Know Your Enemy - The Case for Democracy (w/ Osita Nwanevu)

Matt and Sam talk to Osita Nwanevu about his new book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding.

Duration: 1h 20m
Broadcast on: 12 Sep 2025
Audio Format: other

Since the start of the Trump Era over a decade ago, few words have been deployed as often as "democracy": how it's become imperiled, who threatens it, and what to do to defend it. In The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Osita Nwanevu sets out to understand the true meaning of democracy and defend it from its critics, not just on the right but those liberals who doubt the capacity of ordinary voters to determine their country's fate in a complex world. From there, he levels a critique of the Constitution for its myriad democratic deficits, then details what refounding the United States to be genuinely democratic—politically and economically—would require of us.

Listen again: "The Wolfe in the White Suit" (w/ Osita Nwanevu), July 5, 2024

Sources:

Osita Nwanevu, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (2025)

— "Conservatism’s Baton Twirler," New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2025.

Sheldon Wolin, Fugitive Democracy: And Other Essays (2016)

Michael J. Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016)

Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)

Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (1922)

Publius, Federalist 49 (February 1788)

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023

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All right. Welcome listeners to episode 120 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sitman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam of the Bell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. We are introducing an episode we recorded earlier this week with Ocida Winayvoo, who I'm sure his writing will be familiar to many of our listeners. He's been on the podcast before to talk about Tom Wolfe, the novelist. He's a contributing editor at the New Republic, a columnist at The Guardian, and the Democratic Institutions Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and he came on to talk about his new book, The Right of the People, Democracy, and the Case for a New American Founding. Great book. Really enjoyed reading it, really enjoyed talking to Ocida. We end up talking a lot about why democracy is good, whether America is a democracy, how it might become one, if not, there's a lot of meat to chew on in this one. It's kind of a mix of history, political theory, arguments about democracy. I think everyone should read this book. There's so much useful kind of weighing of arguments. I was impressed with it in that sense, and I just want to say, too, even if some listeners don't like the book, or in this conversation, I had some quibbles. He took a pot shot at Tocqueville. Maybe what is in nuances reading of the Federalist Papers here or there. But I want to say, we should be encouraging more books like this that are ambitious. I just think that's a noble and worthy approach to a book. Be ambitious. Yeah. I think this book is really a serious accomplishment. One of the things that's so admirable about it is that it really does translate an enormous amount of potentially abstract or abstruse kind of political science literature about democracy into a really popular and readable idiom in the prose in this book. I think that's a really great service to do for your reader and for American readers in general. So, buy this book. Yes. And before we get some housekeeping items, we did just want to mention that we recorded this before Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday, September 10th. And I'm sure many listeners will be interested in what we have to say about it or try to make sense of it. There's still lots of conflicting information. Maybe the absence of information is the better way to put it. The killer is still at large. So we will be recording an episode for subscribers next week where we talk about Charlie Kirk's assassination in some detail. Yeah. Very, very bleak. Yes. Well, housekeeping? Yes. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent.

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Matt and Sam talk to Osita Nwanevu about his new book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding.