[T]here are two justifications for [liberalism]. One... is pragmatic and the other... is moral. - Francis Fukuyama

In the 19th and early 20th century the issue had shifted from religion to nation. You had mixed ethnic populations throughout Europe, and as Europe began to reorganize itself on a national, or a cultural, or an ethnic basis, you had two bloody... World Wars that... undermined the magnificent European civilization of the 19th century... Liberalism was called upon in the aftermath... to enable Europeans to live together in ethnically diverse societies. That was the origin of the European Union... an effort to move beyond Nationalism, to a new form of .

The mainstream media does have a liberal bias, as does a lot of... higher education, academia... and so forth... [A] lot of people see that and they don't like it. ...The problem is that the solution ...offered by the extreme right is... a lot worse... [T]he critics of the mainstream media don't... appreciate that fact that there is diversity... that there are actually journalistic standards that... The New York Times and ... adhere to. All of which is being tossed out the window on the far right... in reaction to the perceived bias. ...[T]here's a difference between bias and outright... lying. So the bias... has to do with what kinds of stories are covered... the kinds of slant that's given to the reporting... but what's going on in large sections of the conservative media is just outright... untruth... people will just make up facts... without sourcing them properly... [T]hat's another sense in which... the solution is a lot worse than the... underlying disease. ...What we need is a responsible right wing media that does adhere to certain basic journalistic standards. ...[T]here's a tendency on the part of everybody to... take particular anecdotes and instances of abuse and then generalize it to say that... the entire media universe is corrupt... without... appreciating the fact that... that's not a universal problem.

[L]iberalism has been very severely threatened in recent years. It's been threatened from a number of sources. So internationally you have two great powers, Russia and China, that are definitely not liberal polities, that have expansive ambitions... [A]s Vladimir Putin said... in an iterview with the FT in 2019 "Liberalism is an obsolete doctrine." But the threat... also comes from other places. ...[Y]ou have the rise of a populist nationalist right in many countries. This is Viktor Orbán in Hungary. This is Narendra Modi in India, Donald Trump in the United States, ...Marine Le Pen in France. All of them criticizing liberalism precisely for the tolerance that it permits and tries to deal with, in diverse and increasingly ethnically and racially diverse countries.