 1946. So he's a first cohort boomer. He was then replaced by George Bush, the second George Bush, who was born a month earlier than him in July 46. And then there was Obama who almost lost to Clinton born in 47. So except Obama for a second. And then he was replaced by Trump. And when was Trump? Trump was born in June 46, a month before George W. Bush. And then he was replaced by Biden, born in 42. And now we're back to Trump again. And so that means from 1993, January 1993, until at least 2029, with the exception of an eight year period, The United States has had a president born in the same summer of 1946, with the exception of Biden, who's 1942. The point is, we have been kind of locked in one generation's cycle culture.

And I think the Romans had a word called saclium. It referred to the course of human memory, which is like an 80 year course of living memory in a sense. And everything in the Western culture is a cycle of post-1945 culture. You know, when little kids in the 1950s were reading all the Marvel comic books, those are still the biggest things in the in the movies. The 60s music they started listening to as rebellious teenagers is still the music we're basically listening to. The movies they started making in the 70s and 80s are still the movies we're watching, Star Wars and all this stuff. And then as soon as they're old enough to be president in the 90s, they've stayed president. We're totally locked into this kind of first cohort boomer culture for the last 80 years. And all that's giving up the ghost now. So my point in saying that is that I think it's kind of inevitable that all of these orthodoxies and shibboleths of the last 80 years are coming to a natural end with that generation. The question is, what comes next? And I think as any type of change, it's a risky business.

Josh

That actually is a running theme here on Saving Elephants since it's a millennials podcast trying to explain the classic conservative tradition to my fellow millennials. And I have heard that before, the insanity of how many presidents were born less than six months apart. But it goes deeper than that when you start looking – Speakers of the House, Senate majority leaders, leaders of our corporations, of our industries. The boomers have had, now granted part of it you could, you know, and the millennials will have a similar argument to their name too, is just the sheer size of the boomers. There were more of them. But I don't think that explains all of it. It does seem to be very much a boomer world that we have lived in for at least all my life. And so I think to me, sometimes the challenge is recognizing, okay, well, how much of that is a generational cohort's way of viewing the world? And how much of that is, I'm going to call transgenerational um values embedded within a culture that ought to be carried forward.

Because I think part of my concern is, and I'm your standard millennial, I mean, I like to blame the boomers for all kinds of things, and rightly so. I think they put us in more debt than we'll ever get out of. But I also recognize that you can't always throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like even their versions of, let's say, classical conservatism, I have critiques of while still recognizing, yes, but you know we're born into this. you know This is a Burkean idea. We're born into this world. We don't get to choose the world we're born into. You have to start with the building blocks you're given. And my concern is there is such understandable, self-righteous critique against the world the boomers have made that at times we risk I don't want to call it a utopic because to be quite fair, I think there's far more cynicism in this world about what comes next than utopia of the, you know, say the pre-World War II era. But sort of a, an unwillingness to say, well, what did the boomers get right? And how do we ah not so much keep it going, but recognize the virtues embedded within it?

Cal

I'd say two things on that like one is that you know you asked this question there, like, what is the is there some sort of value set they have that was unique to them? Or is there something that can be continued on? And I think it's yes and yes. But i mean, and in terms of the thing that was unique to them, I remember seeing a ah quote from Maria Shriver, who's Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife or ex-wife. And she was interviewed during the pandemic, I think, like six years ago. And this quote always stayed with me. She said, you know, she said, our generation have seen a lot. And she was like 64 or so.

And so she was born in maybe 1956, I think she was. And she said, the boomer cohort is 46 to 64, I believe, first and second cohort. And she said, our generation has seen a lot. And I was thinking about this quote because it's kind of true, but like it doesn't mean what she thinks it means because yes, that that generation were in a sense the wealthiest generation in human history. the healthiest generation in human history and probably kind of the selfiest you know generation in human history. like They could really just, they had the fingertips, they could travel, they had good health, they had all education. And so in a sense that um they have seen a lot, but life isn't necessarily about having seen a lot, it's about having experienced a lot. And could we really argue that that generation that were born into peacetime and never really witnessed if they're from the West, unless they're very unlucky, ah war or any structural problems, They had a pretty good run. I mean, basically, if you just invested normally in the stock market in 1980 and just kept contributing, just index linked, you know, multimillionaires, many boomers are, you know, and so they're a very lucky generation in many ways.

