Fascism on the Rise Archives - KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show · Burt Cohen

Historian Michael Kazin on America’s Enduring Actual Greatness

·59 min·3 clips

Kazin says the other face of greatness is “the greatness of democracy” and the freedom to speak out against government policy.

1. Keeping Democracy Alive examines Michael Kazin’s essay “The Two Faces of American Greatness” through Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. 2. Burt Cohen hosts, and Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University history professor and New Republic essayist, brings the historical frame. 3. The episode asks what MAGA means and whether American greatness can be defined as democracy instead of domination. 4. Cohen compares Trump’s line with 1856 “free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, and Fremont,” then with Lincoln’s 1860 “vote yourself a farm.” 5. He also cites McKinley’s 1896 “patriotism, protection and prosperity” and Eisenhower’s 1956 “peace and prosperity.” 6. Kazin says the slogan works because it is short, memorable, and ambiguous enough for voters to supply their own meaning. 7. He links that ambiguity to discontent about lower prices, national power, and a past when white men dominated culture and politics. 8. Kazin argues that the slogan is also “vital” because many Americans want to feel proud of their country. 9. He says the darker side of the slogan appeals to people who dislike immigrants, labor unions, and racial equality. 10. Cohen and Kazin connect this to a left tradition of patriotism rather than nationalism. 11. Kazin cites Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. as figures who used “greatness” to describe what America was and could become. 12. He says Bernie Sanders also fits that pattern when he tells audiences to “fight for that person you don’t even know.” 13. Kazin reads Lincoln’s Gettysburg language as a model where “great” can mean both terrible bloodshed and “the great task remaining before us.” 14. He insists that words like “great” must be fought over instead of surrendered to Trump. 15. The conversation turns to patriotism, the flag, and Cohen’s memory of anti-war activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 16. Kazin says burning flags or flying the Viet Cong flag alienated many Americans who opposed the Vietnam War but did not identify with the anti-war movement. 17. He says the better lesson is to oppose leaders without denouncing the country itself, because democratic movements need majorities. 18. Kazin contrasts the patriotic tradition of dissent with Wilson-era repression under the Espionage Act and the arrests tied to anti-draft speech in Canton, Ohio. 19. He describes the episode’s tone as conversational, historically dense, and openly opinionated while still centered on quoted examples and political argument. 20. Listeners interested in American history, constitutional politics, labor organizing, and anti-war dissent will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a quick entertainment segment may skip it.

As heard by us

A concise look at presidential slogans, dissent, and the civic meaning of greatness.

This episode takes "Make America Great Again" and uses it as a way into democracy, dissent, and the argument over what Americans mean by greatness.

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Why you'd press play

If you want MAGA unpacked through presidential slogans, democracy, and free speech.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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