Andrew Sullivan

>> Out on a limb, just where he likes to be.

This week on "Firing Line".

>> I grew up wanting to debate, wanting to argue.

I had a big Irish Catholic family.

We fought about everything.

What was the problem?

>> Never one to shy away from controversy... >>Am I wrong?

>> You are, and I'll say why.

[ Laughter ] He became editor of the New Republic when he was just 28.

Andrew Sullivan's career in columns span more than three decades, but now, he's self-publishing on Substack, outside the mainstream.

His politics still don't fit a single mold -- a fiscal conservative and an early advocate for same-sex marriage... >> The real question is why on earth would anyone want to exclude us from it?

>> ...Who supported the Iraq War, then changed his mind.

Sullivan makes the case against Trump and woke culture on the left.

>> Racist, sexist, anti-gay -- Charles Murray, go away!

>> With both forces at play in this week's elections, what does Andrew Sullivan say now?

>> "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by... And by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> Andrew Sullivan, welcome to "Firing Line".

>> Thanks for having me, Margaret.

>> Your new book, Out on a Limb, is a collection of select essays spanning from 1989 to 2021.

And you have been called a wide range of labels in your career -- a flaming liberal, a homophobe, a commie, and a white supremacist.

You've been canceled various times by both the left and the right.

Do you consider the strong reactions that you have elicited a badge of honor, a sign of the times, or both?

>> Well, I've learned to live with them, whether they're -- both of those things.

I think if you just speak your mind, inevitably -- and you do it for 32 years, it's very unlikely that anybody is going to agree with you all along the way.

And I think the point of the book really and the point of the Weekly Dish, the Substack I have, is I'm interested in having an argument, interested in having a debate, want to put the arguments out there and see what you've got to help me understand where I'm wrong or where I'm right.

>> You know, all eyes this week we're on Virginia's governor race.

Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

What does what happened in Virginia, along with the really strong Republican turnout in New Jersey -- what does all of this tell us about the country right now?

>> I think it tells us that the Democrats have over-read what they thought was their mandate.

They have gone full bore on every part of their left agenda, as it were, and not given much of an indication of tacking to the center, which is what I think a lot of people who voted for Biden, like me, wanted.

We wanted to get rid of Trump, but we did not want to replace him with a massive left-wing crusade, and that's especially true when it came to something like schools, where people are aware that a whole new agenda has been introduced through the educational establishment around critical race theory.

And some of us have been trying to warn the Democrats about this for quite a while -- that they've been overplaying their hand dramatically on these cultural issues, and they need to get in touch with reality.

And the great thing about democracy is the voters just put the Democrats back in touch with some kind of reality.

>> Education and parental choice were one of the flashpoints in the campaign, as you just mentioned -- that flash point had to do with a law in Virginia, when Terry McAuliffe was governor previously, that would have allowed parents to remove books they considered sexually explicit, including Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Now Governor McAuliffe vetoed that bill.

Take a look at this key moment from the debate between Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe.

>> You believe school systems should tell children what to do.

I believe parents should be in charge of their kid's education.

>> Mr. McAuliffe, 30 seconds.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out, make their own decision.

>> You vetoed it.

>> So I'm sure that moment was no surprise to you, but explain why it became this flash point in the race.

>> Well, I think there was some frustration with the teachers' unions over the COVID question.

Then there was just simply the fact that as parents observed their kids being taught on Zoom and through online media, they began to hear stuff that really troubled them.

And that is that America itself is not an experiment in individual liberty, but is it always was intended to be a way to oppress Black and brown people.

They were told by the New York Times that, in fact, the United States was not founded in 1775.

It was founded in 1619 because the true meaning of America is it's a slave-ocracy, not a democracy.

The word "white supremacy" being used to describe the essential nature of our democratic system in 2021, far too extreme for most people.

Most people actually really do believe, and I believe very strongly, that we should teach history with all of its awfulness.

We should not minimize in any way slavery, segregation, the terrible tragedy of reconstruction.

We need to expose it.

The Tulsa Massacre.

But we do not want children to be taught that the entire country is designed and will always be a means to oppress Black and brown people.

>> You have been outspoken about critical race theory, which is something the governor-elect of Virginia had promised to ban.

What is the best way for this to be handled in schools?

I mean, should critical race theory be banned or should it be debated?

>> I think it should be debated.

I publicly opposed crude bans on anybody teaching anything unless it's really egregious, and I do think that theory should be taught.

I mean, not in kindergarten, but at some point in education, yes, we should have it discussed, but we should also have other views discussed as rivals to that particular position.

And what's happened is that it's been presented as the truth, the real truth.

And it is happening.

When the Democrats simply say in response, "It's not happening, you're wrong," they're going to miss a huge amount that's going on out there and they're losing these elections for a very good reason.

They're not listening to people, they're listening to their own activists in ways that is destroying their potential to rescue this country from a very emboldened, anti-democratic far right.

>> Should parents be able to decide which books are OK and not OK?

Should they be able to ban Toni Morrison?

>> No.

I mean, I don't think individuals should be banning any books.

I think we should be adding books, not subtracting them.

The question is, how has this been enforced?

Are the school boards actually open to parents' concerns?

Is there real input from parents in these school boards?

All the school boards themselves are so packed now with activists that the parents can't trust them.

In my view, the debate should happen there at the locality, what is in the curriculum and what isn't.

And if there are some issues in the curriculum that parents really don't want, they should be listened to respectfully and sometimes, their views should be taken into account.

They can't have a veto, but neither should they be shut out as if they don't have a right to determine what their kids are being taught.

People can start feeling that if they send their kids to public schools, they're going to be indoctrinated in really extremist left-wing ideology.

>> I mean, you write about the quote "cult of social justice" on the left.

First, define the problem for the audience.

>> Well, the problem is you're seeing the world entirely as a function of different racial groups oppressing other racial groups.

So I think it's really -- deep down, it's a fundamental attack on liberal society and liberal democracy, and it believes that the importance of fighting this war on race supersedes the right to free speech, the right to say things they don't approve of.

And if you do violate these doctrines, you are hounded out of your job.

This is a way for a country to go to Civil War.

It's not a way for us to have a civil debate.

>> Andrew, what is a good, concrete example of the "cult of social justice" on the left?

>> I think, to be honest, there is something almost religious about it -- that whiteness is being reinvented as original sin -- that people have to seek forgiveness and often are not granted forgiveness for their sins.

People are scared of speaking out in classrooms.

They're afraid in the workplace because these critical race theory concepts of now fused with human resources, so that they can police speech in the workplace and fire people.

This is creating a climate of fear, and the fear is really the fear that every heretic feels when there's an Orthodox imposed religion.

I mean, I'm kind of amazed, for example, that outside of Netflix, there's a campaign to attack Dave Chappelle because he made some certainly highly contentious comments in his special.

And one of them was screaming, "Repent, repent, repent."

I remember when the religious right used to do that.

And I just fear that the left has lost sight of freedom of speech, of toleration of other people's opinions, and of live and let live.

And that's a cult.

>> Andrew, can you define who is at the forefront of the liberal movement?

Is it everyone on the left, or a smaller cohort that has hijacked the left?

>> Oh, very much the latter.

Very much the latter.

There are lots of people who are Democrats who don't really agree with this kind of fanaticism -- this demonization of people who disagree with you.

But they're so frightened of being called out by the small minority as being racist or sexist or homophobes or transphobes, or all the other weapons that are used against them that they have simply not stood up for their own values.

>> Is there anything in the current social justice movements that you think is good or redeemable in your view?

>> Yes, I do think it has done a good job in exposing some real questions of police brutality.

I think it's done a very good job at helping us better appreciate the sheer horrors of this country in the past.

I think, for example, restoring the memory of the Tulsa Massacre as one simple example that we really should face up to.

I think the more we are attuned to that awful history, the better.

But to overplay that entirely is also dangerous for our society as a whole.

So yes, there's always a kernel of truth.

The question is how far are you taking it?

How extreme are you getting?

And how much else are you missing about the complexity of our society when you reduce it to these racial binaries?

>> You know, this program is a renewed version of "Firing Line".

You never appeared on the original "Firing Line" with William F. Buckley Jr., but your former editor, Michael Kinsley, was a frequent guest and a moderator on Buckley's original program.

Take a look at this clip here of him introducing a 1993 debate on the resolution -- "Political correctness is a menace and a bore."

>> Let it be said that the University of Pennsylvania was eager to host tonight's debate, and any university that allows William F. Buckley on its campus can't be all that politically correct.

[ Laughter ] In terms of tonight's debate, Mr. Buckley is always a menace, but never a bore.

>> Do you really believe that in fact, when you say something, you are not anyway ethically or morally responsible for anticipating what someone else -- how someone else might react to what you say?

It's quite true that some people have a hidden sensitivity about a particular subject, and you bring it up and they're terribly offended.

On the other hand, what is required there is a cosmopolitanization of society rather than any ersatz efforts that a -- a protection that doesn't work.

>> It's amazing, isn't it?

I mean, these debates go round and round.

They're forever the same, in a way, except it does seem to me that we're in a slightly more coercive and repressive moment now than we were back then.

But look, a really robust debate will -- perhaps accidentally, hopefully not intentionally, but could upset people -- could really harm them in some ways.

But we decided as a society not that we can't harm people with speech, but that protecting the right to say anything reasonable without -- within the usual First Amendment parameters -- is better overall than having some entity being able to censor or control what people say.

There's more of a risk with protecting people from harmful speech than with attempting to shut speech down.

And that's the crucial liberal belief, isn't it?

That the free speech will lead to better speech.

It will flush out bad arguments as opposed to we've got to protect people from the terrible things people saying.

Look, I've heard a lot of homophobic things in my life.

I've heard a lot of HIV-phobic things in my life, and it wounds.

Of course it wounds.

But it is vital that minorities, members of minorities, begin to build up our own reserves of toleration -- of indifference to hatred.

And in America, you always win the debates, I think, when you're wanting to open them as opposed to wanting to shut them.

And I definitely think the spirit of "Firing Line" was always, "Let's go for it and let's see who has the best argument."

There was a kind of zest about it.

I mean, I'll be honest with you -- I just love arguing.

I love debate because you learn stuff, and you never learn stuff if you're always being polite within the same parameters, saying the same things to impress the same people.

>> Are liberal institutions today more liberal now than when Buckley was debating in 1993?

Is woke culture and the woke movement just another version of the same thing we've seen cyclically?

>> No, it's an upping of the ante, it seems to me.

This is a much more systematic effort.

It's built on a much more systematic ideology that's rooted in a kind of cultural Marxism.

It has reached critical max -- mass in the universities.

When you talk with someone else on university, you have to be aware now in a way you didn't before.

You have to take into account this person's race, this person's sex, this person's gender.

You have to fixate constantly on your differences.

And all the research shows that this actually makes people more racist, more obsessed with these differences, and much less interested in what we have in common.

And I think that's just a way backwards.

>> You just said it was -- it's making people more racist.

How so?

>> We are humans.

We are tribal people.

That's how we grew up as a species.

It's very easy for us to fall into, "I'm a White person.

I belong to this tribe."

"I'm a Black person.

I belong to that tribe."

"I'm a gay.

I belong to this tribe."

That comes much more naturally than saying, "You know, I know that, but let's think about what I have in common with a black person, with a straight person, with a woman.

And what can we agree about?

That's a very different dynamic.

America is an open-minded, not a bigoted country.

In the end, it does the right thing, but only if we stick to the principle of constantly defending each other's right to say what we believe to be true in our hearts.

So let's actually have a really open debate where we can look at the differences as opposed to suppressing it in favor of this racial justice or sexual justice.

And I say that as a member of a minority myself.

>> Explain who is it that is teaching people that race is the first thing you have to identify about somebody?

How prolific is this really?

Who's enforcing it?

Who -- How many people are we really talking about?

>> Well, in terms of education, all the teachers' unions now subscribe to it.

Most education departments have signed on to it.

And you know, I think people out there do feel it.

They see it -- they see it in the fact that they read their newspaper and there are whole new words being introduced that they don't understand.

They didn't realize they were heteronormative, or part of the patriarchy.

All these new terms that have been introduced that confuse people and worry people are designed to coerce people to accept a worldview they may not otherwise believe in.

>> Has it gotten so bad that there could be an opportunity for course correction?

And I want to take the recent example of Netflix and the comedian Dave Chappelle, which you referenced earlier.

Netflix stood by its decision to run that stand up comedy special amid severe pressure to cancel the program because of a joke Chappelle made about transgender men and women.

And there was even a walkout by Netflix employees, which you called a quote, "big tantrum."

But ultimately, Netflix stuck with the decision to keep the program.

Isn't that a good sign?

That an organization can stand up to a cancel culture movement and live to tell about it?

>> Yes, it is a good sign.

I was quite proud of Netflix for doing that.

On the other hand, it's a pretty easy one to do.

You're making a fortune off Dave Chappelle.

He's one of your stars.

if you don't defend him, who are you going to defend?

And so yes, I think -- I think Tuesday's results were a turning point.

I think people are beginning to realize this is not really what they believe in.

It's overkill.

I think you see the election of Eric Adams in New York.

You see the failure of the defund the police movement and how it's been succeeded by massive increases in the murder rate.

Yeah, we are way past the correction.

And my concern is simply that the Democrats don't let themselves be defined by this, that Biden does not let himself be defined as simply indistinguishable from AOC and some elements of the left, and so we have a competitive future.

And as long as Trump stays out of this, I think we could come to a reasonably good compromise on all this after a while.

But we have to keep the principle of freedom of speech front and center.

>> In your edited anthology Out On A Limb, you know, you look back on your career as a writer, from publishing and writing about the Bell Curve to your 1999 column, What's So Bad About Hate, to defending Dave Chappelle, you've caused a lot of controversy, and you rarely back down.

But you did change your mind about the Iraq War.

You write, quote... What did you learn from that experience about yourself, Andrew?

>> That it's when you're most certain that you should be the least certain.

That we are all clouded by our own biases, and we need to check them.

And also that the most important thing to do when making a mistake, especially if you're in the public arena, especially if you're a writer, is not just to acknowledge your mistake openly and freely, but to grapple with why you made the mistake.

What were the conceptual premises that were wrong?

In that case, it was the whole notion we could transform another country so far away into a functioning democracy -- that the sectarianism and tribalism no longer existed in Iraq, that there were WMDs in Iraq.

Many of these things were faulty premises, and you could have supported that war in good faith, as I did, and still be ashamed of it because the misjudgments were so deep and profound.

And yeah, I was haunted by it.

I was haunted by the deaths -- the hundreds of thousands of deaths that I might have unwittingly contributed to.

And I was, above all, haunted by the fact this war I had supported had led the United States government to violate the Geneva Conventions and torture, in some cases, innocent people in the most horrifying fashion.

And it's a very humbling thing, but I think intellectuals need to be humbled more than we are.

And I think we need to be accountable more than we are.

And I think a lot of the populist outrage in America was because we, the elites did -- were not listening.

We were too certain we didn't place doubt and humility at the center of our politics.

We put certainty and passion and zeal, and also the demonization of our opponents.

I am sorry I did that.

I was wrong to do it.

>> Despite, Andrew, your "small 'c' conservatism," as you call it, you supported Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

When Joe Biden defeated President Trump in 2020, you wrote "Rejoice, he's done," but acknowledged that Trumpism did far better than anyone expected.

I mean, you have witnessed the modern American conservative movement descend from a movement of ideas to one centered around one man and one personality.

Where do you think it is headed?

And if Trump runs again, you know, what does that mean for American democracy?

>> I'd say there are two things.

There were issues that Trump brought to the fore, which others had not -- the danger of mass immigration, the effect of free trade, the terrible consequences of neoconservative foreign policy that, irrespective of him as a person, were important messages.

That's why he won -- because he showed the elites were out of touch.

They weren't listening to people.

So there is an amazing opening for the Republicans right now, if they could only wean themselves off this crazy cult figure.

And I hope that last Tuesday's results will encourage people to see that a Republican Party framed around the issues Trump framed, but without his incredibly divisive and dangerous authoritarianism could do well -- could do a lot better than it is.

I would have happily voted for Youngkin in Virginia.

So there is a potential there.

I really believe it.

But the trouble is, the cultish capacity of Trump to really hold people under his spell is so extraordinary.

And I don't think that danger is over.

In fact, I think it -- given the way the Democrats are misreading the country, it could be beginning again.

I think a lot of people in the middle are ready to come back to the GOP if the GOP tells them it's not insane anymore.

And I think that's what last week's elections kind of showed.

Now, whether the Republican Party can do that is another question.

Probably not.

But that is potentially capable of doing that, absolutely.

>> Andrew Sullivan, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line" and best of luck with your anthology and your continued writing.

>> Thank you so much, Margaret.

It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

>> "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by... And by... Corporate funding is provided by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> You're watching PBS.