And I think as a consequence, you could say that, um you know, that their experience is sort of frozen by fortune, not forged in fire. It's led to a certain complacency of how they view the world, which is no fault of theirs. It's circumstantial. And we are you know, as you said, in the book, you we're all born into our circumstance and they were born into very fortunate circumstance and we certainly shouldn't resent them for it. It's not their choice, their fault or anything else. But I do think that we have to be realistic that their experience is quite unique in human history. There's probably no generation before them that had such a good run and they may not ever be again. So ah it's worth saying that. In terms of what can be ah taken from that and what can be continued on, I do think a lot of the civic virtues around, some birds the ideas around like ah engaging in good faith, of presuming good faith in others.

One of the problems I think with the politics we have today is that we um have this sense that, okay, so traditionally speaking in the 20th century, you had this um ah very different type of politics. I mean, if you look at the communists and the capitalists, we often think of them as very much at loggerheads of disagreeing with each other. But weirdly, they actually shared the same frame of reference. So they disagreed on solutions, but they kind of agreed on the problem because both the communists and the capitalists assumed the problem was political economy. And the capital said what you need is a small estate and let the market, you know, you need a market led approach or market driven approach, whereas the communist said you needed a state led approach. And so they had this different solutions to essentially have a problem they agreed on.

I think one of the problems we have today is that it's kind of unclear to me what is the question that we all share. There is no really solid or what is the problem we all agree on. We just simply and the problem we have today is not that we disagree on the solution. We simply disagree on the problem. And there's a reason for that because we assume the problem is each other. We don't just think the other side are wrong. We think they're bad people. The left look at anyone who supports Trump and says, those are terrible, a terrible bunch of racists or something. And of course, then the Trumpy side looks at the sort of woke side, so to speak, and they say yeah those are a bunch of sport brats who are ideologues, bunch of Marxists trying to just destroy everything. So everyone assumes the other side is bad faith, perhaps evil and certainly stupid. And I think that is a very unconstructive way of approaching debate. You can see the way debate is being conducted across the atmosphere, quite frankly, at the moment. In the U.S. politics, it's never been so bad, the rhetoric and the ah the... And of course, we've seen violence, too. We've seen actually people being shot like Charlie Kirk.

And this is a terrible state of things. And I do think one thing that would be good, that kind of... that's sort of um civil discourse of civil disagreement of disagreeing someone, on but still being able to have a drink with them, you know, to go for dinner with them.

Josh

Right.

Cal

I mean, if people now often look at the US Congress and they say ah well, it was always just a club of it was always a big conspiracy, right? We need to but drain the swamp because they all would disagree on the stage and then they'd all go to the bar together afterwards. And it's been presented as some sort of conspiracy that they they're all they all went to the same schools and it's all it's the debate was fake. But I kind of fundamentally disagree with this. But I think there's something very civilized about having a robust the debate with someone disagreeing fundamentally, but still thinking this is a decent human being. And fundamentally, we're the same, but we just have different we see the same problems, we suffer the same things. But we see the solutions lying in different areas. That is something I think we're losing. And I think we'd be good to get back.

Josh

I do try very often to tell significantly younger Americans that this is not normal, that the world, that we at least had a civil discourse that was much healthier than this. And it's kind of weird. It's like, be careful what you wish for, it because back in those days, you know, I was upset that so many Democrats and Republicans could be chummy towards each other. It seemed like it, maybe not conspiratorial, but sort of like you're not really taking it serious, but careful what you wish for.

Cal

Well, can I add on this, though? So you just said um it was normal to do that.

Josh

Sure.

Cal

And actually, I kind of agree, but I disagree as well, because I think the whole point was it's not normal in the course of human history and culture. In most places, in most times, people have fundamentally hated each other for thinking different things. But I think the great one of the great shining achievements of the Anglosphere and Western civilization is the ability to say there is something intrinsic to you that at a human level that transcends ah what you physically look like or what you mentally think. There's some sort of relational, emotional sense of inclusivity before we get to mental and physical exclusivity. um It's a, ah you know, it seems to me, I mean, this is just my own theory, but seems to me throughout human history, if you if you boil all the different conflicts down or civilizations down, most of them have tended to operate on the basis of a sort of mental, like ideological or mental or physical sort of exclusivity.

I mean, the Greeks were very much saying, if you don't look like us, you're a barbarian, basically, you know, we don't want to, that was kind of physical exclusivity. If you look at the Romans, they don't really care where you're from, you know, what you look like. But they said, but you better you better not disagree with us. You know, we are you know, this is our civilization. you’ve got to agree with us.

