The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

Chris — an old friend and, in my view, one of the sharpest right-of-center writers in journalism — returns to the Dishcast. A senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books, his latest book, The Age of Entitlement, is a constitutional narrative of the last half-century that is indispensable — especially for liberals — in understanding the roots of our polarization. We discussed the book last year. This time on the pod, Chris has just returned from Europe and discusses the rapidly shifting politics there.For two clips of our convo — on how one-child families could be the downfall of Putin’s war, and how Biden is co-opting Trump on border policy and China — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Meloni and the US media meltdown, Truss, Remainers vs. Leavers, Boris, the energy crisis, possible off-ramps for the war, Russian dissenters, and the waning of American exceptionalism when it comes to religion. Good times. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Yoram Hazony is a philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He founded the Shalem Center, a research institute in Israel, and he’s currently president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and serves as chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation in DC. The author of many books, including The Virtue of Nationalism, his most recent is Conservatism: A Rediscovery. He is one of the most compelling writers in the “post-liberalism” camp on the right. I think you’ll find I challenged him on everything. For two clips of our convo — on how wokeness is a threat to civic religion, and how Trump can be a tool to reclaim Christianity — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: woke neo-Marxism, the creative tension of the Constitution, Reaganism, Netanyahu, and thinkers including Burke, Hume and Jefferson. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Frank is a longtime writer at the NYT — ranging from White House correspondent to chief restaurant critic to op-ed columnist, and now also a journalism professor at Duke. In his early days at the Detroit Free Press, he was a war correspondent, chief movie critic, and religion writer. We’ve known each other for many years, gay writers of the same generation. His latest book is the bestselling memoir The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found, about aging and optimism after Frank began to go blind.For two clips of our convo — on the opportunities that can be found in suffering, and on the wisdom found in cringey cliches — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics we touch on include: the AIDS crisis, losing my best friend to the disease, the marriage movement, the alphabet people, psychedelics, Frank's dog, and the marvelous adaptations of blind people. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Richard Reeves is a senior fellow at Brookings, where he directs the Boys and Men Project. He’s also been the director of Demos — the London-based political think-tank — an adviser to Nick Clegg in David Cameron’s coalition government, and a Guardian journalist. His latest book is Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. (For more, follow his new substack.)I’m fascinated by the challenges of modernity for the weaker sex (men), and Richard has grappled with the questions more calmly than most. For two clips of our convo — on how boys are less resilient than girls, and on the racialized sexism against African-American men — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics we touch on: the cartoonish masculinity of MAGA, the need for male teachers, the huge gains of black women, the gender pay gap(s), the class gaps of marriage, deaths of despair, sex-segregated sports, and the pathologizing of male sexuality. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

As you’ll tell from my brief new intro to this 2006 conversation, my voice right now is so eviscerated I can’t speak at all. Silenced at last! So here is a very early experiment I did with kinda-podcasting, when I took a microphone to Hitch’s place and let the tape roll. A blast from the grave in some ways.We mainly debated the nature of religion and the global war on terrorism. For two clips — on the divinity of Jesus, and whether the Golden Rule is actually “cruel and stupid,” as Hitch put it — pop over to our YouTube page. The audio quality is a little rough, but a transcript of the two-hour conversation is available here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Louise Perry is a writer and campaigner against sexual violence. This year she co-founded a non-partisan feminist think tank called The Other Half, where she serves as Research Director. Her debut book is The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, where she takes on casual sex, porn, BDSM, dating apps and prostitution, all from a post-liberal perspective. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Matthew Rose is a scholar of religion. He’s currently Senior Fellow and Director of the Barry Center on the University and Intellectual Life — a project of the Morningside Institute — and he previously taught at Villanova. He’s written for magazines such as First Things and The Weekly Standard, and his newest book is A World After Liberalism. It’s an examination of five far-right thinkers, from Julius Evola to Sam Francis, who are proving increasingly influential in post-liberal conservatism in America.It’s the first of several episodes in which I hope to explore more deeply the radical alternatives to liberal democracy being touted on the right. Think of it as a balance to my focus this past year on the illiberal alternatives being touted on the woke left. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

