John Gray On The State Of Liberalism
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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. He’s the author of two dozen books, and his latest is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism. I’d say he’s one of the most brilliant minds of our time — and my first podcast with him was a huge hit. I asked him to come on this week to get a broader and deeper perspective on where we are now in the world. He didn’t disappoint.
For two clips of our convo — on the ways Trump represents peace, and how heterosexuals have become more like gays — pop over to our YouTube page.
Other topics: this week’s inauguration; the peaceful transfer of power; the panic of the left intelligentsia; the contradictions in the new Trump administration; Bannon vs Musk; Vivek’s quick exit; the techno-futurist oligarchs; Vance as the GOP’s future; tariffs and inflation; the federal debt; McKinley and the Gilded Age; Manifest Destiny; Greenland; isolationism; the neocon project to convert the world; Hobbes and “commodious living”; Malthus and today’s declining birthrates; post-industrial alienation; deaths of despair; Fukuyama’s “End of History”; Latinx; AI and knowledge workers; Plato; Pascal; Dante; CS Lewis’ Abolition of Man; pre-Christian paganism; Puritans and the woke; Žižek; Rod Dreher; Houellebecq; how submission can be liberating; Graham Greene; religion as an anchor; why converts are often so dangerous; Freudian repression; Orwell and goose-stepping; the revolution of consciousness after Christ; Star Wars as neo-Christian; Dune as neo-pagan; Foucault; Oakeshott’s lovers; Montaigne; Judith Shklar; Ross Douthat; the UK’s rape-gangs; Starmer and liberal legalism; the Thomist view of nature; the medieval view of abortion; late-term abortions; and assisted dying.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Sebastian Junger on near-death experiences, Jon Rauch on “Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy,” Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Yoni Appelbaum on how America stopped building things, Nick Denton on the evolution of new media, and Ross Douthat on how everyone should be religious. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. Welcome to the dawn of the American century, the beginning of a new era of excitement and expansion and drama and beauty and big, |
| 0:42.6 | beautiful things that our new president has just announced in his inaugural address. It is, |
| 0:48.6 | it's pretty cold here in D.C. I have to say, I don't think it was so cold they should have |
| 0:52.9 | moved it indoors because I think that's a bit, bit of a being, I don't think it was so cold they should have moved it indoors because |
| 0:54.5 | I think that's a bit, bit of a being a bit pussy. But it was pretty bloody cold. And yeah, |
| 1:01.6 | the brass monkey is fully castrated out here. And I was just walking here today into the studio. |
| 1:09.3 | I have, I have gloves which have the little ends of the fingers tips removed so I can look at my phone and pick out dog treats out of my pocket effectively. |
| 1:20.5 | And by the end of the walk, they were almost blue with these little things. |
| 1:23.7 | So maybe they were right to cancel it. |
| 1:25.5 | But we are obviously in the wake of this new moment. |
| 1:31.0 | Unknowable, the future, lots of trepidation, some enthusiasm. |
| 1:37.9 | Half the country seems to be really gung-ho. |
| 1:40.0 | The other half seems to be in a nervous and defensive crouch. |
| 1:45.5 | The question is, can we get a handle on this from a slightly bigger perspective? |
| 1:53.5 | See it more in terms of where we are in history, where we are in the history of ideas, |
| 2:00.1 | what this actually means. And I can't think of anyone |
| 2:03.3 | I'd rather talk to about this, than the guest we have today, who's a returned guest, |
| 2:08.1 | and it's John Gray, his political philosopher, he retired from academia, well, that's really |
| 2:13.8 | not true because he's still producing an extraordinary amount of books. And as professor of |
| 2:19.1 | European thought at London School of Economics, and he's now a regular contributor and lead |
| 2:22.7 | reviewer at the New Statesman. He's the author of two dozen books. And I tell you, pick up any one of |
| 2:28.9 | them. If you're interested in ideas, John will interest you and will provoke you and will provide you with a blizzard of interesting ideas and thoughts. |
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