Trita Parsi

Yeah, absolutely.

There should be absolutely no illusion of what the problem is.

And the problem is, as you pointed out, the neoliberal economic system that is just destroying societies left and right, atomizing them,

combined, and again, there is a strong link between that and this essentially empire type of a foreign policy.

You know, I helped co-found the Quincy Institute and we named it after John Quincy Adams, because we wanted to remind Americans that there's a long tradition of American foreign policy that actually is nothing like what we're seeing right now.

He gave that speech on July 4th, 1821, in which he said, America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

And later on in the passage, he points out, if she does, she can become the dictresses of the world, but it will come at the expense of her own liberty and her own spirit.

That's exactly what we've seen.

The first thing that happened after 9-11 was the Patriot Act and the significant removal of Americans' civil liberties.

And it's just been a trend that has continued ever since.

But it's important because so many people have been led to believe that the current foreign policy we have, this idea that we need to have liberal hegemony, we have to dominate every corner of the world.

750 bases around the world, that that's what we always have been, that this is like written into the American DNA from the outset.

And it's just not true.

Look, a bit outside of my expertise, but the money in politics obviously is, I mean, how could you not conclude that that's gonna be corrupting, particularly mindful of the manner in which the amounts are just so astronomical as it is right now.

And then there's also other areas that are not astronomical, but nevertheless are so opaque, non-transparent that it's become a loophole.

So for instance, one of the things our team, Ben Freeman and Eli Clifton and Nick Cleveland at my shop really work on is the manner in which American think tanks are taking huge amounts of money from foreign governments.

That's unbelievable.

And there's no transparency around that at all.

If you give $250 to an American candidate, it will be in the public record and people can see that.

But you can give 10 million plus to a think tank that pretends that it is completely neutral.