How to think about DeSantis? We decided to ask Dexter Filkins, who recently wrote this super-smart profile of the man for The New Yorker, which the Dish discussed here. Dexter is an award-winning journalist best known for covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the New York Times. His book, The Forever War, won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. He’s the best in the business, a native of Florida, and a longtime friend of the Dish. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Sohrab is a founder and editor of Compact: A Radical American Journal, and he’s a contributing editor at The American Conservative. He spent nearly a decade at News Corp. — as the op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the WSJ opinion pages in New York and London. His books include From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith and The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos. A new voice for a new conservatism, I tried to talk him through how he got to this place — politically and spiritually.You can listen to the episode right away 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 — on whether the free market is actually a tyranny, and how many liberals actually reject democracy, e.g. Brexit — pop over to our YouTube page.Sohrab’s appearance this week is a good excuse to publish a transcript from David French, his great nemesis in conservative circles. Here’s a clip from David’s Dishcast:A reader wrote last week:I know the Sohrab episode isn’t out yet, but judging by his Twitter presence, it’s going to be a real barnburner of sophistry. His latest quips regarding foreign policy are ones that I find to be ignorant, especially his quips at Yascha Mounk. I know you’ve already shot the episode, but I’d suggest you check out the book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. I think it really puts into perspective what American military might has brought to the world (absent, obviously, some of the more glaring blunders), and it might give context, rather than rhetoric, to Sohrab’s arguments.We clashed a little, but I also gave him space and time to explain his own strange journey to this brand of neo-reactionism. In my view, his biography tells you a lot about his need for moral and political “absolutes.” In my book, that makes him close to the opposite of a conservative.If you’re sympathetic to Sohrab’s arguments, send us a comment for next week’s edition: dish@andrewsullivan.com. On last week’s episode of the Dishcast, a listener writes:Terrific interview with Larry Summers. Though my politics are thisclose to Summers’, he floated two whoppers in his talk with you.1) His suggestion that the United States and other liberal democracies can “build their ways” out of right-wing authoritarianism with more housing, infrastructure and health care is simply not true. Not even close. The evidence is very clear that the driving force behind right-wing illiberalism is demographics and left-wing illiberalism is culture. Under investment in macro-economic indicators is a problem, to be sure, but it has nothing to do with illiberalism.2) The United States is decidedly not an exporter of inflation. The US dollar is at historic highs, which means foreigners are investing in America and in dollar denominated assets, because Joe Biden’s America represents the “nicest house in a bad neighborhood,” when measured by jobs growth, business investment, private consumption and personal savings.Summers is right that the America Rescue Plan was too generous. But he seems reluctant to consider the historic relevance of the post-WWII era when American inflation was 14% in 1947, 8% in 1948 and -1% in 1949. As in the post-pandemic era, aggregate demand in the late 1940s rebounded a lot faster than supply, and consumers worldwide bid up the prices of scarce goods, services and raw materials.Summers responds:On the reader’s first point, it’s an interesting hypothesis, but my guess is if there were more and better blue-collar jobs, more affordable housing, and more prosperity, there would be less raging populism.On the second point, I don’t agree. The demand from the US has contributed to global bottlenecks. The strong dollar means weak other currencies which adds to their inflation. I have thought much about the post-WWII period, and I doubt it is a good parallel. There was the effect of removing price controls. There were very different expectations under the gold standard and given the recent depression.I agree with my reader on the core cultural question of left over-reach. I suspect Larry does too — but it’s not a subject he’s comfortable with, especially since his Harvard cancellation. Another reader looks to the deepening tribalism on the right:Perhaps you missed it, but I haven’t seen the Dish comment on the Texas GOP platform yet. This surprises me, since the Dish is, in my view, the most important defender of classical liberalism on the web. The platform of the largest state Republican Party in the country can be found here. From the AP’s summary:Approved by 