0:03 [SPEAKER_00]: There's an old saying that everyone learns by experience. 0:08 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a lot easier when it's someone else's. 0:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In one sense, that's all that history is, being proactive about learning from other people's mistakes, rather than waiting to make those mistakes yourself. 0:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Those of you who have listened to my podcast over the past few years will know how I feel about the discipline of history. 0:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It's been one of the great joys in my life, and I believe it's made me a better thinker, a better person, and a more responsible citizen. 0:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it does that for all of us when we're willing to set aside our assumptions and look frankly and interrogatingly at the past. 0:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I've invited a personal friend and a professor at a nearby university, Dr. Mark Smith, onto the podcast to help us do this. 0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It will be joining us for a brief series of conversations in which we'll explore ways in which different local and national histories can help us think more clearly about the present in the present. 1:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Mark is a humble, insightful student of history, a professor of the year, at his school in Indiana Westland University, and I'm thrilled to have him here, so welcome Mark to the show. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I was complaining about America's two-party political system the other day, and Mark had pumped the brakes on that a little bit, and changed my mind. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I've always been a little frustrated with the fact that when it comes to any major election, we're pretty much stuck with the two-old, entrenched, political powers. 1:51 [SPEAKER_00]: When there are so many other interesting viewpoints worth exploring, every once in a while, a third party or independent candidate makes some noise like Ross Perro did in the 90s. 2:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But for the most part, it's simply a two-horse race that leaves everyone else in the dust. 2:11 [SPEAKER_00]: We've never had the kind of wide open elections that have been more common in Europe. 2:16 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, where you might have 10 or 15 political parties vying for power. 2:22 [SPEAKER_00]: That's always sounded more exciting to me from the debates on down. 2:27 [SPEAKER_00]: What I'd like to see is debates with 10 different parties, not 10 different people from the same party. 2:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Mark pointed out that the two-party system might look like a failure of democracy, while it has actually been something of a safeguard against political chaos as flawed and as frustrating as it may be. 2:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the more spread out political power becomes, the better chance extremists have of taking control. 2:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And when they do take control, they often end democracy all 3:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So you might say that there have been times in history when democracy has obliterated itself by virtue, being so overwhelmingly democratic. 3:16 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a really interesting and bizarre irony in this idea, and I'd like Mark to explain more about it. 3:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Then we were talking probably, breakfast was that the classic illustration is the rise of the Nazis, and they didn't even use this. 3:31 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a famous speech. 3:34 [SPEAKER_01]: It might be even in many refunds stalls, the documentary, trying to put the will. 3:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And Hitler's mocking that Germany has a party for everything. 3:44 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a political party for farmers and there's a political party for small farmers in Bavaria and there's a political party for coal miners. 3:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a time when Germany had 37 political parties. 3:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And so their parliamentary system, and if you get so many boats, you can get someone from your coal miners party in Bavaria with representatives into the right stone and not see they never got over 50% of the vote. 4:18 [SPEAKER_01]: but at one time they had the most seats and they had 37 percent of the seats in the right stock. 4:26 [SPEAKER_01]: But with so many parties, as you say, you might need something in the mid-20, upper 20s or even in the 30 percent range to have the majority party, which is then how you end up with the chancellor in that system. 4:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And the chancellor was appointed by the president, 4:46 [SPEAKER_01]: pass of the population ever because we're right if they won 44% was the highest vote they ever got. 4:53 [SPEAKER_01]: They immediately started to slide backwards and so when Hitler's coming to power, it's really in the upper 30s, but with that multi-party system just across the board, 5:03 [SPEAKER_01]: This fringe group gets in and then one of the first things they do is to outlaw all other political parties. 5:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And so here's a political party with a little over a surge of the people in Germany voting them in to power in the right stars. 5:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the president has to make some deal with a person that he loves that he doesn't like. 5:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And then Henry Merdeyes and Hitler combines the Office of Chancellor and President and then it's a one party system. 5:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's interesting. 5:33 [SPEAKER_01]: What looks much more democratic really lent itself to the abuse and this was a philosophy. 5:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I think both of the Nazis and the communists in the Soviet Union. 5:46 [SPEAKER_01]: we will use certain aspects of democracy in order to destroy democracy and then both end up in these totalitarian systems of one party systems and so then all of a sudden a two party system with an occasional third party popping up every once in a while doesn't look too bad. 6:05 [SPEAKER_01]: I just made a comment today because it seems increasingly we get 6:11 [SPEAKER_01]: fringe, a radical fringe that has more of a voice than that has no social media and other places that you can have a platform. 6:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But by March inner country, we've avoided that Europeans have been so susceptible to, andly was susceptible to it, even before Germany. 6:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And it is that multi-party parliamentary system that kind of lent itself, 6:33 [SPEAKER_01]: We still have two party system, but it does seem that our politics in American sense, Europeans probably, and some way you think you haven't seen really extreme radical politics in your country. 6:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Most of our arguments are, most of the last and the right, it's just to the left of center, just to the right of center. 6:51 [SPEAKER_01]: That's where we've mostly lived for two centuries plus, and it's what looks like a good idea that lent itself 6:59 [SPEAKER_01]: to the very rapid rise of total carrying systems. 7:02 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's one of those strange ironies of history. 7:06 [SPEAKER_00]: A good example of this can be seen in Italy with Mussolini. 7:11 [SPEAKER_01]: They're about a dozen Italian parties in the general election of 1921. 7:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And there are centrist parties. 7:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The largest party was a revolutionary social party and about a quarter, about 24% of the 7:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And the next largest party has about 20% and it's a Christian Democrat party, a Catholic center party kind of thing. 7:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And the fascists who are already there, they're already on the scene. 7:40 [SPEAKER_01]: They're at the very bottom of about a dozen parties and they had less than 1% of the vote. 7:46 [SPEAKER_01]: in the 1921 general election, they had 0.4% so out of 535 seats in the Italian parliament, they got two seats, but they have a seat. 7:59 [SPEAKER_01]: They have a legitimate seat at the table and gives in some kind of legitimacy. 8:05 [SPEAKER_00]: A similar thing happened during the Russian Revolution, a six-year struggle that ended in 1923 with the rise of the Bolsheviks in an effective end to Russian democracy. 8:22 [SPEAKER_01]: SRs, the social revolutionaries, the SDs, the social democrats, those were the communists, but even the communists divided into the Bolsheviks and the Mentreviks, and in there are the, they were called the cadets. 8:36 [SPEAKER_01]: This is a constitutional party that was more conservative. 8:40 [SPEAKER_01]: You have some monarchists who are actually interested in helping get the ZAR back in power, so, 8:47 [SPEAKER_01]: A similar kind of thing not as dramatic and with those 40 parties in Germany, and then with the rise of Hitler, that's just what makes it so spectacular. 8:57 [SPEAKER_00]: When you have a two party system, you don't have to fear the political influence of the American Nazi party. 9:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there are really this one, and it's headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't despise the values and agendas of parties like this, but we don't have to fear them as a political force, because in a two-party deadlock, they can never break through. 9:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Because unlike in Italy, in 1921, a French party with 2% of the vote doesn't get a seat at the table. 9:29 [SPEAKER_01]: They're outside the mainstream. 9:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So you have those groups, you have those radical groups in our country. 9:36 [SPEAKER_01]: But because you have two parties to have a real chance to hold office, to be a legislator, everything gets pushed to the middle and has a moderating influence because you've got me in one, and in every once in a while you have someone who probably started as a Republican or a Democrat and then declares themselves to be independent, but they really came out of that and it's just one 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: tiny step removed, whereas with this wide spectrum, you probably have even in the European countries, most of the people are in the middle, but because you've given an opportunity for the group on the widest fringe from the center to have some kind of representative in your legislature in your 10:28 [SPEAKER_01]: whatever it's called. 10:29 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a tendency probably with your pants to make coalitions. 10:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And as you say, you so demonize the other that you're afraid of and you find yourself not staying in the middle, but moving further away as far as you can from that one extreme to the other extreme. 10:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And then that's what's on. 10:47 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the extremes that begin to look so much like each other. 10:50 [SPEAKER_01]: as they blossomed into a one-party totalitarian state that was Anna Arrent's conclusion in her study of totalitarianism. 10:59 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not the contrast of national socialism, the Nazis, and fascism, communism. 11:04 [SPEAKER_01]: It's how they look so much alike. 11:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, probably most people, they're too, they start in the middle, but you have a place to go and so you're pushed out and America seems to be the other way. 11:16 [SPEAKER_01]: You might have these fringe groups, but in order to gain some kind of respectability, they have to identify with somebody in the middle, so it has a moderating influence. 11:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I always thought that the two party system was a terrible system. 11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: and it is, but it's not the worst thing that can happen to us, as history makes clear. 11:37 [SPEAKER_00]: If we did see a sudden proliferation of powerful parties in the United States, things would get more interesting for sure. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be exciting at first, and people would feel more represented than ever before. 11:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The U-A-W, the auto-workers union, for example, might have its very own party, small farmers who so often struggle through thriving our modern economy, might have a party that truly represented their interests to the rest of the nation, but the gigantic voting blocks that currently draw 70 or 80 million in two party elections would begin to fragment in radicals on both sides of the aisle. 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: who have had to moderate their agendas in the past might have a real chance of achieving national power. 12:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I used to think that being stuck with two mediocre candidates every four years was a failure of our democracy. 12:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I also used to think that an ideal national debate would involve a chorus of golden-throated fringe players, but after this conversation of come to realize that I've been describing every maniacal dictator from the 20th century. 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Our republic is a fragile thing, and imperfect thing, but our world is imperfect. 12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes discretion is the better form of valor. 13:02 [SPEAKER_00]: In sometimes the highest aspiration is simply damage control, and hey, I'm still in favor of a good third party. 13:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the 37th party that concerns me. 13:15 [SPEAKER_00]: In our next conversation with Mark, we're going to be looking at America's national 13:21 [SPEAKER_00]: and why Benjamin Franklin was not a fan. 13:24 [SPEAKER_00]: What did he prefer instead? 13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The Wild Turkey. 13:28 [SPEAKER_00]: In the next episode I'll tell you why.
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