Eric Kaufmann On Liberal Overreach

The brilliant writer is back to blame liberals — not leftists — for woke excess.

Eric is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, where he runs the new Centre for Heterodox Social Science. He’s also an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is The Third Awokening: A 12-Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism (its title in the UK is Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution). He also runs a 15-week online course on the origins of wokeness that anyone can sign up for.

You can listen to the episode in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — why race/gender/sexuality are now considered sacred identities, and whether peak woke is past us — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: born in Hong Kong with a diplomatic dad; raised in Tokyo and Vancouver; living in the UK ever since; how the US spreads its culture wars abroad; the BLM moral panic; “hate speech”; psychotherapy and Carl Rogers; the psychological harm of growing up with homophobia; the gay rights movement; wedding cakes in Colorado; Jon Rauch; Jon Haidt; the taboos of talking immigration or family structure; the Moynihan Report shelved by LBJ; Shelby Steele’s book on white guilt; Coleman Hughes and “intergenerational trauma”; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; the AIDS crisis; the tradeoffs in trans rights vs. women’s rights; the spurious “mass graves” of indigenous Canadians; the CRA of 1964 dovetailing with the Immigration Act of 1965; Chris Caldwell; Richard Hanania; America’s original sin of slavery; Locke and Hobbes; Douglas Murray’s The War on the West; Churchill; cancel culture; CRT as unfalsifiable; Ibram Kendi; the gender imbalance in various industries; Chris Rufo; how Trump makes wokeness worse; the absence of identity politics in Harris’ convention speech; and being comfortable with being “abnormal”.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Rod Dreher on religion and the presidential race, Michelle Goldberg on Harris, David Frum on Trump, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on the history of animal cruelty, John Gray on, well, everything, and Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod with James Carville:

What a good interview, and fun too. I only wish Carville could coach Kamala.

Another writes, “The Carville interview was the best Dish in a very long time!” And another:

I’m a big fan of yours and have always found James Carville hilarious. Even now that I don’t quite see eye-to-eye with him on the state of current Democrat Party, I can’t help liking him. I really wish we were back in the Bill Clinton days. Even if he was a pig towards woman, he was an amazing politician and managed to bridge the divide between the parties, which benefited everyone.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, seems unwilling to even talk to the left-leaning media who want nothing more than to fluff her. What does this woman stand for? I felt like you and James both did the “she is not Trump” dance, but you didn’t have much else. That is not going to win my vote, considering the state of our country after four years of her and the Dems in charge.

Another critic of Harris and the MSM:

I’m one of those classical liberal Republicans who thoroughly enjoys James Carville. While serving in the George H.W. Bush administration, I remember well (painfully) how Mr. Carville took us apart, piece by piece.

I voted against Hillary Clinton in 2016 because I saw her as corrupt to her core, but I was shocked when Trump won the Electoral College. In 2020, I broke rank with my party and voted for Joe Biden because I bought the Dem establishment’s propaganda that he would serve as a centrist.

The Pelosi/Obama coup has given us the ultimate patsy candidate — a person thoroughly devoid of original thought. That the legacy media is not only allowing this undemocratic selection to go unquestioned, but celebrating it, is unfathomable to me. As much as I detest the personal character defects of Mr. Trump, I will be voting for him in November. At least in Trump, I know exactly what I am getting.

I suspect the vacuity of the Harris campaign is unsustainable. But we’ll see. Another listener comments on this clip:

The only people I hear talking about “marginalized people” are corporate HR types and the consultant critters they bring in to run pointless seminars. And it’s a very useful excuse for corporate media to avoid talking about class.

Another feels I didn’t challenge Carville enough:

You barely pushed back against his statement that “misogyny and racism have a real hold on America” — as to why people support Trump as a response to the leftist madness. You are one of the few people who has been talking sense in recent years and standing up for your values and beliefs while the “center left” has gone mad, and you meekly let this go with only a mild protest!? His statement is a prime example of the worst type of toxicity that must be called out whenever it’s uttered.

Then he says, “The 11% of our party that is focused on identitarianism is silly, just ignore them.” NO! They are trying to change the Constitution and get rid of free speech and equality under the law, and they have controlled Biden’s domestic policy with no pushback from the supposed 89% of Democrats who know better!  Andrew, you KNOW this and have been raging against it! How can you possibly let Carville just blithely ignore this and try to make us all forget about what they tried — and are still trying to do!?

I did push back. I offered an alternative explanation — that many were sick of incompetent elites and their condescension — and Carville essentially backed down. Maybe I should have been more forceful. Another is with Carville:

Excellent interview. He gets that racism and misogyny still have a hold in America, which is why Trump is at 48 percent. We’re engaged in a battle for the soul of the nation. (By the way, I think you should interview Raphael Warnock on Christian faith and love.)

Rod Dreher, writing on his substack, takes issue with the following clip:

For some bizarre reason, Carville once again calls me out for having a “huge, huge effect on J.D. Vance.” I wish it were true, but it’s not. Carville recognizes that I’m Orthodox, but seems to think I converted Vance to “right-wing Catholicism.” As I’ve said before, when J.D. asked me what he should read and to whom he should talk if he wanted to be Catholic, and I came to understand that there was no chance of my winning him to Orthodoxy, I put him in touch with a great Dominican who began his instruction. And that was it: the introduction. If he had chosen Orthodoxy, then I might deserve some credit, but he didn’t.

Carville and Andrew talk about J.D. the convert as some sort of puritanical interloper into the Church. Andrew implies that J.D. took up Catholicism because he thought it would be a good way to restore social order, as opposed to because it’s the truth. What a remarkable thing for Andrew to say! He famously rejects the Catholic Church’s truth claims about sexuality, yet he faults J.D. Vance for becoming Catholic for some other reason besides the truth?!

Do these guys even know how J.D. came to faith, from atheism? Far as I know, the only place he has written about it at length was in this 2020 essay in The Lamp. If you only listened to Carville and Sullivan, you would think J.D. embraced Catholicism as a pathway to power. In fact, as he writes in the piece, in a time in his life when he was questioning the meaning of it all, and coming to doubt his atheism, he read St. Augustine, and discovered, via Peter Thiel, the Catholic thinker René Girard.

Read the rest of his complaint here. Rod has agreed to come back on the Dishcast to thrash some of this out. But I don’t doubt he’s right that Carville overstates his influence. I don’t think and didn’t say that Vance became Catholic “as a pathway to power.” What I said was that some converts see the Magisterium as a perfect guide, a way to resolve all doubts, and see it as a blueprint for society as a whole, a one-stop shop for every question. I’ve been there and realized that approach was too full of pride, precision, and projection, and came to embrace more humility, mystery, and silence. That’s the core narrative of my book on Christianity, which I’m beginning to write. (I think my mother’s death ended my writer’s block on it.)

Another listener:

In your conversation with Carville, I heard you make a comment about Christ’s siblings and the immaculate conception. I’m sure it was an absent-minded lapse, but please review the meaning of immaculate conception. Many mistakenly believe this term is related to Christ’s conception; it instead refers to the conception of Mary. (Though why that would be of any interest is beyond me, perhaps only to elevate her to a separate degree of humanity.)

The fact that Christ’s brother James is at the council in Jerusalem is an entirely different conundrum for the Catholic church to address. I’m not sure it’s relevant to the claim of Christ’s divinity (which I support), or the continuity of the gospel (the topic that you and Carville were discussing). Again, it may only be relevant to whether Mary’s purity/virginity was perpetually intact as a valued commodity.

I am very much aware that the Immaculate Conception is Mary’s, not Jesus’. And part of that immaculacy is her ever-virginity. That’s why I mentioned Jesus’ brother, James, as a problem. Here’s a guest rec from a listener:

Have we exhausted the subject of Abraham Lincoln yet? Or has he exhausted us? Not a chance. With virtually no formal education, he was: an outstanding working trial lawyer, a fine constitutional lawyer, skilled politician, strong executive and commander-in-chief, able to hold his own in debate against the finest orators of his time, and, just to top it off, a literary genius. And someone with an unshakeable moral conviction that slavery was morally wrong.

Lincoln’s views on religion and morality are interesting. It was rumored early in his career that he was a freethinker/atheist, causing him to issue a lawyerly denial/non-denial. He never joined a church and apparently did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Yet as the Civil War progressed, his rhetoric took on an increasingly religious coloration.

Redeemer President by Allen Guelzo, now at Princeton, has been much praised as one of the best intellectual biographies of Lincoln and a deep examination of his religious thought. Might make for an interesting conversation.

A listener who would probably like that convo:

I was so looking forward to your reemergence from vacation and bereavement leave. I know you’ve been going through a rough time and hope you’re ok.

I looked at the list of upcoming guests and was disappointed. Politics, Politics, Politics. You may not want to admit it, but politics is not — on the day-to-day level — your strong point. This isn’t said to offend you, but Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn are offering far more interesting takes on the political day to day. Your talking to James Carville about Kamala Harris doesn’t sound too exciting. As for David Frum and Michelle Goldberg, the prospect of listening to them is more than I can bear. I’d get more of a kick out of Cornel West (he’s funnier) or Slavoj Žižek (actually so is he).

We are in the last two months of a presidential campaign. Hence the focus. But the great philosopher John Gray is returning! Rod Dreher is coming on to talk about Vance, the new right, enchantment, and Christianity. And we have a pod scheduled about the history of animal cruelty in America. All before the election.

Ahead of next week’s presidential debate, a reader notes:

Donald Trump could make more than $2 billion dumping his Trump Media stock later this month:

Trump’s stake in the public company behind his right-wing social media site Truth Social is under a six-month lockup period that could end as early as Sept. 20 — if the stock stays above $12 for for any 20 trading days starting Aug. 22. At that point, Trump could sell all or part of his holdings. If shares fall below $12, then the first day Trump would be able to sell would be Sept. 25, regardless of the stock’s value.

I hope this comes up during the debate next week. Think about it: Trump will probably equivocate and contradict himself twice in the same sentence, but whatever he says could have a large impact on the stock’s price in the following days. When the time comes, you know he will sell and leave his “affinity stock” investors with nothing.

Another reader digs up footage of Harris:

Like many Americans, I’ve had low expectations of Kamala Harris. Her 2019 campaign for president was a big flop. Leftists still post clips of her speaking engagements, smearing her as “Kamala the cop.” But after recently listening to two speeches — not just Twitter snippets — I came away impressed. Here she is talking to a Chicago audience in 2013 about crime and justice:

And the same year talking to young students in California:

She’s well-spoken, confident and doesn’t sound woke. The students are equally impressive, and patriotic! I’d like to hear more from this 2013 Kamala Harris.

Me too! Another is giving her the benefit of the doubt:

You worry that Kamala’s recent pivot to the center is an electoral ploy, but isn’t it more likely to be the other way around? In my view, her policy positions during the 2020 primary were a blatant attempt at winning primary voters, forcing her to take uncharacteristic positions given the national environment at the time. (For instance, she supported Eric Garcetti’s proposed $150 million cuts to the LAPD.)

However, going off her career as a prosecutor and her 2009 book, she advocated for a tougher-on-crime approach. She supported aggressively going after truancy in schools by prosecuting parents, pushed for higher bail, and criticized progressives for being biased against law enforcement. If she’s closer to the center on issues of criminal justice, I would expect her to be closer to the center on other issues as well.

In some ways, I wonder if people unfairly perceive her to be more left-wing than she actually is, since she checks off so many boxes due to her identity: woman, black, Asian, and from California (similar to how you would assume a non-college educated white male from Alabama would be more right-wing).

Well, we’ll see. It would be helpful if she put a list of her policy priorities on her website. But she hasn’t. This reader is staying optimistic:

Harris’ speech was masterful, as you put it. Even if she didn’t write it, she OK’d it — put it on her own record. She doesn’t do that unless she is willing to stand behind it. Was the speech a Trojan horse, just said to get in office so she can go full woke? Maybe there is a little of that, but she gave a huge middle finger to the woke base. That’s a real cost.

I’m tired of cynicism. What’s the worst that happens if we aren’t cynical about it? She gets elected instead of Trump and does some annoying things? Not so bad. People are cynical because they’ve been burnt before. Why not, in this case, just swallow the cynicism, hope she tacks center, and feel good about supporting the hope? There is no hope on the other side. I’d rather be annoyed than despondent, and that’s the worst-case scenario choice here.

To be honest, my mood shifts all the time on this. Another reader provides an optimistic outlook on November by looking to the past year of political change in Oregon:

I’m sure you’re getting a deluge of emails about the Harris campaign. I don’t have much to add other than I think she she’s running a great campaign and looks strong headed into November. I thought I’d write another update from Portland, Oregon. There have been significant events here in Oregon over the past year that I think preview some of the trends we’ll see in the November election.

Following other cities on the West Coast, a more conservative DA, Nathan Vasquez, was soundly elected to replace the controversial incumbent Mike Schmidt. Vasquez ran on a more hardline stance of law-and-order and victim’s rights. He also stressed that the crime and disorder in Portland disproportionally impacted communities of color. Vasquez is an Independent, former Republican, and still won in Portland. Portland’s crime has decreased, and the downtown has improved, but we have a ways to go, and people have no patience with the laissez-faire approach to law enforcement and prosecution that got us into this mess. I haven’t seen a “defund the police” sign in a long time.

In other election results, more pragmatic candidates like Maxine Dexter for the state legislature (now running for Congress) and Julia Brim-Edwards for Multnomah County Commissioner both won decisively. People here are tired of activists and inflammatory rhetoric. As the Oregonian points out, it isn’t as clear as voters rejecting progressives. Many winning candidates support progressive policies but are more realistic and action-focused. The social media firebrands and activist candidates were soundly defeated. If this didn’t work in Portland, it certainly won’t win across the country. Harris is smart to reject that approach.

A major change this year was Oregon reforming Measure 110, the drug decriminalization bill. The bill focused on investing resources into treatment, but more importantly eliminated much of the enforcement. NYT podcasts (here and here) do a good job of outlining the issues, and this Atlantic article on why Oregon decrim failed is spot on. While people overwhelmingly support a treatment-first approach, making treatment opt-in only and preventing enforcement was an absolutely disaster. It inflamed the homelessness and crime crisis in Portland.

This year the enforcement portions of the bill were overhauled. Despite what you may see on social media, Measure 110 reform was bipartisan and a widely supported. Portland and Multnomah County are still wrangling on how to enforce and manage going forward, but the past policies have been rejected.

What’s struck me about the Republican Party here in Oregon is how uninterested it is in governing. Most pledge their allegiance to Trump and focus on more guns, repealing environmental restrictions, and outlawing abortion. There is no effort at all to appeal to moderate Democrats like me. In theory I would be open to listening to other options, but I think the Republicans are reckless and unserious. I only have one party option, and I will be voting and participating. Staying home and not voting is not an option for me.

Another reader continues a thread from last week:

No offense, but I sometimes find your readers’ comments to be more interesting than your columns. And this comment really jumped out at me:

I don’t forgive the political excesses of the left in 2020, and I haven’t forgotten them. None of us should forget the lunatic idea of defunding — even disbanding! — the police. How much violence, how many deaths can be laid at the feet of city officials throughout the country who cut funding and told/forced police to disengage? And now we’re supposed to just forget all that because “we went a little crazy?”

There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, I would point out that the essence of the problems we faced in 2020 was indeed extremism — but it was not just “the political excesses of the left.” I happen to remember some excesses on the other side as well. For example, does anyone else recall that after Trump lost his bid for reelection, he proceeded to repeatedly insist that he had actually won? That one act alone — his rejection of our constitutional system and his refusal to peacefully transfer power to his successor — is utterly disqualifying. So, yes, there are segments of the activist left that went too far in 2020, but there was plenty of extremism on the right as well.

Nevertheless, the main question that the reader is addressing is how to best respond to zealotry on both the left and right. And two separate but related issues are discussed: forgiving and forgetting.

In regard to forgetting, I am in complete agreement with the reader. Are we now just supposed to forget all that craziness? Hell no! That would be foolish and potentially dangerous. Our recent “reckoning” very much needs a reckoning of its own.

So rather than turning a blind eye to the ideological and political excesses of recent years, we need to scrutinize them. And the better we can understand them, the better off we will hopefully be in the future. How exactly does a (Republican) political party utterly collapse to such an extent that a boorish demagogue like Trump is able to remake it in his own grotesque image? And why on Earth did once-liberal institutions like academia, publishing, and the media cave (seemingly without much if any struggle) to a fringe faction of illiberal leftists who pushed a distinctly un-American ideology that promotes identity (rather than inquiry), equity (rather than equality), and censorship (rather than free speech)?

But in regard to forgiving, I am very much in disagreement with the reader. “I don’t forgive the political excesses of the left in 2020” — that sentiment is understandable, but it’s ultimately unacceptable. And we have, of course, been here before:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

If the best way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating, the best way to stop villainization is to stop villainizing. And we cannot honestly express our longing for moderation if we ourselves refuse to behave with moderation.

I know it’s annoying when called on to be the adult in the room, but we should consider it a patriotic duty. And I ultimately believe that we are large, that we contain multitudes, and that we are all more than our worst excesses. So with these and similar thoughts in mind, we do in fact need to forgive each other. I don’t see how else there is any hope for a peaceful and prosperous future.

A beautiful and sane sentiment.

Many thanks for all the dissent and other emails, and please keep them coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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