Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Christopher Rufo. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,

and the author of the book America's Cultural Revolution,

how the radical left conquered everything. He is considered the intellectual architect

of the conservative movement's campaign against critical race theory in schools. His words are found their way into

speeches by Republican governors and senators, and he has helped craft legislation to combat the

spread of what he sees as a pernicious leftist ideology. Recently, having been appointed by

Governor Ron DeSantis to the Board of Trustees of New College of Florida and Sarasota, he has been explicit about his goal of reducing

the number and influence of left-wing professors and restoring a classical great books education.

His efforts in that direction have already led the foundation for individual rights and education

to accuse him of, quote,

retaliating against faculty for First Amendment protected expression. He joins us today to discuss all

this. Welcome, Christopher Rufo. It's great to be with you. Let me just lay out for you first,

kind of where I come from on this. Your book is about how the radical left

conquered everything. Obviously, you can't literally mean everything. We clearly haven't fully

conquered Harper College books or the Manhattan Institute, but I consider myself a member of the

radical left. I've been working within it for a few years now. I wrote a book called Why You

Should Be Socialist. And it strikes me. My impression has been that the left in this country is very

weak. And it gives you examples. The leftists that I know are trying to do things like raise

the minimum wage to $15 an hour, deal with the climate crisis, scale down fossil fuel use,

boiling outside here, protect women's

rights to an abortion, which your guy Ron DeSantis is trying to do away with, parental leave,

...