Cofounder of Moms for Liberty Tiffany Justice speaks ahead of former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Moms for Liberty Summit in Philadelphia, Pa., 2023.(Hannah Beier for the Washington Post)
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, died on December 16 at
age 95. His legacy is a complex one, since in recent decades neoconservatism has been
supplanted in many ways by American First conservatism. But many aspects of Podhoretz’s
influence still play a shaping role on right. I take up Podhoretz’s career with David Klion (who
wrote an obituary for the pundit for The Nation) and the historian Ronnie Grinberg, who had
discussed Podhoretz in her book Write Like a Man.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Although only formed in 2021, Moms for Liberty, a group agitating for reactionary policies in schools, is already a major player in national politics. Republican presidential hopefuls like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are eager to speak at the group’s convention. Moms for Liberty is also receiving generous profiles in major media outlets like The New York Times.
As my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann notes in a recent column, such profiles tend to whitewash Moms for Liberty, falsely portraying it as a grassroots organization and ignoring its bigoted agenda and ties to the institutional right. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, we talk about the true nature of Moms for Liberty, as well as the way anti-trans agitation is remaking politics. In the discussion, we reference this earlier conversation I had with the historian Rick Perlstein about the deep roots of right-wing agitation over education.
Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.