If you could travel back in time and speak with America's founders, what warning would you offer them about the nation's future?
That was the question Washington Week moderator Jeffrey Goldberg posed to the panel during the show's "America: The Next 250" special.
"We've had hard moments in the past. We had a civil war. We went through the civil rights era," said Stephen Hayes.
"Winston Churchill ... said Americans always do the right thing only after they've tried everything else. But I feel like we're trying everything else."
"Peter, small question for you: Is the post-World War II international liberal order created and maintained by the United States over?" Jeffrey Goldberg asked @peterbakernyt.bsky.social.
"Yes," Baker said. "Our understanding of what we thought the world order was for the last 80 years is over."
Tim Alberta: "[The founders] believed that the church should be distinct from the state, in part so that the church would not be co-opted by the state, and that the church would not simply just become an appendage of the state or of different factional interests related to governing this country."
Are you surprised by the shift in how Americans view immigration compared with 10 or 15 years ago?
"It’s a cycle," said Idrees Kahloon.
"There's a big surge, and then there's a huge nativistic backlash. Those migrants were then incorporated into the American body politic."
"We are the most erratic and unstable force in the globe because of our disproportionate, both economic and military, power," @sbg1.bsky.social said.
"The uncertainty that we have ourselves ... is a source of global instability."
Are America's issues terminal or recoverable?
Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch told moderator Jeffrey Goldberg that the nation has endured "hard moments" in the past. At this moment, he said, he "wouldn't pronounce the country dead."
What does Trump understand about the American people that 'elites' don't?
"This sense of grievance,” said @ashleyrparker.bsky.social
"That people feel like no one is looking out for them, and he is going to take that grievance and channel it and sort of cast himself as the martyr on their behalf."
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Tim Alberta of The Atlantic, Peter Baker of The New York Times, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch, Idrees Kahloon of The Atlantic and Ashley Parker of The Atlantic shared their thoughts.
