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PODCAST

ReImagining Liberty

Aaron Ross Powell

The emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical liberalism. A philosophy and ideas podcast hosted by Aaron Ross Powell.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

56:31

093: The State of the Constitution (w/ Evan Bernick)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/11/03

Today's episode is about the Constitution. It's a clear-eyed assessment of the assaults on it by the Trump administration, and a deep discussion of how we should think about constitutional interpretation and constitutional defense. Things aren't good. There's no denying that.But things also perhaps aren't as bad, at least not yet, as the most shrill of the doomers insist. To dig into all this, I'm joined by Evan Bernick. He's a law professor at Northern Illinois

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58:21

092: Liberalism's Common Ground (w/ Matt Zwolinski...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/10/31

institutions now and to reform them when the time comes. As my friend, and past ReImagining Liberty guest, Jason Kuznicki says, "The future is a conversation." So today I've brought on two smart liberals, with very different ideas about what liberalism means in practice, for a conversation about common ground.Matthew McManus is an assistant professor at Spelman College, author of The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, and frequent ReImagining Liberty guest. Matt Zwolinski is a first

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54:21

091: Lessons from Left Market Anarchism (w/ Zak Woodman)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/10/23

Today things get particularly radical, with an introduction to left market anarchism. I'm joined by Zak Woodman, host of the Mutual Exchange Radio podcast from the Center for a Stateless Society. We talk about whether we need a state at all, the dangers a powerful government poses, even if its values are arguably good ones, and why the aims of the left are better advanced through free markets than state control of the economy. We end with a call to take anarchist ideas seriously, even if you

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50:50

Bonus 003: Trump's Cult of Cruelty (w/ Radley Balko...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/09/29

I've got a special bonus episode for you today. In August, I attended the second annual Liberalism for the 21st Century conference in DC, organized by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism. That's the group that runs The UnPopulist, a publication I occasionally guest host for on their Zooming In podcast. I led a special live recording of that show at the conference, a conversation with journalist (and ReImagining Liberty guest) Radley Balko and commentator Charlie Sykes.I

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47:30

090: The Liberty Movement's Cultural Blind Spot (w/...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/09/25

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowellCathy Reisenwitz's "Sex and the State" is one of the handful of newsletters I consider indispensable. She writes, from what I'd label a radical liberal perspective, about culture and gender in ways I consistently find illuminating. And she was my guest on episode 50 of this show, on misogyny and the

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49:33

089: The Shared Roots of Patriarchy and the State (w/...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/09/09

The political right, including more right-wing sorts of self-identified libertarians, are rather down on feminism. For those right-wingers, their hostility is understandable, because feminist insights challenge truths the right imagines to be natural and immutable, about equality, and gender, and hierarchy. But for radical liberals, feminist theory offers powerful tools for understanding and critiquing power and its use by the state.Today I have on my friend Kelly Vee for a discussion of these ideas

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49:07

088: The Far-Right's Favorite Thinkers (w/ Matt McManus)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/09/01

The last episode of this show was about what ReImagining Liberty is. With frequent guest Cory Massimino, I talked about the values and perspective behind ReImagining Liberty's approach to liberalism, and how it's distinct from right-libertarianism. Today's episode is a nice companion to that. Not just because it also features a frequent guest, this time my friend Matt McManus, but because it runs further with the theme of distinctions. Namely, in this case, the ideas of the

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40:44

090: Podcasting's Political Power (w/ Landry Ayres)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/08/15

Today's episode gets a bit meta. I've done something like ninety ReImagining Liberty shows, and hundreds more on other podcasts, but I've never done one on the place of podcasting itself in the political environment. This even though podcasting has been one of the big themes of politics lately, in many ways blamed for the rise, or at least persistence, of the ideologies that have reshaped our political culture and institutions.I'm delighted to bring on Landry Ayres for that. You

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50:30

089: AI, Cultural Tools, and Pluralism (w/ Ted...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/08/04

We sometimes talk about technology on ReImagining Liberty, in the context of how it interacts with a liberal society, or how technology can help us defend and advance liberal. The big technology everyone's talking about right now is, of course, artificial intelligence. It's a topic I've written about, but not one I'd yet done an episode about specifically regarding what it means for liberalism.Then I read an essay by Ted Underwood, a professor in the School of Information Sciences,

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47:35

088: Liberalism's Radical Future (w/ Andy Craig)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/07/18

It's difficult to be optimistic about liberalism's future. Certainly in the short to medium term. We're in an acute period of democratic backsliding and authoritarian ascendency. The opposition party, or at least its leadership, has been largely supine in response. A backlash is rising, but it's an open question whether it'll be enough, and soon enough, to make a difference.But it's also not a time to give up all hope. There is a backlash. The current regime is deeply unpopular. And a ton of

