Know Your Enemy18 Touko 2021

The Long Farewell to Majority Rule? (w/ Joshua Tait)

In this follow-up episode to "Democracy and Its Discontents" (listen here), historian Joshua Tait joins Matt and Sam for a conversation about the intellectual origins of the American Right's hostility to democracy—from John C. Calhoun's invention of the filibuster in the nineteenth century to the writings of conservatives like Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, and others, in the 1950s and '60s.

Sources and Further Reading:

Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (Liveright Books, January 2021)

James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition (Regnery, 1959)

Willmoore Kendall, The Conservative Affirmation (Regnery Publishing, 1963)

Willmoore Kendall & George W. Carey, Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1970; reprint, The Catholic University of American Press, 1995)

Saul Bellow, "Mosby's Memoirs," The New Yorker, Jul 12, 1968

John A. Murley & John E. Alvis, eds., Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)

Harry V. Jaffa, "Equality as a Conservative Principle," Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, June 1, 1975

Joshua Tait, "Why Willmoore Kendall and James Burnham are the Prophets of Modern Conservatism," National Interest, April 30, 2021

Joshua Tait, "The Long History of Fighting Over the Term 'Conservative,'" The Bulwark, April 2, 2021

Matthew Sitman, "Farewell to a Constitutional Conservative," The American Conservative, June 27, 2013

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January 6, Five Years Later (w/ Robert Draper)

For years now on Know Your Enemy, we've taken the January 6, 2021 insurrection as a glimpse of Trumpism unbound—not a few naive Q-anon types and tourists bumbling around, and not an excuse to be black...

12 Tammi 1h 37min

Great Books and the AI Apocalypse (w/ Matt Dinan) [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.We were excited to record and share this conversation with Matt Dinan, a professor who teaches in a Great Books p...

2 Tammi 5min

UNLOCKED: Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner)

This episode originally aired November 17, 2025 on Patreon — we're unlocking it as a holiday treat. If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's proba...

22 Joulu 20251h 1min

What We Got Wrong (and Right) about the Right in 2025 [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to look back at another year of trying to understand the American ri...

15 Joulu 20256min

One Podcast After Another (w/ Jesse Brenneman)

Given the not-terribly-uplifting streak of episodes we've had lately, we thought it was time for a Know Your Enemy movie night, and were joined by the podcast's intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman, for...

8 Joulu 20251h 4min

On Friendship (w/ Andy Elrick)

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Should you try to improve your friends or leave them be? Do friendship and politics mix? Is friendship about virt...

1 Joulu 20251min

The Furious Minds of MAGA (w/ Laura Field)

Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, published earlier this month, is a book we simply had to discuss. Listeners to this podcast will recognize its cast of characters—cons...

24 Marras 20251h 9min

Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner) [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoi...

17 Marras 20254min