Is America Rooted in Evil? Not According to Andrew Sullivan

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Issues of racial and social justice are also among the topics tackled by our next guest but from a very different vantage point. Andrew Sullivan is one of today’s most provocative social and political commentators and he’s often critical of both left and right. And his new book explores whether America has become too ideological in these politically charged times. Here he is going out on a limb with Walter Isaacson.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Andrew Sullivan, congratulations on the book and welcome to the show.

ANDREW SULLIVAN, AUTHOR, “OUT ON A LIMB”: Thank you so much for having me.

ISAACSON: You know, Michael Logshot (ph) who you write about, when I first met you as a graduate student and you were doing your dissertation, he’s in this book but he’s not only a moderate conservative as you say, he is sort of anti-ideology, right? Do you feel that we’ve become too ideological?

SULLIVAN: Oh, of course we have, Walter. I think we forget and can often forget that life is a practical entity, a challenge. That we go through life doing things. And we try and compromise with other people. And the world changes. And people change. So, we’re in this constant flux. And if you have this fixed ideology, it will never be able to take account of the society you live in. And (INAUDIBLE) has this metaphor of a book that you are running society out of and you use the book as a guide. And eventually, after a little bit of time, they start doing things the book doesn’t say you are allowed to do. And so, you try and revise it. And then you keep revising until eventually you realize the society is doing this on its own and you shut the book. And I think shutting the book of ideology is really what he was about. Which means being alive to the present and being alive to the practical possibilities of every moment. So, there is also a kind of Bohemian kind of eastern Daoist view behind (INAUDIBLE), which is things are mysterious, let’s live now and let’s understand the world. He had this phrase, everything is truly so long as it isn’t taken to be anything more than it is. In other words, find exactly what you are talking about first and then understand the world that way.

ISAACSON: The other guiding light in your book was Plato. And I read about him in the republic in your book quite a bit. And he talks about in the dialogue how tyranny is going to maybe grow out of democracy. Do you think we’re seeing that?

SULLIVAN: I do. And that’s what I saw in the piece I wrote about Trump in 2016. When a society becomes a kind of pathologically egalitarian society in which we abolish distinctions between the learned and the unlearned, we — the kid teaches his parents, the student teaches the teachers, the rich wear clothes that the poor wear and people’s complexity and variety of factions in the community become so great that you kind of get paralyze by division, paralyzed by individual tribalism in ways you think your country is just not going anywhere because it is kind of stuck in this cacophony. There is a yearning for someone to come along and just put it right. That sort of authoritative moment. A man will come up. And Plato believed that out of that chaotic democracy, someone would have the skill to exploit that frustration, to tell the people that he alone among the elites understands how corrupt this is and he will do it for them. And with Trump, you had an absolutely perfect example of that. Now, it almost succeeded in some ways. If he hadn’t been operational competent, intelligent and not mentally unwell person, he could have used the epidemic, for example, to impose martial law if he’d wanted. I mean, that’s the kind of situation that Plato (ph) yearns for but he didn’t, because he’s not interested in controlling. What he’s interested in is ego. And so, eventually he subverted the constitution of this country trying to overturn election. Why? Because his own ego couldn’t accept that he had lost. And that is a person not in control of reason. That is someone guided by passion and impulse and whose built his entire appeal on resentment and fear. But it happened and it can happen again. And you see a discomfort on both right and left with the mess of pluralism, the mess of compromise, the mess of having people in your own society you really disagree with but you have to come to a compromise on. And that can be frustrating. But that frustration is what the conservative says, when you want to cut through it and solve everything and get a leader, conservatives should say, no, that’s exactly when you shouldn’t. And what’s happened in America is conservativism has become the opposite. That it is now worshipping a cult figure. Its authoritarian impulses have overwhelmed its sense of small government and individual freedom.

ISAACSON: And do you think that is Trump or do you think that is a deeper impulse affecting the conservative movement in America?