And um and that you see that repeated throughout human history quite often. I think that sort of pattern of communism and fascism is a similar. Fascism is saying if you're not physically like us, then you know we'll get rid of you. And the communist said you can look like whatever you want, essentially, but you better agree with us. the difference with the sort of like ah classical liberal tradition um is that it's always had this this idea a focus of its political philosophy is not mental exclusivity like what is your ideology that binds us together or physical exclusivity of ah like know do we do we look similar in a sense But it was saying, actually, ah we starting point, is there something inclusive about us?

Is the Martin Luther King idea of, you know, like I dream of a world where ah someone only judges my daughter, I think, on the content of her character. And I think that's, ah you know, it's ah I think as of as a value, I think that's pretty, I mean, I'm pretty classical liberal on some of these things. I think these are, and now the challenge is, of course, one of the issues is that world of those values um where there's, and Alex, there's a guy called Alex Lefebvre, who's written a brilliant book on the liberal idea of the good life, I think it's called. And I've just, he's just been in Hungary, Alex Lefebvre. He's a professor at the University of Sydney, I believe. And he's working on a book now on the post-liberalism and that concept of the good life.

And he gave this really wonderful talk recently at my institute in Hungary, the Danube Institute, which I can give the link to you, maybe stick it in the in the links.  And so there's a range, I can't remember them all, but he gave a really interesting set of distinctions. And I think his point was that the liberal tradition had all of these great virtues, but in the end it also had things it didn't focus on where it had weak points and it's collapsed under the under its own weight because the foundation wasn't strong enough. It didn't have enough pillars. And his argument, I think, would be post-liberalism is offering so a different set of virtues ah where the state is perhaps not neutral. Because liberal tradition is saying the state should be a neutral arbiter of things where we disagree, but we don't impose someone's an idea of the good life. We let it be ah played out by people and more of an individualistic understanding of things. But the post-liberal tradition is now saying, or the new emerging post-liberalism is saying that the state perhaps should have a role As a almost a paternal role in society of shaping what the society is, how it ought to be.

And he says there are advantages in that. There's things that that is doing which liberalism did not do. But of course, the argument will also but the post-liberals should be careful because they also are missing a few pillars, which the liberals had.  And so the question is, is it is it possible to be a square and a circle at the same time? Can you actually unify these values? There's a ah political philosopher called Isaiah Berlin, who said not all of the virtues, not all of the values are compatible. Some things are ah fundamentally incompatible and they're both good.

And so life is this constant. This human condition, right? It's the paradox human condition. We're always negotiating competing values that are both worthy, but are incompatible. And so I think that there's a virtue and all value in the liberal tradition. elements that I think that the boomers had very well and we're losing. I think the best thing we need to do is try and recognize diagnostically and in a very sort of dispassionate way what failed in liberalism. We had diagnosed that and try and fix those things without throwing out the baby with the bathwater because there were good things in the liberal tradition that we all benefited from.

Josh

Yeah, there's a lot of themes you're hitting on that we touch often in this in and in this show. You know Irving Kristol kind of gave his two cheers for capitalism, which I think you can sort of impute to liberalism. Although, to be fair, he talked he critiqued a lot of liberalism too, essentially saying, look, it doesn't…it presupposes a sort of value structure that it itself cannot create. And in absence of that value structure, classical liberalism can't operate.

I'm sure you've noticed, at least here in the United States, there is a raging debate between the classical liberal and post-liberal traditions on the right. I think there's a I think there's an echo of that within the left, too.

Cal

Yeah.

Josh

I have ah opinions on that. But I'll save them maybe for another time because I want to ask you, you have unique perspective, presumably, ah spending so many years there in Budapest, because I'm sure it's not escape your attention that Hungary, under Viktor Orban at least, became kind of ground zero for this argument of what would an alternative to the boomer slash classical liberal tradition look like on the right? you know There are obviously all kinds of alternatives, but one that the right could live with, one that somehow...defended the Christian faith and upheld family values and essentially would create this sort of, pardon me, I guess it was the shorthand being, well, if classical liberalism isn't getting us to the world we want, what system would? And there's a lot of things I could say.

Yeah, and you know there are 10,000 critiques of that entire idea, but the one that I think that that I want to pick your brain on is... um The United States is a country of, what, 300 and approaching 50 million people of an insanely diverse culture, of a completely different, I we were talking earlier, the U.S. s does not have a history of subjugation in the way that the Hungarian people would have. We also don't have a history that stretches back millennia in the way the Hungarian people would have. There are so many ways in which it is an odd comparison. And, and you know, you have only to go back about 10 years, and the right was often criticizing the Bernie Sander types of We can't be Sweden. Sweden's a perfectly wonderful place, but the idea that you're going to turn our complex society into that largely ethnic homogenous nation state of not even socialist, but let's say high tax rates and high benefits was insane. And so I guess I'm just kind of curious from your perspective, getting a bird's eye view there than Hungary, was the average Hungarian kind of looking around like, what the heck are these Americans doing?  they want to pattern themselves after like, like, was it seen as sort of a celebration, a point of pride or sort of like these Americans are insane or what was kind of your perspective from that end?

Cal

Well, I've had a pretty much front row seat on that, actually, because so I'm a director of research at the Danube Institute in Budapest, and we're ah we're a center right think tank, and we work on mostly geopolitical issues. And we have a visiting fellowship program, and we have ah a lot of conferences and events. And I should also say anyone who's ever in Budapest, please come to our events. And also subscribe to our Substack, based in Budapest. which is we're very proud of the title. um But the but no, we have a lot of people coming through and a lot of Americans have come through and they see Budapest and Hungary as a kind of a laboratory for post-liberal thinking of what an alternative model might be, one focused on sovereignty and with quite bold ideas around restricting migration or championing Christianity or centering family policy and government policy to incentivize people to have. in it Obviously, throughout the world, we've got you know, um the demography tailing off where families getting smaller and so on. And the government's been trialing all sorts of different programs to try and incentivize people to have children. It could be ah better facilities. It can be tax cuts and so on. And ah and as a lot of Americans have come through, and as well as people from other places, because I think that Auburn's a fascinating character because he has seems to have basically been able to be about three years ahead of the curve on a number of issues. I mean, when he was talking about migration 10 years ago, it was it created controversy in Europe because no one was saying this stuff.

But within a few years, a lot of countries have started adopting similar approaches. So more restrictionist views on immigration, particularly Islamic immigration to Europe. The same with the family policy. ah People were questioning it. Now other countries are asking about it. And you know the list goes on. I mean, even rearmament, the Hungarians have been investing a lot in their defense. so They have a very small military, of course, but they but relative to their size, they've been putting more effort into it. So he's kind of been... Orban has this extraordinary ability to... He seems to be very willing to push the discussion. He's quite... It's interesting if you watch him speak. I don't know you've Orban speak.

He's very interesting. he ah he speaks, he's unlike any statesman that you'll see in how he talks. I saw an interview 80 months ago that kind of illustrates this. Tucker Carlson interviewed him. And Carlson said, ah something like, why do Brussels hate you, you know, like the EU? And why do they why have you got these tensions? What's the difference in your ideology? And Orban's response to this, he said, no, he said, our difference, and I'm paraphrasing it, but he said, the difference we have is does not have an ideological character. He said, the difference has an anthropological character.

And Carlson goes, from how do you mean? He goes, the difference is, Orban says, they think the basic unit of society is the individual. We think it's the family. And I had simply never heard ah a prime minister anywhere or leader anywhere um ah reframe the question to talk about things at a kind of anthropological level at a deeper kind of societal sort of almost philosophical level and he is quite interesting like this because he has a sort of broader vision of things And he, he kind of always tries to contextualize things in that broader context of like, there is a broader vision of what we want. And we're trying to do some things to achieve that so in this sense His approach is very different from the more technocratic sort of technical form of managing that you see, even among conservatives like, you Rishi Sunak famously in the UK was the conservative leader for a couple of years, one of our many prime ministers recently.

He was a, I don't think he was a politician. He was he was a manager. He was a, he was a technocrat. And, and the thing is, the problem in the UK, and I'm in the UK right now, is that the UK completely lacks a vision of what is the problem and indeed what the solution could be and how it ought things to be. It's completely missing right there. There is simply no discussion about it. Everyone is, critiquing each other on very particular things. And no one is saying, no one's really coming with a big, bold vision. I mean, arguably Reforma now and the Reform Party ah are trying to do this.

