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The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

John Gray On The Dusk Of Western Liberalism

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan

Politics, News, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 836 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

John Gray is a political philosopher. He retired from academia in 2007 as Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and is now a regular contributor and lead reviewer at the New Statesman. His forthcoming book is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism. I regard him as one of the great minds of our time, and this is one of my favorite pods ever.

For two clips of our convo — how smug liberalism led to Trump and Brexit, and why we shouldn’t treat religion as intellectual error — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the Judeo-Christian roots of liberalism; why Catholics never supported eugenics; the genius and licentious life of Michael Oakeshott; how Thatcherism and Reaganism turned into “inverted Marxism”; John’s loathing of the “indifference to economic casualties” (e.g. Hillary’s “deplorables”); his opposition to Fukuyama; Blair and the Iraq War; the liberal case for border control; the dangers of producing too many elites; Silicon Valley’s obsession with eternal life; anti-wokeness in France; how Trump predicted Germany’s bind over Russian energy; the disintegrating support for the war in Ukraine; reporting on the Holodomor; Fox News and Dominion; and how the gains of Western civilization could ultimately be saved by non-Westerners.

Next week is Cathy Young to discuss Ukraine and what do to about CRT in public schools. Browse the Dishcast archives for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety). If you missed last week’s transcript with Glenn Loury, it’s here for the reading.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Hi there, and welcome to another dishcast.

0:32.0

We've had such amazing feedback from last weeks with Oralian Kriatsu on moderation, really inspiring to know that

0:41.2

we can do really quite high level stuff here. And people really enjoy it and appreciate it.

0:46.5

And that's one reason I'm incredibly psyched today to have a writer, a philosopher that I followed

0:52.6

and known a little for many years, going all

0:57.1

way back to Harvard, actually.

0:59.9

And his name is John Gray.

1:01.8

He's a political philosopher, if you haven't heard of him.

1:04.9

He retired from academia in 2007 as school professor of European thought at the London School of Economics,

1:12.7

and is now a regular contributor and lead reviewer at the New Statesman.

1:16.8

If you haven't checked out, his reviews in the New Statesman, they're really terrific.

1:20.0

He has many books include Fourth Dawn, The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Black Mass,

1:27.1

Apocalyptic Religion, and the death of utopia,

1:30.3

and seven types of atheism. That's another really fun read. His latest is feline philosophy,

1:38.4

cats and the meaning of life, and he has just put on its way a magnumopus on Hobbes and the end of liberalism or what happens

1:48.2

after liberalism. He is very hard to characterize in so many different ways, but a wonderful

1:53.5

conversationalist and a wonderful thinker. And I just want to let you know before we get going

1:57.9

of some of the amazing people we have coming up. We have Michael Lind

2:01.6

coming on the show. We have Mark, we have James Allison, the Catholic Theologian. John Ward,

2:07.0

the fundamentalist, he's an evangelicalist. He's an evangelical. He's a wonderful person.

2:13.3

He's coming to talk about his experiences of the evangelical movement as it came under the influence of Donald Trump.

2:19.7

And John Oberg, the vegan proselytizer, is going to try and talk me into giving up meat and Kathy Young.

...

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