I'm Jonathan Kapart and welcome to Kapart.

If you're a reader of the Washington Post,

then you know if you see an opinion essay by Robert Kagan,

senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,

and editor-at-large for the Washington Post, you need to stop what you're doing and read it.

Well, the same goes for his books, including his latest, rebellion, how anti-ism is tearing America apart again.

In this sobering conversation first recorded for Washington Post live on May 16th, Robert

Kagan talks about how the MAGA movement of today follows a long line

of anti-liberal movements throughout American history.

But more importantly, he explains why he writes quote the problem is and always has been

with the people and their beliefs all right so let's start with the title of your

book rebellion who exactly is All right, so let's start with the title of your book, Rebellion.

Who exactly is rebellion, rebelling, and what are they rebelling against?

Well, I think that the core of the Trump movement is fundamentally rebelling against the order

that the founders created after the revolution and with the Constitution, an order based on universal

individual rights, the idea that everyone enjoys those rights equally, and which is you know hostile to racial hierarchies

religious hierarchies and other traditional hierarchies and I think just as many

people throughout American history have objected to those principles and fought against them,

that's what we're seeing today and their leader, the person they think can overthrow this system is Donald Trump.

All right, so you may have already answered this question in your previous answer,

but I would love for you to elaborate because as you write in your book, similar movements have emerged throughout American history.

Some of these anti-liberal groups you mentioned or you describe are the slaveholding south,

...