But Orbán, I think, has been an interesting example for people to learn from because he's a statesman in power. He's been there a long time with a lot of experience. So he's not just a sort of worldview and is trying to express that, and trying to shape things around them. And you don't necessarily have to agree with him or not. It's just what's really interesting is that, and also a lot of his vision, I think was it works for Hungary at a scale of Hungary. Would it work for, say, the United States of Britain? You know, it's a debate. But I do think that, you know, what he's doing to see someone talking at a kind of abstract level who who's had a lot of experience and is actually in office is quite interesting. So for that reason, I think Hungary has proven to be a very interesting sort of precedent to show what is possible. If you have someone in power with experience who has a ah sense of what they're trying to do at a, not just technically and not simply win, but actually is trying to leave the country in a particular image of itself.

Josh

How do you, I'm trying to think how to form this question. So I understand in a sense that the, let's say the post-liberal crowd will have a critique of, ah what is it Kevin Roberts calls, wax museum conservatives, or sometimes I'll call the dead consensus, that it in my view, I think is both fair for some, but also a bit of a straw man, because I don't think everyone who disagrees with him is arguing these points.

Cal

hmm.

Josh

That, look, there's a sense in which just putting everything up to trade in the global order, yeah, it's going to make some executives very wealthy, but it's going to hollow out the rest of the country, and this is not good for everybody. There's a sense in which it makes sense for the state to have a broader view of what is good for institutions, families, individuals, kind of as a as a as um you know competing interest, let's say. And when it comes to something such as Viktor Orban being ahead of his time, I don't know if this would be the chief opponent, but let's say of and Angela Merkel's sort of Europe of, you know, we apologize for World War II. If you want to come here, or come here. kind of ah I'm obviously oversimplifying. But her sort of leading the way to opening the floodgates for immigration. Yeah. um I am far more sympathetic to a nation state saying, look, we have sovereignty and we ought to be able to define for ourselves what is in our best interest of who is or isn't here and under what circumstances can they stay or become citizens.

When it comes to something more say like, the revitalization of the family or revival of you know protecting religious norms, Christianity. And I recognize that the Hungarian sense of Christianity is probably very different than the American sense of Christianity. but that I start to get very uncomfortable as a conservative because I don't think we're chiefly dealing with political questions here. I don't think, you know, I had Dr. Piano, ah a prior guest I had on, we had a long discussion. She did a lot of study about the efforts in the Soviet Union to try to bolster family sizes. And she said, if you do comparison, like, you know, adjust for inflation and the differences of culture, they did things far more radical than anything J.D. Vance has ever advocated to try to increase family. And it didn't work. Like, it might have had some marginal effects, but in effect, she was saying these were not economic issues. These were spiritual issues. these were cultural issues.

Cal

Yeah.

Josh

And so I guess I'm wondering, just as a broader critique of not only Victor Orbanism, but all of, let's say, post-classical liberalism, are we misidentifying where the actual threats lie. It's one thing to defend yourself against the wokest left, but to try to come up with a positive vision, do the tools of government just simply not fix these problems?

Cal

It's a very interesting question. And I think that ah at the center of the, I mean, obviously I'm in a community in Budapest, but there's a lot of people who would probably self-identify as post-liberal. And there is a general sense that there is a spiritual malaise across the West and a like lack of a collapse of sort of cultural confidence in a sense.

And a lot of people are talking about the need to sort of find a sort of re-enchantment of that. We have a fellow the Danube Institute called Rod Dre, probably no Rod, I read his work. And Rod, just his recent book is called Living in Wonder. And he's precisely looking at this idea of re-enchantment. And I think one of the unifying themes is not simply a critique of the woke and so on. And I could do think, personally, I'm sick and tired of hearing about woke stuff. But also not just hearing from people who are so-called woke, but also the critiques of it. it's ah it's a

Josh

Right, right.

Cal

It's a very much that kind of cottage industry of people who are cancelling and cancelled is a bit played out. I think it everyone's bought by it. But... And for interesting reasons, I think they're kind of, you know, they're but just different conversation, but they're I can talk about the dynamic there, but the with the work stuff and the and the critiques of it. But the but putting that aside, I think what. um the post-liberal community is identifying is that there is at the heart of things, a spiritual issue in a sense. Now, whether that means religion or not, I don't know, it but there is a sense of something of the spirit of things, not just the letter of things, that there is more to us than simply our thoughts and our and sensations, that there's something else to us. Now, um but of course, the social structures we built to center that in our lives, religious structures and so on, have ah we've fallen out of the habits and the rituals and the routines. And so how do you really re-establish that? And, you know, I myself am conscious of there being something, you know missing, but I was never in the habit of going to church. So it's quite hard to start that if you were not brought up in it. So there are deeper sort of issues that have a sort of almost practical, habitual type of problem.

