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About Uncommon Knowledge

For more than a decade the Hoover Institution has been producing Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, a series hosted by Hoover fellow Peter Robinson as an outlet for political leaders, scholars, journalists, and today’s big thinkers to share their views with the world. Guests have included a host of famous figures, including Paul Ryan, Henry Kissinger, Antonin Scalia, Rupert Murdoch, Newt Gingrich, and Christopher Hitchens, along with Hoover fellows such as Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz.

Uncommon Knowledge takes fascinating, accomplished guests, then sits them down with me to talk about the issues of the day,” says Robinson, an author and former speechwriter for President Reagan. “Unhurried, civil, thoughtful, and informed conversation– that’s what we produce. And there isn’t all that much of it around these days.”

The show started life as a television series in 1997 and is now distributed exclusively on the web over a growing network of the largest political websites and channels. To stay tuned for the latest updates on and episodes related to Uncommon Knowledge, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

November 30, 2009 | Recorded on November 19, 2009

Soft Despotism with Paul Rahe

Paul Rahe

Paul Rahe discusses the danger a consolidation of government poses for the people of the United States, the psychological disposition that makes democratic peoples vulnerable to servile temptation, and the institutions that once in some measure shielded Americans from these propensities.

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Asserting that the Obama administration is pursuing tyrannical ambitions, he offers some of the reasons why it is now possible for us to recover the liberty that once was ours. (39:13) Video transcript

To go to segments within a video, click the links below:

  • start video from beginning Paul Rahe defends his position that President Obama’s health-care proposals “presuppose the administrative state’s assuming a power over our lives that is nothing less than tyrannical.”
  • start segment 2 at 8:12 Paul Rahe says it is easy to explain the nanny state, since there is a nanny in all of us. What’s harder to explain is why someone would desire life under the nanny.
  • start segment 3 at 15:16 Paul Rahe discusses the keen perceptions and timeless wisdom of Tocqueville.
  • start segment 4 at 23:10 What are the roots of modern soft despotism in America? Paul Rahe responds.
  • start segment 5 at 29:54 Is the all-encompassing welfare state inevitable? Can we recover our liberty? Paul Rahe responds.