You’re listening to What Rough Beast!
We are Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf, and today we’re talking with the great writer and reporter John Jeremiah Sullivan. We discuss:
John’s forthcoming book "The Prime Minister of Paradise" about Christian Gottlieb Priber, a radical Enlightenment thinker who established a utopian experiment among the Cherokee in 1730s America
How Priber's vision for "Paradise" included revolutionary principles that were ahead of their time: religious tolerance, racial equality, democratic governance, and rejection of slavery
The forgotten history of radical Enlightenment ideas in early America and how they influenced (but weren't fully embraced by) the founding fathers
The parallel between today's political threats to democracy and the tension between enlightenment and anti-enlightenment forces that has existed throughout American history
The importance of identifying and defending the core enlightenment principles that make the American experiment worth fighting for
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