But I think the Hungarians have a sense that there is something ah that that is not simply a technical state of policy. And this is where I think the Soviets went completely wrong, is that it was very much a technical view. They said there was nothing there in the spiritual. And I think Orban, I'm going to misquote him here, but he once said something, and I'm paraphrasing it, saying, being Hungarian is like an attitude. And um it's not like he doesn't give any particular definitions. Like it's just being here is just a way of thinking about the world. and I'm not even thinking just being and it's and I have to say if it's ah and I'm paraphrasing.

I may not be quite his phrasing, but I think it's true. Like I've been there five years and it's just it's an attitude. And it's a culture that has one. And it's I struggle sometimes to think of what that would be the equivalent in the UK. Because so much of our in the UK is about suppressing who we are and pushing it aside and talking about the weather, right? And we are more than just the inclemency of the weather. So but the Hungarians, they just they just sit with something. I'd say I have a little anecdote about this, actually. um So there's a festival that happens in Transylvania, in Romania. It used to be Hungary 108 years ago. But um I went to this festival and I go every year. It's really, really interesting in in July, six days.

It's so a strange combination of like a literary festival and an intellectual sort of panel discussion thing during the day. And at night there's drinking and dancing. And on the last day, Orban shows up and he gives his state of the nation speech to the Hungarians about what is it to be Hungarian in the world. And it's literally held in a mountain valley with a fence around to keep the bears out. And, um, uh, and I remember, at this festival, there's a, um, there's always at these trestle tables and people having drinks in the evening. And I remember one time, my first time I went, there was a trestle table with a violinist playing old folk songs.

And then there was about 50 Hungarians gathered around all singing along. And there was one drunk guy with a bottle of wine smashing on the table, uh, very enthusiastically. And I was the only foreigner in this group of like 50, 60 Hungarians all singing these old songs, slightly sad songs about loss of Hungary and so on. And um beautiful folk songs. And I sat there looking around I thought, what's strange about this? There's something odd about this group. And then I realized not a single person that had a smartphone out. No one was filming it. all of them were present in the experience. They were actually having the experience. They were not consuming it as a product to show someone later.

It was not authentic to them. As somebody said, I did something authentic to someone. They were just being, they were being them. And I don't think anyone's done that the UK since about 1996. I mean, obviously, that's pre-smartphone, but this idea of actually engaging with something I wouldn't even say authentically because the word authentic has become this kind of fake way of doing a real thing. It's just like I'm just doing it without any reflection, just doing it.

It's a very, um that's what I've discovered in It's a very present culture. And they are who they are in the present and they're pretty unapologetic about it. And one of the problems in the Anglosphere, and this is coming largely from the from the progressive left, is that we're constantly having apologize for everything. And it's, ah but it is what it is. We are who we are. History is what it was. ah And the Hungarians just, they, you know, they've had quite traumatic history and they're a bit sad about it sometimes, but upset about it. But they're pretty unapologetically themselves. And I think that's, that is a kind of almost spiritual self-assurance and that they're, you know, they're not secure about everything, but on that, they, they, they said, this is just who we are.

Josh

Well, Callum, it occurred to me we've gone for about an hour and I haven't asked you a single question about climate change, so I'll probably have to have you back for that. I also feel like we have nowhere near exhausted the subject of Hungary because it is it's less of a flashpoint than it used to be here in the United States, but it used to be just very um you know talked about all the time and relatively controversial, and I'm sure there's a lot of questions I'll regret after the conversation. We'll have to have you back sometime.

But in the in the meanwhile, let me um let me encourage, if the listener was interested in the work you were doing, and you've given a couple of shout outs, but I want to give you an opportunity here at closing to say, well, how would they follow you in your work?

Cal

Sure. Well, if you want to follow the work of the Danube Institute, danubeinstitute.hu for Hungary, and we do events every week. We do videos, videocasts, podcasts every week, which are nicely edited, good to listen to.

Really a lot of good storytelling there. We do papers every week worth reading. And we've got a sub stack based in Budapest, which is ah not only informative as to what's happening in these sort of suddenly based post-liberal slash conservative community in Budapest is also funny. So it's a good, day it's a very funny read. The guy writes it is a wit. So it's ah it's good. So I'd recommend all that stuff. And you my own stuff is woven into that, all of that.

Josh

Cal Nicholson, thank you for taking the time to come on the Saving Elephant Show.

Cal

Pleasure. Thanks a lot. Great to see you.