Ezra Klein

So to the extent people think about liberalism today, which is, let's be real, a niche hobby, I think they define it as a philosophy of individual rights, of individual expression.

You write in your book that the word liberalism did not even exist until the early 19th century.

And for hundreds of years prior to its birth, being liberal meant something very different.

What did it mean?

So talk me through the early word here.

It's not even liberal, it's liberalitas, or where does this start for you?

One thing that was a bit of an epiphany reading your book for me, I think a lot of things are missing in modern liberalism.

My interest in doing this episode and more that I think are going to come is trying to figure out why liberalism feels so exhausted at a moment that it is so needed, and why so many of the books I read about it, some of the defenses I read of it, are so arid.

They have no blood in them.

But one thing that was interesting here was this idea that liberalism is built on a virtue, not a political philosophy, right?

Liberality.

And as you just mentioned, that the old definitions of it, and you have Cicero and John Locke and John Donne, and they have some kind of intersection between generosity and freedom, but not freedom like we think of it now.

So what did freedom mean in this context?

When you talk about this conception of freedom, this conception of what it means to be liberal, who are some of the people you quote and what are their arguments?

What do they say?

What is their vision of...

I think this is quite important, and it's something threaded through your book.

You write at some point that this idea of being a liberal, which comes way before liberalism as a political philosophy, is designed by and for the free, wealthy, and well-connected men who are in a position to give and receive benefits in ancient Rome.

And some other things that emerge as the book goes on, one thing it makes clear is that if today your problem with liberalism and liberals is you find them to be a bunch of smug, condescending elites—

That problem goes way back.