SULLIVAN: I think it is a deeper impulse. I think it’s always been there. I think the failures of the elites in the early 21st century embittered people. I think the fact that it seems as if half our industrial base was lost to China and people were left behind. I think the collapse of Christianity and religion has left people adrift. These are ripe conditions for the demagogue. And — but they are also lessons for the existing elites. Take note. Do not ignore the forces that he is exploiting. So, do not take immigration as something you have to have unrestricted in order to show that you are not Trump. If you aren’t (ph) going to enforce the borders, fascist will. And so, there’s — he’s just a brilliant demagogue. And that’s — I think that hasn’t been properly appreciated. A gifted, really gifted demagogue out there with some of the worst and greatest. Like Huey Long, people who would really rattle you with the power to rally a crowd. And you have seen those rallies. That’s — not many politicians can do that. And he also listened to the crowd. He became one with them. When we read stories of these charismatic dictators, there is this quality. And he had it. Ironically, New York real estate scion has this. But he did it. And that’s talent. And we have to be worried about that talent. Happily, not many people have it. But he saw the opportunity and instinctively seized it.

ISAACSON: You have endorsed Obama and you have taken on Trump. But you are mainly now aiming your lance at the far left, the woke left, the critical race theory. Does that worry you as much as the Trumpist authoritarian impulse?

SULLIVAN: I don’t think it worries me as much. But I do think it is at its core an illiberal impulse. And that if you remove the idea that we’re all individual citizens irrespective of our race, gender, sex and we are, as citizens, engaged in a project of reasoning through the common good, if that is the basis of our society, then critical race theory, critical theory really detonates it at its foundation because it doesn’t believe in individuals, it believes in group rights. It doesn’t believe that society is a function of individual freedom competing with one another, it believes it’s actually a story of oppression in which groups suppress other groups ad infinitum.

ISAACSON: By the way, don’t we have a history of oppression in this country against blacks that needs to be righted?

SULLIVAN: Yes. We absolutely do. And I’m glad you brought it up. Because I don’t want to be seen as someone dismissing that. The truth is that we have whitewashed the past. It is shocking how much we have ignored or played down what was essentially a sort of gulag system in the American South for a very long time. And we have shamefully not actually brought to life the hideous reality for African Americans in this country for so long. If it was about that, if it was about unearthing that history and making students face it and understand where we’ve come from, but and — in so doing understanding how we have managed to get past only some of that, how we still have work to do but America, as Obama said, is a project. It is still ongoing. Critical race theory says, no, there will never be a moment where America can get past its racist essential DNA. The founding of the America wasn’t 1775, it was when slaves are brought in. This is a slavocracy not a democracy. The constitution was designed for racial oppression, not for individual freedom. Now — and therefore, the whole system has to be undone to undo that crime. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe this country is rotten at its core. I don’t. I think it is deeply flawed. I think its history has horrors in it. But I emigrated here for a reason. Because it has improved and it betters itself and it has shown that individual freedom and small government leads to a dynamic society. And so, I don’t want America’s kids to be constantly aware of their race and their gender. I don’t want them to be fixated on the identities of their friends. I want them to be interested in the characters of their friends, their personalities, their lives. I want them to form friendships the way I did as a kid. And eventually, we can understand the past and learn to adjust to it. But the idea we’ve made no progress? The idea that Barack Obama’s two terms were a waste of time? The idea that we have to actually reintroduce active race discrimination and sex discrimination into the government and into society as a whole to rectify these historic injustices is deeply antithetical to American principles. It’s actually —

ISAACSON: But don’t we have to inject something to rectify what are still injustices that are built in a bit so that we can make sure, including affirmative action which you have been against?

SULLIVAN: Well, I don’t think affirmative action does that. I think what we should do is invest in early education, in really caring about the next generation of black kids. I think we should be concerned about the crime that terrorizes them on a daily basis and that is rising very fast. I think we need to be concerned about family structure. And I think yes, we have an obligation to be honest about the problems that are there and propose solutions to them and ways to improve. But I don’t think token gestures in which white people have based themselves from the past and give these symbolic gestures is healthy and I don’t think — and I do not think the current generation is guilty of these crimes of previous generations. But think of all the new immigrants who have come into this country from Asia and from Africa and around the world the last 30 years. They are not responsible for something called white supremacy. And I don’t think this country is a white supremacist country. I don’t. I think it has been. I think there are strains of it still here. I think there are legacies of it that need to be confronted. Specifically, the wealth gap. But when you come to that kind of issue, the wealth gap, which is created in part by red lining and by discrimination by the government in the past. The question then becomes, how would we make that right? And it is very complicated. And I would rather focus on how do we make the next generation more successful than the last and we don’t ignore or we don’t euthanize or we don’t pretend there are no problems there. That’s how I would approach it. The old liberal approach — my approach to that is Obama’s. It is not exactly far right.

