Jeremi Suri: Civil War, Slavery, Freedom, and Democracy | Lex Fridman Podcast #354

... the war continues after the battles end. This is something that's hard for Americans to understand. Our system is built with the presumption when war is over, when we s- sign a piece of paper-

Mm-hmm.

... everyone can go home. That's not what happens.

The following is a conversation with Jeremy Surrey, a historian at UT Austin. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Jeremy Surrey. What is the main idea, the- the main case that you make in your new book, Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy?

So our democratic institutions in the United States, they are filled with many virtues and many, uh, elements in their design that improve our society and allow for innovation, but they also have many flaws in them, as any institutions created by human beings have. And the flaws in our institutions go back to a number of judgments and perspectives that people in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries had, and those flaws have been built into our institutions and they continue to hinder innovation and growth in our society. Three of the flaws that I emphasize in this, uh, book are flaws of exclusion, the ways our institutions exclude people, not just African-Americans, many different groups, um, the ways our institutions also, uh, give power to certain people who have position rather than skill or intelligence or quality, and third, and most of all, the ways our institutions embed certain myths in our society, myths that prevent us from gaining the knowledge we need to improve our world. In all of these ways, our democracy is hindered by the false reverence for institutions that actually need to be reformed, just as we need to highlight the good elements of them. That's really what my book is about.

And then the myth, the- the- the false reverence, what are we talking about there?

So there's a way in which, uh, we believe that, uh, if we love our country, it's somehow wrong to criticize our institutions. I believe if you love your country, you want to encourage your institutions to get better and better. I love my university where I work, but I want it to be better. We have many flaws. I love my family, but I'm constantly telling family members how they can be better. Uh, that's what true knowledge leadership is about, not just cheerleading.

What's the counterpoint to that? 'Cause, uh, the other extreme is a- a deep, all-encompassing cynicism towards institutions. So for me, I like the idea of loving America, which seems to be sometimes a politicized statement these days, that you believe in the ideals of this country. That seems to be, um... that seems to be either a naive or a political statement the way it's interpreted. So the flip side of that, having a healthy skepticism of institutions is good, but having a complete paralyzing cynicism seems to be bad.