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51:44

087: Classical Liberalism and Michel Foucault (w/...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/06/30

Liberals, particularly classical liberals and libertarians, have too narrow a view of power. They focus on government force, or the threat of government force, and ignore all the other ways power is exercised in society. And the way classical liberals and libertarians imagine the fully autonomous self is at odds with our deep cultural embeddedness and the social construction of our identities, our ways of seeing, and the concepts through which we come to understand ourselves and the world.That's the

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51:24

086: Reclaiming the Internet (w/ Mike Masnick)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/06/19

What's happened to Twitter, or now X, is the clearest example of why it's actually not great that so much of our digital communication is controlled by just a few firms and, through them, the whims of guys like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. These single points of control not only mean a product we love today can be unlovable, or just gone, tomorrow, but also give more dangerous actors, like governments, avenues to use that centralization against us.The alternative is to revive what the internet once

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34:57

How Trump is Using the Surveillance State Against Us...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/06/12

The government's power to see is its power to oppress. The more the state knows about us, the more levers it has to control us. Understanding that connection, its history and its application, is critical if we are to secure our liberties in the face of authoritarian threats, such as the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the federal government in Los Angeles.I'd scheduled this episode—with returning guest Patrick Eddington about his new book The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and

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46:08

Liberty Means Taking Equality Seriously (w/ Jonathan...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/06/03

Equality is central to the liberal project. Thomas Jefferson failed, dramatically and unforgivably, to live up to this ideal, but he stated in correctly when, in a letter, he wrote that "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately." Liberalism views us as equals, and demands the law treat us as such.The illiberal project, then, is the denial of this equality. And the failure to notice inequalities, or to

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55:51

What the Right Gets Wrong About Men (w/ Toby Buckle)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/05/27

The Trumpist right has a very clear picture of what they imagine masculinity to be, and are quite upset that it's not a picture all men find all that appealing. It's one of violence, belligerence, and professions of heavy labor. Anything else, including the whole of the knowledge economy that has made the developed world rich, is inauthentically masculine, the result of corrupting feminization.As someone who earns his living communicating ideas, and is pretty happy doing so, I find their

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54:14

Why do Trumpists talk so much about democracy if they...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/05/15

The authoritarian right loves to talk about how they're upholding democracy. Trump didn't lose the 2020 election, because if he had, democracy would've been against him. So instead it was stolen from him, his loss a subversion of the democratic process. Now, as a deeply unpopular second-term president, he and his loyalists pretend they are executing the will of the people, instead of horrifying most Americans while circumventing the people's elected legislature. My guest today has written a t...

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53:22

Forging an Opposition to Trump (w/ Adam Gurri)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/05/06

The first few months of the Trump administration have proven not just how willing much of America was to embrace and celebrate fascism, but how crucial careful, clear-eye, and thoughtful reporting and analysis are to building and sustaining a resistance movement. Few publications have been as essential in this moment as Liberal Currents, which has consistently brought deep understanding, a sense of urgency, and a commitment to the necessary practical steps of defending liberal institutions an...

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44:05

The Crank Theory of Everything (w/ Alysia Ames)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/04/29

As we've talked about a fair amount on the show, gender is at the center of the ideological clashes defining our political moment. Trumpism is, at its heart, a misogynistic movement, and the fractious coalition of philosophies within the Trumpist tent all agree that increased freedom and opportunities for women have been very upsetting for right-wing men. My guest today brings gender into dialogue with the structure of the economy has it has manifested in the developed world. And, in doing so...

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55:12

Ayn Rand Would've Hated Elon Musk (w/ Paul Crider)

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/04/15

Many very rich men who support Trump fancy themselves heroes from the novels of Ayn Rand. I've never done an episode of this show on Rand's ideas, because I'm not a Randian, and don't think about political questions through anything like an Objectivist perspective. But the fact that so many men breaking the country believe they are Randian archetypes makes her ideas now, I think, worth talking about. Particularly because, as my guest argues, Rand would hate these guys. Paul Crider is an assoc...

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43:04

How State Attorneys General are Taking the Fight to...

ReImagining Liberty ·

2025/04/07

I wanted to try to do a hopeful episode. The world look pretty grim right now, and many of us feel discouraged. The unlawful and authoritarian actions of the Trump administration keep coming at a relentless pace, and it can be difficult to see any reasons for optimism. It can also be lonely. Someone mentioned to me recently that, in times as dark as these, we need friends, but we also need comrades. We need people who share a common purpose in defending liberalism and who are working, alongsi...

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