ISAACSON: One of the most emotional and sort of layered essays in your book is a letter you wrote to Ta-Nehisi Coates, it is an open letter. And it stems out of the fact that when you were added to the New Republic, you published the Bell Curve, which looked at the correlation of race and I.Q. and the symposium in which people debated it and you were a truth seeker. And yet, in that letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates you talk about maybe being empathetic should Trump being a truth seeker at times. You have to wrestle with that. Explain your thinking on that.

SULLIVAN: Well, I’ve thought about this a lot, honestly, and I was quite young when I decided to use the New Republic magazine as a place to air a debate about this. And intellectually, I understand completely the need. In fact, I think it is important to air typical subjects and to demystify them, not to let them be covered by subterranean, rather maligned forces. We should bring them out in the open and to subject them to reason. I have no qualms about that. But when you hurt people’s feelings, when you may actually create sentiment that can put back race relations, when your own friends and people you love — and I was friends with Ta-Nehisi, I respect him enormously, are wounded, deeply wounded and think I’m personally winning them from this, I take stock.

ISAACSON: Isn’t though that what note political correctness, which people criticize, in that at its core what it is supposed to be is taking stock of whether you are wounding somebody by pretending to be too much of a truth seeker?

SULLIVAN: In part, yes. But in the same way, Christianity, which doesn’t require all that kind of ideology tells you just to love your fellow person and regardless of their race. We are neither Greek nor Jew. Neither male nor female. And that is a fundamental part of my own belief. To hurt people and to invoke and to touch deep historical pain is something you should do very gingerly and only when it really requires an honest account. And you need to do it in good faith and carefully. But nonetheless, there are times when I feel that my duty as a truth seeker, in a way, has conflicted with my duty to be a better Christian and to not pick up some old scabs, not look under the — not pursue the things. But, you know, there are roles that we all play. And one of the roles of the journalist is to be, and the public intellectual, is to be the skunk at the party and to be the person no one likes because they bring up uncomfortable subjects and make people do that. I don’t believe a journalist should be popular or particularly amiable. I think we should be a kind of pariah class whose role is in part to play the role of the court jester or the person who will ask the question no one is supposed to ask. And so, I’ve seen that as part of my role, to be honest with you. Also, I’ll confess. I find really thorny topics the places I really want to jump in. I’m just curious. I want to know the truth about this. And I’m a long believer that the best way to do that is have it all out on the table. Let this view compete with that view. I’m an old school liberal in that sense. And I don’t think words ultimately harm people. I think actions harm people.

ISAACSON: But words do harm people.

SULLIVAN: They can harm your psyche. But what happened to Eleanor Roosevelt’s (INAUDIBLE) that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent? People say hurtful things all the time. The things I have heard against me, whether I was a catholic in England, a gay person in Catholic Church, you know, a gay person in America. I’ve been hurt. People say mean things. People talk about promiscuity and they talked about — when I had HIV, did I complain when people said he was too stupid, he shouldn’t have gotten this, or he’s gay, of course they are going to get there this? No. You have to develop — and this is key. Minorities have to develop and have developed in the past resilience, tenacity, self-pride. And to collapse all that into this desperate need for other people’s love? Screw that. You don’t need people’s love. I want their respect and I want equality. But I don’t mind if they hate me. And instead of responding to people yelling at us, yelling back bigot, engage them, talk to them, be reasonable. America — and here again, I will say this, people that talk about America as inherently bigoted or racist or homophobic, I’ve lived an adult life where this country has gone from one position to another through a system of open debate, done civilly, no violence, occasional spectacular demos, and some of them I disagreed with. But a lot of argument, a lot of talk around family tables, a lot of people taking risks with their own lives and telling their story, and we change people’s minds and hearts. So, I’m not giving up on this place. I don’t think it is rooted in evil and constantly going to always oppress people. It is a fantastic place. That’s why I came here.

ISAACSON: Andrew Sullivan, thank you so much for joining us.

SULLIVAN: Walter, it is wonderful to see you. Thank you so much.