What the Founders Feared Most Is Happening Now
Scott Galloway and historian Heather Cox Richardson discuss how sidelining expertise in American governance echoes past anti-intellectual movements and threatens the institutions behind post-WWII prosperity.
The gist
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Leaders now openly say intuition or faith overrides decades of training, which the Founders specifically designed government to prevent.
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Post-WWII Western prosperity was built on evidence, science, and shared norms, not ideology, and Richardson says that foundation is being dismantled.
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Galloway traces today's anti-expertise trend back 50 years to Reagan-era attacks on higher education, which gradually normalized the idea that training is unnecessary.
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When the most powerful country drops shared factual frameworks, it puts nuclear treaties and trade agreements at risk because rational negotiation breaks down.
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The Scarlet Letter
· "You think of even things like The Scarlet Letter, right? Which everybody suffered through in high school —..."
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