5,000-plus party delegates last weekend in Houston during the party’s biennial convention, the new platform brands President Joe Biden an “acting” commander-in-chief who was never “legitimately elected.” It may not matter who the president is, though, since the platform takes previous language about secession much farther — urging the Republican-controlled legislature to put the question of leaving the United States to voters next year. The platform also says homosexuality is “an abnormal lifestyle choice” …The platform is the guiding document of a political party that has controlled every executive office in Texas since 2002, a state of almost 40 million people. To put this number in perspective: that’s more than twice as many of our fellow citizens who attend college this year and 25 times as many of our fellow Americans who identify as transgender. Texas and Florida lie at the heart of today’s Republican Party, demographically and financially. To ignore what those Republicans stand for is as near-sighted as ignoring how California and New York stand in the vanguard of what the national Democratic Party will stand for a few years out.The platform is an affront to liberalism and an example of the “movement after Trump” that you’ve speculated about. In my view, the movement preceded Trump and will proceed in his aftermath.The extremism was on full display this week in Dallas, as CPAC cheered Viktor Orbàn’s denunciation of marriage equality (which has 71 percent support nationally). I agree it’s creepy and deranged. But so is the postmodern, pro-criminal madness of the CRT/CQT/CGT Democrats — and they run California.On the growing affection for the Hungarian president on the American right, here’s “a Hungarian living under the Orbán regime”:In my mind, he has become popular among Republicans for two reasons:* The fundamental problems of Hungarian society (and most of post-communist Europe’s) are not dissimilar to those of the US — at least on the surface. The cultural cleavages between the “globalist elite” and the “deplorables” are similarly wide. Multiculturalism and the markets’ winner-takes-all logic hit these post-communist societies harder than most, because local communities had been extremely weak to begin with: the communists had been suspicious of any organic communities therefore had worked very hard to suppress and eliminate them as much as they could. * Capitalism, financialization, globalization and the wholesale urbanization of culture all happened at once when these societies were completely atomized. No wonder many felt that nobody cared about their problems and all they received from the elite was some lecturing on the inevitability of these phenomena. The American society has gotten to a similar stage through a different path, nicely documented by Robert Putnam. Therefore, the US lower-middle class resonates well to the messages developed from a Hungarian experience.* Viktor Orbán and his team have made conscious and expensive efforts to reach out to Trump Republicans (word in Budapest is that Arthur Finkelstein and Benjamin Netanyahu were instrumental in this effort). The regime has not spared any money to welcome, wine, and dine second- and third-tear MAGA influencers. They came, got impressed, and spread the word at home. It definitely helped that these tours have been all-inclusive: who would not like to spend a few days in cool and beautiful Budapest — for free? Moreover, they received and continue to receive official respect. This is all the more attractive now that they are far from the halls of power in the US. It should not be surprising that they were all too happy to believe the propaganda that the regime fed them.I am sure I don’t see the full picture on the American side, but these factors seem to be quite important in explaining Orbán’s popularity in the US.One of those American conservatives courted by Orbán is Rod Dreher. A reader defends Rod:I’ve generally agreed with most of your recent output and was pleasantly surprised to read your more-than-lukewarm enthusiasm for a DeSantis administration.  However, I think you’re being rather unfair on Twitter to Rod Dreher regarding Orbán and Hungary. First of all, you and Rod clearly agree that the current level of immigration to the US (and the West more generally) is unsustainably high, and that continuing to bring ever larger numbers of culturally, racially, and religiously diverse groups of primarily economic migrants into any country is bound to increase social tension and strain social safety nets. You also agree that this is especially reckless under a regnant elite ideology that constantly denigrates Western cultural traditions, antagonizing the native-born white population while simultaneously promoting the importance of group identity and solidarity for non-whites. It’s a recipe for civilizational suicide.I get that Rod is enamored with Orbán and wants an American president somewhat in that vein, but it’s ridiculous to say that he thinks everything that Orbán does for Hungary will translate well for the US or that he would support every analogous policy here. Rod explicitly denies thinking that in almost every post he writes about Orbán. In addition, Rod is right that racial issues are completely different in the US and Hungary. An ethnically homogeneous country like Hungary that seeks to restrict immigration levels in order to preserve its national character will necessarily exclude most