Jon Meacham | Full Episode 1.20.23 | Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | PBS
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- Pulitzer Prize winning-author and presidential biographer Jon Meacham discusses how today’s leaders compare to their predecessors. Meacham, who has helped craft some of Biden's key speeches, weighs in on today's GOP and whether Biden will run again.
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FIRING LINE WITH MARGARET HOOVER airs on PBS. Launched in June 2018, Firing Line maintains the character of the original series by William F. Buckley Jr., providing a platform that is diligent in its commitment to a balanced exchange of opinion. In weekly 30-minute episodes, host Margaret Hoover engages in a rigorous exchange of ideas with political leaders, cultural luminaries, thought leaders and activists who represent a wide range of ideas and perspectives. New episodes are available Fridays here on CZcams at 8:30 pm ET.
Jon Meacham is an American treasure!
wish more Americans would watch quality programs such as this one…
Outstanding interview, may not agree with Jon Meacham on all his viewpoints on U.S. Presidents; however, Meacham is solid gold.
He calls all of us to follow our higher and better angels.
Jon Meacham never ceases to inspire. ThankYou Jon, I always feel we can do this, the hard work, to save and improve U.S. democracy after listening to you speak. 💫🇺🇸💫
Our "higher and better angels" would best be expressed in a confluence of democracy and some modern expression of Socialism. Capitalism is antithetical to democracy and in it bathes the poison of the soul that will inevitably cause its own destructrion...and ours as well.
Jon Meacham, BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO!!! For your clear articulation of the essence of presidential leadership dedicated to the common good in our democracy! Margaret Hoover, congratulations on your enlightening interview! BRAVA!
What a joy it is to listen to intelligent conversation about the events of today.
Jon Meacham needs a wider audience !
Really excellent interview on both sides. I would love to ask Meacham who he thinks are the young up-and-coming pols that can lead with the kind of dignity and integrity that he talks about. I'm not sure, myself, who these people are. A really thought provoking interview, well done.
Just a hunch but he rarely mentions contemporary individuals, so I don't think he'd give a specific answer to that. Notice he never goes the other way either, especially in talking about Orange Face for example. His response might be more about judging each individual's aspirations and do they align with our country's ideals, much of what he says in this interview.
@@michaeldecavalcante7820
Thanks for your response.
I watch Jon Meacham as he makes the English language proud with respect to his play on words. Truly, a pastor of the English vernacular.
Thank you for a brilliant interview with a great author. He has a gift for seeing the history of America thru presidents.
Mr. Meacham has hit the nail on the head not only for a President but for all of us. Can we put our own self aside (die to ourself) and do good deeds for others, even if we have been wronged by those others, for the common good. Will we consciously choose good over evil and in the process become virtuous, LOVING people?
The cadence and order of Margaret’s interviews are masterful . Always the right questions and the respect to be a great listener and not interrupt . Just this steely intellect and piercing focus on the interviewee.
His idea of fighting back on the right's claim to god, rather than ignoring it in favor of rigid secularism, is an interesting strategy and perspective.
Excellent interview - Jon Meacham is clear-eyed and sober on the state of our democracy. It is also obvious how under-rated George Herbert Walker Bush was when he was president. I wish he was re-elected in 1992.
8 years of Reagan and then 8 years of Bush? Thank God that did not happen.
Great respect for John Meacham. Keep talking
Thank you Margaret. You are an intellectual beacon who illuminates and elucidates the issues of our time. Because of you I see more clearly and I understand more deeply.
Meacham shows how Lincoln, through his implacable stand against slavery and his determination to use caution and wisdom to fight it, was able to end slavery.
Took a Civil War for him to change his mind... Coming from his writings.
Interesting, so lifting _habeas corpus_ is, either, the very ANTITHESIS of caution since it was,quite possibly, a one-time only, last resort, hail mary pass in the 11th hour OR it was so cautious, it was a precaution?(by the virtue of its own necessity+ actual historical reasons,Confederate media ) ..Or paradoxically, both? Hmmmm 🤔
I think we just illustrated the principles of structuralism
Christian neighbors not Christian nationalist is the way. This person is wise and always enjoyable to listen to. Prayers to all for Love healing and peace.
Thanks John. Your conversation helped me have some renewed hope for our country going forward. It seems that hope has been a scarce commodity around here lately.
I'm feeling nervous about our country.
So much hate out there such a great country being destroyed from within imo
@@tomasofaolain3117 We all need to get involved b/c it's not ordained that hate will win.
If we sit back and lament the circumstances, democracy will suffer.
So many good people; and, good organizations working to save democracy.
Local, State; and, on National levels, pick at least one.
We are stronger together. Action will win the day!
Meacham has a big picture perspective that needs to be heard. The parallel between the Ukraine war today and his book Winston and Franklin are very close.
Excellent interview....
More regular News on Sovereign UKRAINE!!!💙💛🇺🇦
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. a main commandment in the jewish faith. the commandment i've been trying to live by all my life, DOES IT MATTER WHO OR WHAT CLAIMS IT?!
How about a Citizen just run for President to lead/govern....we don't need everyone trying to "change history"... Whatever that means anyways.
God Bless America with Realistic Leadership ❤🇺🇲🙂🙏
Liz Cheny, hahaha-no more phone calls, we have a winner.
Fair points about Ukraine and US foreign policy, but probably the misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to that skepticism of interventionist policies among some on the Right.
And yet the Right was fully gung ho on all three wars. So you all can spare me your clutching of pearls when we're finally called to the right thing for the first time in over 80 years.
meechum , the fish in water talking about the land.....
It sounds like he would even prefer another Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump.
Jon Meachum would you consider running for U.S President?
Of course your letter had no effect - that would involve reading it and looking up in the dictionary potentially unknown words.
What a disappointing interview.
It's the party of Lucifer.
He looks like he has a crush on Margaret.
I was thinking the same thing but in the opposite direction
Everybody’s got a crush on Margaret
President Donald Trump 2024
While Meacham is a great and insightful historian, he simply sees history and historical figures through the lens of Capitalism. Monarchy and Serfdom, the rise of the banking/tradeclass, slavery and now neo-Capitalism (another word for wage slavery) were all constructed in their respective eras on two basic natural human (inhuman?) tendencies: Greed and the accumulation of money, and the Power that the accumulation of money provides. Slavery was the means to create the greatest accumulation of wealth in a time dominated by agriculture and King Cotton by enslaving others (free labor) and has since morphed into the present-day iteration of slavery (wage slavery, the lowest possible wages and benefits to reward shareholders with the highest possible profits). From Nixon to Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Obama and now to Biden, their service to their corporate masters and cabals is what has rendered the short-lived concept of lilberal democracy - which, tosurvive and flourish, MUST be based on some expression of Socialism - a thing of the past. Nice try, people! But to lavish Roosevelt and Eisenhower and George W. Bush and all the other narcissistic. iimmoral and sociopathic synophants with praise is to tacitly admit that they were essentially tools of whatever cabal or cabals they served in their times, all of those cabals being constructed expressions of greed and power. And for this, Meacham's otherwise valuable insight regarding history remains superficial and lacking in important economic analysis.
I agree with your analysis, but I don't understand your point. The leaders Meacham speaks about were a product of a system, and became leaders, precisely because they managed to master the system, on way or another. Then they used their leadership and mastery of the system to create the conditions for large groups to improve their life's. Not all groups, and no permanent improvement, but there is no such thing in history.
@@laurentdrozin812 Perhaps your lack of understanding comes from your inclination to elevate those who "led" the system to being the actual "leaders" of that very system. They were not. They were those who, to be sure, evinced the abillity to become a convicing public facade of the system, but the true "leadership" of the system came from those who actually stood to profit from the decisions they required those appointed "leaders" to sell to the general populace. For example, the "military-industrial complex" existed long before Eisenhower gave it a name and, by giving it a public identification and calling it out, he betrayed the very system who appointed him to do their bidding quietly and behind closed doors - and for which he was relegated to the scrapheap of history, his revelation having ultimately amounted to nothing. FDR was chosen by the oligarchs after the "Gay Nineties" turned suddenly into the Great Depression to be the friendly public face of the oligarchy and, to the oligarchs' great fortune, convinced them to save their own asses by actually allowing the New Deal and social programs to be installyed to head off a sociallist-communist revolution poised to overturn the oligarchic class. I think you place too much stock in the power of those you deem "leaders" when, in fact, they were rather "appointees" and "representatives" of the faceless cabals that saw particular talents in them that made them basically pubic relations tools for the survival and betterment of the cabals they were chosen to represent. If you want to see the fate of the true "leaders" you think your are identifying, watch what will happen if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becomes a viable threat to the oligarchy by actually assuming front-runner status in the 2024 POTUS election over Biden or any other cabal-appointed candidate. Guaranteed he will wind up lying next to his uncle and his father who themselves were examples the very "leaders" you think you are describing but who in reality weren't. Bernie sold out and went along quietly; RFK, Jr. will never do that, and his ferocious independence and utter refusal to bow down to power by becoming a tool of the system constitutes an existential threat to the oligarchic class which cannot be tolerated and therefore must be eliminated at all costs. You can only discover true leadership by looking deep below the surface of commonly-told history to see who has been vilified: Ralph Nader is a prime example; Malcom X was another; Edwin Snowden and Julian Assange are two more. The moral to the story is that true "leadership" always falls under the weight of the system it opposes and the history that system manufactures for public consumption, and true "leaders" wind up either dead or becoming societal outcasts, "hippies" and nutjobs - and usually both.
@@semigeniusreally8988 I think I understand where you come from. Correct me if I am wrong, but if I read your text correctly, you want to destroy the established order and build something new, better in its place. I sympathize, but I firmly believe this is impossible. Revolutions have always led to more destructions than good, and always a lot of deaths. An effective leader has to work within a system, and use the system to deliver. All effective leaders did that. Augustus, Charlemagne, Lincoln, Eisenhower. They did not seek to create paradise on earth, but achieved limited objectives, and mostly left most people better off, for a period of time. Often, their very success set the stage for the destruction of their legacy later on, but that is human condition, we cannot escape it. I don't think we can expect much more from our leaders. To do so is to court disaster. I cannot point to a single successful revolution in all of human history. The one that came closest to success is the American Revolution, and that was because the aims were very limited.
@@laurentdrozin812 Revolutions involve destruction almost inevitably, but when monarchies and czars and tyrants and ayatollahs are overthrown, almost always better conditions emerge for the general populace. I have already said that capitalism, which has existed in one form or another under different rubrics and applications since the development of agriculture, is the enemy of democracy and only now abides democracy in a limited and controlled form in order to avoid a socialistic revolution. I agree that revolution has now been made a virtual impossibility due to the emergence of electronic media and the ability of the powerful to control it - and our opinions and lives in the process - ultimately, as Chomsky's seminal work so clearly explains, to manufacture consent. So the choice as so powerfully presented by Chris Hedges is revolution for revolution's sake irrespective of outcome, because it is our responsibility as free and independent human beings to fight for our freedom from control and oppression by other human beings. In this regard, revolution becomes a moral imperative and an end in itself. But, unfortunately or, in my opinion fortunately, the exponential advance of climate change/global warming, which itself is the ironic but inevitable end result of thousands of years of capitallist economic "progress," will inevitably, unavoidably, unmitigatingly and inexorably doom all life on this planet in less than 70 years, so all that we are discussing here becomes little more than whistling past the graveyard and emotionally avoiding our expiration date while conducting a form of mutual ingtellectual masturbation that keeps our minds distracted from facing - and accepting and preparing for - the horror that is to come.
I have always thought he was really great. I’ve been binge watching firing squad and as a hard core leftist I have respect for Margret and her interviewing abilities.