America at 250: Is the Experiment Failing?
7/1/202657 min
In this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum discusses the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. David discusses how he hopes Americans can find a future where we rediscover how much there is to be proud of in the American experience and offers a comparison to another turbulent time in American history: the Compromise of 1850.
Then, David is joined by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss the impending celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and whether the ideas in that document still ring true in the Trump era.
Finally, David ends the episode with a discussion of “City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism” by Abram Van Engen and the origins of the phrase “a shining city on a hill.”
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsKarla Lavey0:00
I'm Karla Lavey, cookbook author and snack enthusiast. Do you have a sweet tooth? Check out Sweets Unwrapped, a podcast from Ferrero and Atlantic Rethink, The Atlantic's creative marketing studio. Together, we're celebrating the traditions that make life sweet. Tune in now.
David Frum· Host0:17
[ on-hold music] Hello, and welcome to a special star-spangled edition of The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic. We'll be discussing the American idea and how it stands on this 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The book under discussion this week will also have a patriotic theme. That book is City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism by Abraham Bongiorno. But before either the dialogue with Jeffrey Goldberg or the book discussion, some opening thoughts on this m-memorable and momentous anniversary. The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has been shaping up as, well, frankly, somewhere between an embarrassment and a fiasco. It's marked by a military defeat in the Middle East, President Trump's lost war against Iran, and at home, it's been made ridiculous by the algae in the reflecting pool before the Lincoln Memorial, by the, uh, mixed martial ar-arts fight on the Wh-White