foreign-born members of other racial groups from citizenship. White European countries that do this (and are explicit about their motivations for doing this) should not be held to a different standard than non-white, non-European countries such as Japan that do this (and are also explicit about their motivations for doing this). It is perfectly reasonable for Hungarians to look at the recent experience of Western Europe and decide that they don’t want to establish another Molenbeek in suburban Budapest. Excluding prospective immigrants for any reason is in no way comparable to committing atrocities against long-resident minority populations like the ongoing Uyghur genocide in China.Furthermore, the meat of the argument Orbán makes surrounding his objectionable Camp of the Saints reference reads to me as in the same vein as Douglas Murray’s thesis in his masterful anti-Merkelian philippic The Strange Death of Europe, the main difference being that Murray’s perspective is that of the tragic observer, while Orbán obviously has the ability to devise government policies in line with his views. And Murray was on your podcast recently.In this speech, Orbán, like Murray, is not primarily attacking the migrants themselves, but rather the European political class that constantly ignores its constituents’ wishes on the matter of immigration levels and sources, and that will not be satisfied until every EU country “diversifies” itself by accepting large numbers of Third World migrants. The same could almost be said about Raspail’s book, The Camp of the Saints, which, despite its disgustingness, provides a useful indictment of a decadent and self-loathing Western elite that is unwilling to fight to preserve its cultural heritage. Indeed, Murray, Orbán, and Raspail would essentially all endorse the same policy outcome (complete moratorium, or at least severe restriction, of non-European immigration) for essentially the same reason (desire to preserve historic character and culture of their societies). They only really differ in their level of empathy for the non-European migrants, with Murray capable of recognizing their individual humanity, Orbán treating them more as an impersonal force of nature to be repelled, and Raspail viewing them with racist contempt as a demonic horde who the last “heroes” of the West will die fighting against. None of them view chronic Third World immiseration as the West’s problem to solve, least of all by allowing the impoverished masses to indefinitely relocate to Europe.The Covid era showed that Western countries do indeed have the means to control their borders when necessary. But their ruling classes do not think that voters’ preferences for less immigration — tainted as they must be by ignorance, “xenophobia” and “racism” — are a good enough reason to actually enforce their laws. And even restrictionist-leaning administrations have trouble following through with policies that inevitably appear heartless towards those who seek shelter in the West, because each individual migrant often has a generally sympathetic story and by himself wouldn’t pose a great burden on the receiving society. Yet unfortunately the annual influx of millions of these individuals does strain Western countries, and sometimes tough choices must be made. It seems like an unfortunate reality that it takes someone who is otherwise unpalatable like Orbán to actually enforce immigration restrictions these days. I know I’d vastly prefer someone clear-eyed (even cold-hearted) and competent like him in charge of our southern border over Biden or even Trump.Lastly, it’s one thing to criticize Orbán for the specific comments he made in the speech, but your continuing guilt-by-association smears of Rod are just lazy. I could analogously indict you on the same topic — not for anything you’ve specifically said or written, but that, say, “I heard Andrew Sullivan did a friendly podcast with Ann Coulter where he largely agreed with her about our current immigration issues… In a recent article she wrote ‘(insert egregiously inflammatory sentence stripped of any context)’… Coulter also endorsed articles that were published on the website of an SPLC-certified hate group… Ergo Andrew Sullivan endorses white nationalism.” On his blog, Rod clearly and repeatedly says he disagrees with the anti-“race-mixing” language, especially as applied to America and other multiracial societies, and admits that The Camp of the Saints is a racist novel that shouldn’t be praised the way Orbán did. But those demerits don’t invalidate Orbán’s main argument. He can be “racist” by American standards and still right about the overall immigration strategy that is best for Hungary.I know you despise Orbán, and Rod rankles you with some of his posts that deploy a knee-jerk “think of the children” outrage regarding gay and trans news. But you’re better than stooping to insinuations of racism against him personally, especially when you’re pretty much on the same page regarding the challenges that mass immigration poses for the West. Not sure if it’s something you could hash out with him on a podcast or if tensions are too high, but it could be productive for both of you. Thanks for these comments, which I don’t disagree with much. I haven’t called Rod a racist, and don’t think he is. The trouble for me lies less in his defense of Orbanism than of Orbán himself — to the point of becoming a near p.r. spokesman for this authoritarian. The