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First Things Podcast

Rufo on the Culture Wars

First Things Podcast

First Things

Religion & Spirituality

4.6699 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Christopher Rufo joins Mark Bauerlein to discuss his new book “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything​​.” Music by Jack Bauerlein.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Christopher Rufo is with us again after two years, I believe.

0:21.1

He is a documentary filmmaker, a cultural critic of actually national note at this point,

0:27.1

and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, though he lives across the country in the Pacific Northwest.

0:32.1

His new book is America's Cultural Revolution, How the Radical Left Conqu conquered everything. That's our topic today.

0:40.8

Welcome, Mr. Rufo. It's great to be with you. First, a personal question. You're involved in many

0:46.8

things, such as advising governors on cultural education legislation, serving as trustee at New

0:52.3

College, where I am as well, and doing it

0:55.8

investigative work on DEI, astonishing investigative work on CRT and DEI in the schools,

1:02.8

the shenanigans in the government, in schools, and corporations as well.

1:06.6

One wonders, where do you carve out the time to write a book that is actually deeply researched?

1:12.5

It has a strong historical angle. It's just not just about current affairs. That's one of the

1:17.2

points. When do you write in your day? Do you reserve a couple hours?

1:22.7

Yeah, absolutely. My schedule writing this book was typically, I reserved about five hours a day

1:30.1

in the morning through the early afternoon, try to do appointments at the end of the day or maybe one call in the very beginning of the day.

1:38.2

And so it was kind of interesting as I was doing all of the reporting on critical race theory and gender ideology and

1:44.8

DEI that was gaining a lot of national attention behind the scenes kind of silently and quietly.

1:52.1

I was spending actually the most most of my time writing this book. And so it's it's a balance

1:59.3

and you got to kind of sneak in to sneak in where you can.

2:02.2

But this was something that I really wanted to do and taking some of the reporting and then going many layers deeper to show people the genealogy of these ideas.

2:11.6

Right.

2:12.1

So that when they read the book, they can see the news in a totally new light.

2:16.5

You actually state the book's purpose as, in effect, quote, to understand the ideology

...

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