In this episode we delve into Jeffrey Rosen's latest work The Pursuit of Happiness. As the President of the National Constitution Center and a Professor of Law at George Washington University, Rosen brings a unique perspective on America's democratic foundations. Through an exploration of classical writers and America's own philosophers and political founders, Rosen and Keen engage in a discussion on the challenges facing American democracy and law today.

We ask crucial questions: How closely do America's democratic institutions align with the ideals of the founding fathers? What insights can we glean from the evolution of American law and government practices over centuries? And, perhaps most importantly, what elements from our past are essential for sustaining and enriching American democracy?

Testing American Liberalism in the Cold War Years

In this episode journalist and historian James Traub delves into the paradoxical nature of liberalism in the post war years. The continuation of New Deal social and economic reforms charactarized a society of consensus in fulfillment of democratic ideals in the Cold War years. However, the illusory impression was built on the continuiation of Jim Crow systems in the South deepening racial inequity in the rest of the country. Resistance stirred underneath consensus and the illusion of an expanding liberalism and democratic enhancement.

James Traub is an American journalist and scholar specializing in international affairs.

In conversation with Prof. Sarah Snyder, an historian of Cold War international relations, Andrew Keen examines the relationship of democratic goals with the realities of American foreign policy. As the world's great post-war democratic and capitalistic power, the U.S. opposed Russia and China through strategic foreign aid and international interventions - often with non-democratic regimes. Internal divisions and controversies about the role of the United Nations, international human rights initiatives and racial divisions in the U.S. however challenged that post-war consensus.