only moment I have actually called Rod out was when he insinuated without evidence that a gay man with monkeypox may have raped a toddler to explain why the kid came down with the disease. Rod withdrew the remark. It’s also perplexing that he shares my disgust at Camp of the Saints but finds nothing significant in Orbán’s belief that the book is “outstanding.” At some point, the rationalization has to stop. Another reader wants me to be less productive with Rod:Please, please, Andrew! Do an old-fashioned fisking already! Dreher is totally unhinged! For example: I’m not saying gays are Nazis, but …Or pick any of his recent articles. Twenty bullet points for defending the “race mixing” comment! Gays didn’t exist forever before Diaghilev! Libraries are groomers! They are so so far beyond. And if you try to comment, you are deleted or told you are doing “whataboutism.”Best not to use the term “fisking” around Rod. From a reader who loves pluralism and cultural diversity:I have trouble understanding why people in the US have trouble with newcomers.  Maybe because my dad and maternal grandparents were immigrants, I have a closer view. In my 76 years, I can’t even begin to tell you what I have learned from folks who are NOT like me: black people, immigrants from a whole lot of places in the world, plus their children. I think people who are afraid of being “replaced” have to have some deep-seated insecurity that I don’t understand. For Tucker Carlson to spout the garbage that he does to get ratings is just scary to me, because it seems to help unleash the worst in people. And believe me, it’s not just a color divide. My Polish dad and Italian mom were subject to all kinds of discrimination and harassment, but it was much easier for them to assimilate because they were white and certainly much easier for their children. My life is so much fuller because not everyone I know and care about looks, acts, or thinks the same. Including you!I’ve long lived in highly diverse places and love it. But I’m not a typical human being, and the desire to live among “people like you” is so deeply ingrained in human nature it deserves respect in public policy. I’m pro-immigrant, but the pace and scale of migration right now is far beyond what a country needs to retain a sense of itself, its history and identity. We’re at a century-high peak of immigration; and we could do with a respite for cultural and social cohesion. “A long-time subscriber, first-time correspondent” has some guest recommendations for the Dishcast: One theme I’ve particularly enjoyed on your podcast is faith and secularism in the contemporary world. I’m writing to suggest several thinkers who could bring a lot to that discussion.First is the eminent philosopher Charles Taylor, the most important living Canadian intellectual. While he’s contributed to many branches of thought, his book A Secular Age transformed the study of religious faith in the modern world. He’s also interested in the concept of multiculturalism and has stood up against efforts in Quebec to stop Muslim women from wearing the hijab. His political stance is more communitarian than liberal, though, and he’s had fascinating dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and other thinkers.Another suggestion is the Anglican theologian and philosopher John Milbank. As a founder of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, he’s taken on liberalism more directly, but I think the two of you could have a very constructive conversation about it. He would also have really interesting — and maybe provocative — things to say about continental philosophy (he has coauthored books with Slavoj Žižek!), Brexit, and the future of Western political systems.Finally, I’d recommend the Protestant theologian James (Jamie) K. A. Smith, a philosophy professor at Calvin University. He’s written many books on Christianity in the contemporary world, drawing especially on postmodern philosophy. He is particularly interested in how Christian intellectuals can engage with contemporary art and literature, and is editor-in-chief of the journal Image.I actually read A Secular Age in its entirety a couple of years ago. It’s magisterial but bloated: two words I’m not sure work on a podcast. But thanks for the other suggestions. Next up, a reader with some personal advice:I wanted to tell you something based upon a comment you made discussing your testosterone shots. Get Biote pellets. I did, and I don’t have the ups and downs. You get them put in every 4-6 months, depending on how active you are with exercise and sex. I work out every day, so I get them replaced at the 4-month mark. It’s also referred to as hormone replacement therapy. I used to use the cream daily, but I felt like s**t every morning until I put the cream on again. I have no ups and downs now, and my levels stay around 1,200. You can do less if you want, but man, I feel great for months at a time and it’s not that expensive. One more reader:You linked to an interesting piece by Lisa Selin Davis with the teaser, “What if ‘life-saving care’ for trans kids is really more about cosmetic passing?” Yes, it does seem like transitioning is mostly cosmetic. I wonder if trans advocates would support men who want to take testosterone for bodybuilding. What about professional sports, to get a competitive edge? What about Olympic sports? Any thoughts?I’m not against adult men using steroids to get bigger and hotter. Au contraire. I’m not against trans adults using any safe, pharmaceutical methods to “pass” more easily. I’m against using these very powerful substance on children without extremely careful vetting and an expansive mental health assessment. Yes, transing them before puberty could make them more likely to pass as adults — but I don’t believe most are mature enough to make that kind of decision at that age, especially when it may guarantee them sterility and, in some cases, an inability to experience orgasm ever. Keep the dissents and other comments coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

He’s in the news again this week — after persuading Joe Manchin that the climate and healthcare bill he’s pushing isn’t inflationary. Larry Summers has had a storied career, as the chief economist of the World Bank, the treasury secretary under Clinton, and the director of the National Economic Council under Obama. He also was the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006 and remains there as the Charles W. Eliot University Professor. You can listen to the episode right away 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 — on how the US government spent way too little during the Great Recession and way too much during the pandemic, and how we can help the working class cope — pop over to our YouTube page.The episode has a lot of thematic overlap with our recent discussion with David Goodhart, author of Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect. Here’s a new transcript. And below is a clip from that episode on how our economy overvalues white-collar brain power:Back to inflation talk, here’s a dissent:I’ve been reading your blog for a little over a year now, and listening to Dishcast, which is great. I’ve noticed a few things, however, that I would like you to perhaps respond to, or at least consider. First, what you refer to as “wokeness” on the left is, I agree, an obnoxious problem that has been exacerbated by social media. But I think your recent guest Francis Fukuyama has it mostly correct in his new book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, when he identifies illiberal trends on the political left as being more of an annoyance, or at the very least, far less of a threat to the republic than illiberal trends on the right. Second, I completely disagree with this rather lazy salvo from you: “Biden’s legacy — an abandonment of his mandate for moderation, soaring inflation, an imminent recession, yet another new war, and woker-than-woke extremism — has only deepened it.” It simply is not the case that Biden has not, especially when forced to, hewed towards moderation. Yes, he is attempting to respond to a leftward shift in the Democratic Party by trying to govern more from the left, but this is simply a reflection of political reality. In addition, much of his agenda has been batted down, but more on that in a moment. Next, inflation and an imminent recession have a lot more to do with what the Fed has done over the last four decades — and definitely since the financial crisis of 2008 — than with Joe Biden. On this theme of a highly financialized economy nearing the end of the neoliberal era, I recommend Rana Foroohar on Ezra Klein’s latest podcast, where she talks about the popping of the “Everything Bubble.” Asset-value inflation, deindustrialization, a perverse focus on shareholder value rather than investing in Main Street or even R&D, and an utter lack of policy solutions, have caused this. In addition, as Foroohar herself says, the changes we need to make in our economy are going to be, in the short-to-medium term, inflationary. This means policymakers have to start making policy that actually helps both people and infrastructure, which means spending money. Unfortunately, the garden has gone untended for so long that we’re teetering on the brink of becoming a really shitty country if we don’t take more aggressive action. In addition, with regard to an upcoming recession, Noah Smith wrote on his Substack recently that Keynesian economics would suggest that a quick recession now in order to stomp out inflation would be better in the long run than milquetoast attempts to curb it by raising interest rates too slowly. The idea is that recessions — especially fast and somewhat shallow ones — can be weathered, but inflation that goes on for too long leaves lasting scars on the economy. (Smith identifies the Volker recessions as probably permanently damaging the Rust Belt.) Personally, what I worry about more on the left is not “woke-ism,” but the trendy socialist/ironic/weird outlets like Jacobin or Chapo Trap House, which seem to be doing their damndest to convince younger, more impressionable and less educated people that the whole country is fucked; it’s designed to be fucked because capitalism is fucked; and only its imminent collapse will allow for problems to be solved through revolution/redistribution. Believe me, that sentiment is becoming a real problem, and the people who buy into it are every bit as ideologically rigid, illiberal, and closed to inquiry as those on the rabid right.Next up, listeners sound off on last week’s episode with Fraser Nelson, the British journalist who sized up the prime minister race. The first comment comes from “a long-time libertarian in Massachusetts”:I’ve been reading the Dish for about a year and finally subscribed thanks to your fascinating interview with Fraser Nelson. I was particularly glad to be alerted to Kemi Badenoch.It’s taken awhile to pull the trigger on subscribing to the Dish because of your Trump bashing, since you sound more like Hillary Clinton than William Buckley. I’m perfectly fine with bashing Trump, but I prefer to see it paired with an acknowledgment of the forces that created him, i.e. the abandonment of the middle class by the two major parties, particularly the Democrats. I do think half the country would lose its mind if Trump runs again, so in that sense I sympathize with your sentiments. But the larger context is essential.Some episodes our listener might appreciate — ones sympathetic to the concerns of middle-class Trump voters — include Michael Anton, Mickey Kaus, Ann Coulter and David French. More on the Fraser Nelson pod:Thank you for an outstanding episode. Nelson has almost persuaded me to take out a Spectator subscription! I thought he summed up eloquently and fairly the state of the Conservative Party, Johnson, Sunak and Truss, and the challenges that lie ahead.Like many Brexiteers — and Nelson half-acknowledges this — the Tories have not grappled with the realities of Brexit. The most obvious lacuna in your discussion was the economy. You cannot leave the EU and not increase the size of the state. You have to have more customs arrangements (as we have recently seen at Dover), more vets, more checks and so on, ad nauseam. It’s all very well for conservatives to argue for a smaller state, but they haven’t defined what that will look like and how the services people use now (education, transport, local government, the legal system etc) will be improved, i.e. funded to a better extent than now. Underfunding is obvious and no amount of arguing “we can do it more efficiently” will cut it — the Tories have had 12 years to fix this.Moreover, picking fights with the EU has meant less investment, reduced business confidence and increased uncertainty — except of course in Northern Ireland, which has access to the single market and where business is booming. Listen to NFU President Minette Batters talk about the issues surrounding Truss’s free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, or fishermen now dealing with the consequences of Brexit. They were once fans. Not so much now.James Carville once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Promising tax cuts now when much of the Western world is likely to enter a recession is ridiculously irresponsible, but hey ho, it’s a political campaign and reality will bite once we have a new prime minister, whoever she is.Also, I look forward to hearing Marina Hyde on the Dishcast!This next listener takes issue with some of my phrasing:I enjoyed the Nelson episode overall! But I have to take issue with a rare faux pas from you, where you said that Rishi Sunak is “himself obviously a globalist, just by his very career and nature.” I can’t really understand how you came to this conclusion. Is anyone who worked overseas for some time a “globalist”? Are you a “globalist” because your moved to America? What about Sunak’s “nature” makes him so?Back in 2016, Sunak supported Brexit, which was seen as the losing bet, despite much pressure from David Cameron. And he has set out very clearly in his leadership campaign that he thinks, for example, we need to be tougher on border control. Neither of these things strike me as globalist, nor a return to the Cameron era.On the other hand, I agree with your characterisation of Truss — who voted Remain before undergoing a miraculous and instantaneous change of heart the day after her side lost — as a “dime-store Thatcher.”Speaking of border control, here’s David Goodhart — also from a British perspective — on why elites favor open borders:One more listener on Fraser pod:As a Spectator subscriber (and Glasgow Uni man), I very much enjoyed Fraser Nelson. Mishearing (I think) at around the 37 minute mark when he seemed to refer to Boris getting a first at Oxford, I was reminded of this fine b****y exchange with David Cameron in the Sunday Times back in the day:Surely Boris has been the man Cameron had to beat, ever since they were at school together. 'This is one of the great myths of politics', says the PM [Cameron]. 'These things grow up and it's so long ago no one challenges them, but I don't think we really knew each other at school, he was a couple of years ahead of me. He was very clever.'Then Cameron explodes into a beaming grin. 'But', he says exultantly. 'Boris didn't get a First! I only discovered that on the Panorama programme the other night... I didn't know that'. He is suddenly lit up, almost punching the air with joy.And in that outburst of public-schoolboy competitiveness — Cameron, of course, did get a First — he reveals everything we've always thought about him.Also, when Boris was described as believing the untrue things he said at the time he said them, I’m reminded of George Costanza’s credo that “it’s not a lie if you believe it!” (which, for a fairly left liberal Tory, you’d perhaps take over a Trump analogy).Lastly, a listener looks to a potential guest:If you wish to continue to mine the vein of the global power landscape, its recent evolution this century, and its implications: Condoleezza Rice. She has an interesting perspective from one whose expertise is Russia and is a past practitioner of American statecraft with Russia and China.Thanks, as always, for the suggestion. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe