The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan (private feed for kbockus@gmail.com)

Fraser Nelson On The PM Race And Tory Diversity

Fraser is a Scottish Catholic highlander who now edits (brilliantly) the Spectator in London. Deeply versed in Tory politics, and sympathetic to Boris, he seemed the ideal person to ask to explain what’s been going on in Westminster, what went so wrong under PM Johnson, and who is likely to replace him. It’s a one-stop guide to contemporary British politics in a mild Scottish accent.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on how Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss compare to one another, and what Fraser calls the “absolutely electrifying” effect of Kemi Badenoch — pop over to our YouTube page.A good complement to this episode is the one I had last year with Dominic Cummings, the brilliant strategist behind Brexit and the rise of Boris. Here’s the transcript. Here’s a clip about Dominic’s break from Boris:To continue the debate over my recent column on Trump and Boris, a reader writes:Here’s a dissent: You are right about Trump. You are wrong about Johnson.Lying comes naturally to Johnson. It’s not just to get out of trouble. He lies about everything. Max Hastings knew this and presciently forecast it would all blow up.  It has.Let’s turn to Brexit. First take the term “elites.” This glib, trash term is overused, over-hackneyed and should have no place in your lexicon. Unless very carefully defined, it is completely meaningless. I know as many lawyers and city types who voted for Brexit as did Remain, and likewise for gardeners, carpenters, plumbers etc. The British public was conned, lied to and persuaded there was a problem of the EU’s doing. To be fair, there were problems, some of which can be laid at the EU’s door, but for too many years, blame deflection was the name of the game. Most of the problems the country faced were homegrown. Now look at what has happened: we have a stuttering economy, low growth and haven’t yet introduced the checks at our borders we are supposed to, as it will cause even more chaos — Jacob Rees-Mogg has admitted as much. That’s what happens when you erect major trade barriers with your neighbours and largest market. We can debate immigration as much as you like, but the problem has got worse, and as you correctly pointed out, the numbers have increased.Now let’s look at the so-called Conservative Party. Under Johnson, one-nation conservatism died. He killed it. It was replaced, deliberately, by a populist, divisive style of rule, not dissimilar to Trump’s, quite happy to bend or break laws and conventions in order to further its agenda. Its leading persona was Boris Johnson, and to the eternal shame of the Conservative Party, precious few demurred. The problems the country now face stem directly from Brexit: a plethora of unfulfillable promises built on lies. There are still many who think Brexit was a good thing, but there is a growing and significant majority that now recognises it isn’t working and was a mistake. It’s happened, and Keir Starmer is right to say that the next step should be to improve relations with the EU and to see what can be made to work, starting with the Northern Ireland Protocol (putting a border down the Irish Sea was, you’ll remember, a promise Johnson swore he would never do.  And then promptly did “to get Brexit done”). All the deceit involved drives me mad, but the Labour Party, by electing a no-hoper and no-brainer in Jeremy Corbyn, made winning a majority inevitable (and remember FPTP didn’t require a significantly higher number of votes to achieve this).It might be too early to write off the Conservative Party, much as I would like to, despite having voted for them most of my adult life. But they are tainted, out of ideas, and despite the diversity you applaud, not impressive. I fear the next few months may prove as entertaining as the last few years.One aspect that you haven’t touched on is the role of the media. It is staggering to see the degree of partisanship on display. The Telegraph, Mail and Express appear to be living in an alternative universe where truth and fantasy commingle without differentiation. And why did the Times, which I read along with the Guardian, pull the blow-job report? This, along with the Londongrad money saga, is for another day.  By the way, I am pleased you quoted Marina Hyde. Her sassiness, razor-sharp intellect and acerbic wit are spot-on.We will have her on the Dishcast soon enough. Here’s a reader in London:Sure, there was mounting frustration about Boris Johnson’s lying — not just the lying, but the fact that he invariably had to follow with “oh yes, come to think of it …” But voters, as opposed to MPs, think politicians lie all the time anyway, so I don’t think the cut-through is as great as might be supposed. I think the great point lost in all this is that Boris got his landslide because of Brexit and the increasing frustration with his inability to grasp the potential benefits became a hugely increasing sore, exacerbated by the daily shots of illegal immigrants turning up on our shores in rubber dinghies, often helped by the lifeboat service. This and his inability to grasp until too late how badly the economy was going to hit Mr & Mrs Average was what cost him public support as much as, if not more so, than his economy of truth. Another point not made enough is that Boris seemed to be a prisoner of focus groups and vocal groups of MPs, which meant he was constantly veering from one view to another. He made a string of supposedly exciting announcements that remained just that, never getting anywhere. You can only do that for so long before the public wises up.Yes, it was the MPs who knifed him, but these were MPs getting it in the neck from their constituents for what was (or more often was not) going on. My neighbour tore up his Tory membership card in sheer frustration and told our MP about it. Boris could offer no clear guiding principles we could cling to that would help us bat aside the machinations of Cummings, the BBC et al, who were manifestly on a mission to defenestrate him. In the end, even those who fear for Brexit in the wake of his departure could see there was no other course.Looking back to last week’s episode with Peter Staley, here’s a key moment where he calls the federal incompetence over monkeypox “Covid 2.0”:The whole 20-minute segment on monkeypox is here. Another listener “enjoyed the episode”:I share Mr. Staley’s concerns about the government’s handling of the monkeypox outbreak. I agree with him that the US did a disturbingly poor job of handling the Covid pandemic at the start. However, I have two important qualifiers:* The US was hardly the primary “bad actor” in Covid; stupidity and misconduct in other countries was more flagrant and more consequential.* I don’t know the details of the bureaucratic mangling of the monkeypox vaccine, but everything Staley reports sounds sadly accurate. However, it seems to me that the core problem early in the AIDS pandemic, and in the past two months with monkeypox, was the unwillingness of many in the gay community to modify their behavior consistent with obvious public health concerns. I was struck that neither you nor Staley mention this, beyond your effort to provide some rational current health advice, which is however strongly tilted toward vaccination over behavior modification.We did urge gay men to “cool it” for a while. Maybe we should have been more adamant. It’s also becoming clearer how this version of monkeypox is spread: primarily through sexual contact. If mere skin-touching were spreading it, then it seems to me the epidemic would be much, much larger, given the crowds during Pride. That means, of course, that we have the ability to help stop it, by not having sex until vaccinated. That’s not sex-phobic or homophobic. It’s just sensible health advice.Another dissenter expands on the reader’s second point:Your discussion of monkeypox really bugged me, for a reason I hope you take to heart. The vast majority of it was focused on the failures of the FDA and CDC, which I don’t take issue with. But the assumptions of the world you live in, particularly when in Provincetown, were alarmingly similar to the assumptions you make (rightfully) about the progressive left — that it takes for granted people not having agency in their own lives.The US government has (probably) failed with monkeypox, as it has with other diseases. Given that, what should people do? You and Staley both took it for granted that you seemed to have a right — almost an obligation — to party hard in P-Town, which the government’s failure was interfering with. It wasn’t until more than halfway through this part of the conversation that Staley and then you mentioned offhand that “some” people were suggesting people “cool it” for a month or so.But listen again to the rest of your conversation about monkeypox. Time and again, you blamed the government for its failures and never said anything about maybe the party boys could do something besides bemoan the inability to get vaccinated — maybe party less or (trigger warning) not go to Provincetown one summer. Self-restraint in the face of a still small but looming epidemic was only on the margins of your assumptions.At this early stage, restraint now among the mostly gay-male monkeypox spreaders would have exponential benefits going forward. Isn’t that a message about social good that is worth the telling?I’m older and was never much of a partier, so I guess it’s easier for me to say this. But the pretty confined groups of A-Gays ought to take some agency in their own lives at this critical time, and maybe give something up temporarily for the benefit of both themselves and a very real group of future A-Gays and B-Gays and whatever letter the rest of us get. Not to mention heterosexuals.As you can see, I take your point. Another listener moves to a different part of the discussion:Your interview with Peter Staley was fairly interesting regarding his participation during the critical years of AIDS. But the conversation became electric when the subject turned to critical queer theory, the indoctrination of children, and the discussion of sex identity in preschool. You kept asking Staley if he thought it was ok to teach children this curriculum and he kept nervously laughing and avoiding to answer and said that you’re confused and banging your little drum. I agree with you: critical theory has hijacked the gay community, gay rights, etc. and there very well could be an anti-gay backlash. Please continue to voice your side and fight for common sense. Your observations of critical theory’s dangerous impact are not anecdotal — they’re unfortunately everywhere.To decide for yourself, here’s a clip of that heated exchange:From a listener in San Francisco:I had never heard of Peter Staley before (I’m a 49-year-old gay man in SF). ACT-UP and Queer Nation had already fallen apart when I landed there in 1993 as a young punk rock guy. So I was interested in hearing his retelling of that period in the late ‘80s. But then the convo moved to gay activism today — and wow. I thought, “Well this is it. This is the denial that so many gay men have about the gender ideology cult.” They are fucking terrified of speaking out against this. And of course it’s because they know it would mean expulsion from polite Democrat society.I was recently discussing the mass delusion period we’re living through around Gender ID extremism. Someone said we should get ready for a massive gaslighting from people who will tell us that they never believed in this cult.For what it’s worth, I keep hearing from gay men in Provincetown how alienated they are from this ideology, but also how scared they are to voice their concerns — especially about what this indoctrination is doing to gay children. Peter is emblematic of the majority, however, who prefer dismissing these concerns as overblown, and sticking to their own political tribe, which they have now internalized as “LGBTQIA+”. It’s maddening, but a function of real homophobes latching onto the “groomer” discourse, and tribal gays closing ranks in opposition. The real trouble is that the non-profit institutions allegedly representing us are packed with critical theory zealots who experience no pushback, and if they do, purge the dissenters. My view is that gay men should stop funding groups that are dedicated to the abolition of homosexuality. From a parent:It was so hard for me to listen to Peter Staley downplay the gender stuff for kids. My five-year-old stayed up an hour past her bedtime last night because she was worried she could suddenly become male, or that my breasts might disappear. She is extremely confused. At a time in her life when she is only beginning to understand what it will mean for her to grow up and become a physical woman, she thinks her “pronouns” might suddenly change and she might become genderless. Teenaged camp counselors with clear and obvious feminine features are telling her that they are neither male nor female. The worst part of that, is that my daughter is beginning to believe that her sex is determined by her interests and behavior. For example, she thinks that if I swear too much, I may become male. The result is her belief that womanhood is some sort of cartoonish stereotype of old-fashioned gender roles. It’s all so regressive. As a lifelong liberal, I am repulsed by the mainstream push to reinforce gender stereotypes and essentialism. What might be an even bigger crime for a writer like myself is that my daughter — who hasn’t even started kindergarten yet — thinks pronouns are a personal trait, not a part of speech. As horrified as I am at the regressive and sexist gender roles being pushed on my child, I am equally grimacing at the grammatical confusion this creating. Can’t the school teach my kid what a pronoun even is before scrambling her brain? Happy to air your personal experience. It’s horrifying. Another worried parent:I just had the most intriguing conversation with my 17-year-old daughter. She said that if she ever had a child who was trans, she would totally support that. Curious, I asked why. She said, “Because it’s all about who you love, and it’s ok to love different people.”I said, “Hold up, you’re talking about being gay. Trans doesn’t have anything do with who you love.”She insisted that it did. I said again, “No, you’re talking about being gay.” She said, “They're the same thing. Whenever a guy wants to be a girl, it’s because he wants to be able to date other guys. And when a girl wants to be a guy, it’s so that she can date other girls.”I said, “Now you're just confirming it — you are literally talking about being gay. There is no connection. Sometimes a guy transitions to being a woman, but still wants to date women — and will say that he has become a lesbian.”She just didn’t believe me! She shook her head and said something like, “It’s all over TikTok, and 99 percent of the time, when someone wants to be trans, it’s because they’re just trying to be gay.”We changed the subject, but even though this is just one data point (my daughter), I do wonder how prevalent her point of view is among other teenagers who watch TikTok.God only knows. But the attempt to conflate very different gay, lesbian and trans experiences is part of an ideological project, rooted in postmodernism. It is designed to destroy anyone’s coherent understanding of stable human nature. This next listener is on Staley’s side, not wanting to scapegoat queer theorists:I have to agree with Peter Staley that mass indoctrination of critical trans/queer/gender theory in school children is not the cause of any rise in gender confusion and trans identity. Something else is going on. My theory: the biological organism of homo sapiens is undergoing evolutionary reproductive change due to mounting environmental stresses.Let’s start with the simple observation that schools are only one small part of the cultural, political, environmental, familial and technological waters children swim in. One lesson from the story book How To Raise A Trans Inclusive Child is not going to make much of a sexual identity dent in the ocean of information, stress and confusion children are growing up in these days.There are so many other stresses that are going to have far greater biological impacts. Overpopulation is of course the big one that cannot be discussed. There are too many rats in the cage. Humans now live on a planet in which they are constantly bathed in low doses of industrial and agricultural chemicals of every kind. It is in our food, air and water. Developing embryos are all bathed in these chemicals to some degree.Throw in all the current economic and political chaos. Add in the bugaboo of social media and the cultural worship of money and fame. Body modification with tattoos, piercing and plastic surgery is a norm. You can create yourself to be anything.A big change, of course, is the rising equality of women. Economically, that is going to give women a better hand to play in reproductive choice. House husbands are becoming more and more common. Stereotypical gender expectations are pretty much kaput. Let’s not forget the #MeToo movement — that certainly threw a wrench into heterosexual relations.So what are these kids supposed to think about sex and gender? These are just some of the dots that Staley suggested may need a bit more connecting. So it’s a bit of a stretch to pin any rising gender confusion and dysphoria on indoctrination with critical gender/queer/trans theory in school children. That would be about as effective as conversion therapy for gay men. It’s not that simple to convert.But it’s very easy to confuse a third-grader. One more reader keeps another debate going:I wanted to respond to your response to the theory that another reader “wanted to float by you” about the nature/nurture debate over trans identity and sexual orientation. First, I think you dismiss this person’s idea a bit too readily. The possibility that sexual orientation isn’t inborn (even though I agree with you that it’s involuntary) is actually relevant to this discussion. Much of the modern trans movement incorrectly attempts to hitch its claims to the claims made by the gay rights movement, and “born this way” is no exception to this trend. If people are born trans, as this movement claims, then it’s theoretically possible to identify trans children with perfect accuracy and medicalize them before they go through puberty. But if instead, maturing into a trans adult is a stochastic process, then it’s impossible to predict perfectly which kids will persist in their trans identity after puberty. And in such a case, convincing the public to support youth medical transition is a much harder sell.Additionally, I disagree with you on whether trans people choose to be trans. Dysphoric individuals like Lauren Black, who choose to deal with their gender dysphoria without transitioning, complicate the claim that transitioning is the only possible outcome for someone with gender dysphoria. I think there are some people with dysphoria severe enough that medical transition is the best choice for them. But the decision of whether to transition or handle dysphoria in other ways is still ultimately a choice.As always, send your dissents, as well as other comments and personal stories, to dish@andrewsullivan.com. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Peter Staley On AIDS And Monkeypox

Peter is a political activist, most famously as a pioneering member of ACT UP — the grassroots AIDS group that challenged and changed the federal government. He founded both the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the educational website AIDSmeds.com. An old friend and sparring partner, he also stars in the Oscar-nominated documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” Check out his memoir, Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism.You can listen to the episode — which gets fiery at times — in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two short clips of my convo with Peter — on how he and other AIDS survivors turned to meth, and Peter pushing back on my views of critical queer theory in schools — pop over to our YouTube page. There’s also a long segment on just the monkeypox stuff. If that episode isn’t gay enough for you, we just posted a transcript of the episode last year with Katie Herzog and Jamie Kirchick. Both of these Alphabet apostates were on Real Time last month — here’s Jamie:Katie appeared alongside this clapped-out old bear:Come to think of it, two more Dishcast alums were on the same episode of Real Time last month — Michael Shellenberger and Douglas Murray:Oh wait, two more in June — Cornel West and Josh Barro:We now have 20 episodes of the Dishcast transcribed (check out the whole podcast archive here):* Bob Woodward & Robert Costa on the ongoing peril of Trump* Buck Angel & Helena Kerschner on living as trans and detrans* Katie Herzog & Jamie Kirchick on Pride and the alphabet people* Dominic Cummings on Boris, Brexit and immigration* Caitlin Flanagan on cancer, abortion and other Christmas cheer* Glenn Greenwald on Bolsonaro, woke journalists and animal torture* Jonathan Haidt on social media’s havoc* Yossi Klein Halevi on the origins of Zionism* Fiona Hill on Russia, Trump and the American Dream* Jamie Kirchick on the Lavender Scare* John McWhorter on woke racism* John Mearsheimer on handling Russia and China* Roosevelt Montás on saving the humanities * Michael Moynihan on Afghanistan and free speech* Charles Murray on human diversity* Jonathan Rauch on dangers to liberalism* Christopher Rufo on critical race theory in schools* Michael Shellenberger on homeless, addiction and crime* Cornel West on God and the great thinkers* Wesley Yang on the Successor IdeologyA Dishcast listener looks to last week’s episode and strongly dissents:I enjoyed your interview with Matthew Continetti. Unfortunately, an exchange at the end reminded me of why I had to reluctantly tune you out for years: your hero worship of Obama. I respect and admire the way you call out the failures and excesses of both sides, including those of mine (the right), which I acknowledge were glaring even before Trump. During the Obama years, however, it was hard not to cringe when I watched you tear up on Chris Matthews’s show and compare him to a father figure. I also recall you yelling at SE Cupp and aggressively pointing a finger at her on Bill Maher’s show for daring to compare the foreign policies of Obama and W Bush:It’s hard to imagine anyone with that kind of emotional response being objective, and sadly, you never were during his presidency.You argued with Continetti that Obama was a middle-of-the-road pragmatist, when nothing could be further from the truth. He came into office with the economy reeling in a banking and housing crisis, and he took the Rahm Emmanuel approach of never letting a crisis go to waste. Even before his inauguration, he begin planning to rush through major legislation on healthcare, climate, and education. These may be worthy goals, but they are not the actions of a pragmatist who wants to govern by addressing the problems of the moment. He then outsourced the stimulus bill to Pelosi, which was a pork-filled bonanza with almost nothing even remotely stimulative. He refused to incorporate any Republican ideas into the healthcare legislation and arrogantly said to McCain that “the election’s over” when McCain voiced some opposition. Obama then lied in selling the bill to the American people by saying you would be able to keep your plan and your doctor in all cases.When Obama lost his congressional majority, he resorted to gross lawlessness, taking executive actions that exceeded his constitutional authority on everything from carbon emissions to insurance company appropriations to immigration, including on measures that were recently voted down by Congress or (as Continetti noted) he previously acknowledged he lacked the constitutional authority to do. He even flouted his ability to do this — knowing the media would cover for him — by saying he had “a pen and a phone.”Obama was one of the more divisive presidents in history. Every speech followed the same obnoxious shtick of chiding Republicans for playing politics and claiming that he alone was acting in the national interest. We saw this again, even post-presidency, during the funeral of John Lewis. For once, both sides came together, and even Republicans celebrated the achievements of a genuine American hero.  But during Obama’s speech, he turned the event into a partisan tirade about voting rights, calling the filibuster a Jim Crow relic (never mind that he used as a Senator).Finally, you argued that Republicans never gave Obama a chance. Not true. When he was inaugurated, his approval ratings were among the highest on record and were even above 40 percent among Republicans. They plummeted among Republican voters because he refused to ever take their concerns seriously or acknowledge that they had any legitimate points. When he finally did something they had even slight agreement with, the Trans Pacific Partnership, most Republicans supported him, while much of his own party opposed him.I respect your objectivity and believe that you are largely back to it. But I’m hoping the next time someone you love comes along, you will remain able to see the forest from the trees. (And sorry about the War and Peace-length email. There isn’t another intellectual I’m aware of who would actually welcome a dissent like that, which is why I wish I became a subscriber sooner.)That’s a lot of political history to litigate, but if you think I was blindly supporting Obama, read “The Fierce Urgency of Whenever,” “Obama’s Marriage Cowardice,” “Obama’s New War: Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb,” “Obama’s Two New Illegal Wars,” “Is Obama A Phony On Torture?”, “Obama Is Now Covering Up Alleged Torture,” “Obama’s Gitmo Disgrace,” “Obama To The Next Generation: Screw You, Suckers,” my reaction to his townhall comments on cannabis, “Behind the Obama Implosion,” and my excoriation of his first debate against Romney, if you remember.Obama’s healthcare proposal originally came from the Heritage Foundation; it was the most conservative measure to move us to universal healthcare access available; he passed it; and it remains the law because Republicans realized it was too popular to repeal. If that’s what you call extremism, you have a different definition of the word than I do.His stimulus was — yes — insufficient to the moment. But that’s because it veered toward a fiscal prudence long abandoned by the GOP. And he put it before any other priority. The GOP still refused to give this new president in an economic crisis any support at all, and acted as if the Bush debacle had never happened.Another listener defends the former president’s record — to a point:Obama had one chance to pass health care reform — something presidents had been trying and failing to do for several decades. In reality he had a razor-thin margin, especially in the Senate. He spent months letting moderates like Max Baucus take the lead in Congress. He gave moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe endless time to pretend to be willing to vote for a centrist bill. Remember: this was largely RomneyCare, an already moderate Republican policy idea and one which had originally come out of a conservative think tank.In the end, no matter how much Big Pharma and other healthcare lobbies had to be bribed and how much Obama compromised — no public option; no federal negotiation via Medicare to lower drug prices — the moderate Republicans had strung him along. He had to give Ben Nelson goodies to get his vote. And, overall, as much as the bill was a corporate sellout, it still — and 12 years on it’s so easy to forget this — still made massively important reforms the public was desperate for: it expanded family access for kids up to 26; it ended the rampant abuse of preexisting conditions to deny coverage; it ended retroactive rescissions in which insurance employees were tasked to comb through patient records and fine print to find pretexts for dumping patients when they needed care the most; it ended lifetime caps on coverage for things like major early childhood diseases and illnesses and catastrophic illnesses in adults; and of course it expanded access to Medicaid (most people don’t realize how stunningly low one’s income has to be to qualify). ObamaCare, flaws and all, was necessary — and a major step forward. There was no Republican compromise to be had in 2010 or ever. Remember what Mitch McConnell said his #1 priority was? Ensuring Obama was a one-term president with no major successes to campaign on. They simply wanted the legislation to crash and burn, similar to how it did in 1994. DACA and DAPA and the rest? Very very different story. And I agree with Continetti: Obama did not have that authority and he knew he didn’t. And after the Gang of Eight fell apart, his second term was all about caving to radical, often openly ethnically chauvinistic, identitarian, open borders advocates. And that’s where the Democratic Party has been stuck ever since. Executive decisions like DACA were a big part of why I soured on the Obama administration. ObamaCare, flawed as it was, was a big reason I volunteered so heavily for Obama in 2012. We’re still not close to the kind of publicly guaranteed, universal health care virtually all peer countries and allies enjoy. But we’re closer due to ObamaCare. And that’s a clear example of what Democrats can accomplish when they’re focused on passing the best bill they can pass (by the barest of margins) for the common good. For the record (see the Daily Dish links above), I also opposed the Libya war, the Iraq surge, and the DACA executive overreach. This next reader is more sympathetic to Obama on DACA:Deporting kids who have never known another country has a 19 percent approval rating. Obama begged Congress for years to do something to correct this. So is the Continetti position that Obama needed to do something that more than 80 percent of Americans don’t want because far-right extremists are holding Boehner hostage? If that is your position, then it’s fundamentally undemocratic.Another clip from last week:Yet another take on the Continetti convo:I’m a moderately liberal person, and I listen to conservative voices to hear good arguments that make me consider more deeply my innate biases. But the conservatism described by Continetti is just uninteresting. Describing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as too large an overreach? Talking about constitutionalism in the same way that Alito does — as frozen, depending upon the section, in either 1789 or 1868? Dissing Obamacare?Obamacare is a big improvement on pre-ACA insurance, and I’m glad Obama persevered after Ted Kennedy's death. Healthcare has a lot of moving parts, but finally we have an individual insurance market with plans as good as those in the employer group market. My kids have used it at various times switching between jobs and school, or even instead of a law school's highly mediocre plan. One of my biggest problems with Biden is that he hasn’t even managed to get the subsidy income limit, which was lifted by the pandemic relief bill, made permanent. My biggest problem with Biden is that I expected that he’d be able to negotiate with someone like Manchin, who’s dim but probably willing to support something. Cranking up the ACA subsidies and funding some solar panel research and LWTR reactor prototypes, with the work being done in part in West Virginia?  It can’t be that hard to cut some deal. Instead, we seem to have nothing.So, until the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, I figured the Dems would get wiped out in '22 and '24. I figured the combination of trans-positive teaching in lower schools and race essentialism everywhere would lead to races like the Virginia governor election, where someone with a sane approach to schools would dominate. Dobbs may change all that.  From a small sample of Republican suburban voters I know, a lot of people are furious at the Court’s decision. They rightly view it as an ignorant decision that makes even pregnancy for wealthy women in red states far more dangerous than it was, since a partial miscarriage with lots of bleeding — not a rare event by any means — will now require sign-off from a hospital’s legal staff before a lifesaving D&C can be performed, by which time a pregnant woman may well be dead. And while Republicans typically don’t mind making life miserable for poor people (fun fact: a family of four has to have an income below $4,700 per year to get Medicaid in Mississippi), fucking over the upper middle class will not go over nearly as well.Keeping with the abortion theme, another reader:This caught my eye in your most recent podcast email: “[T]he question of when human life becomes a human person is a highly debatable one.”First, thank you for stating the issue correctly! The issue is NOT when HUMAN LIFE begins. Science has answered that question definitively: at conception. It’s not a “theory,” religious or philosophical doctrine or anyone’s “opinion,” and it’s not debatable. We may not know everything that happens during conception, but no embryologist denies that it’s the beginning of human life. The term “person” is not scientific, and that’s why I avoid using it when debating abortion with non-believers. As I’ve noted before, the term “person” arose out of debates about the relations among the Three Persons of the Trinity in the run-up to the council of Nicea. Before that, the Latin term “persona” just referred to public citizenship. Slaves were not legally persons. The Christian philosophers made it into a much richer and more resonant concept, in order to explain that God could be one God but three “persons” — a way of saying that if God is Love, love is not a monism but a mode of relationality. Anyway, for purposes of modern discussion of abortion, the term “person” now means something close to what the pagan Roman meaning of “person” was: a human being legally granted rights by the state, including the right to life. In other words, some human beings are not “persons.”This distinction is morally troubling and creates issues for defenders of abortion. If it’s really up to the state to say who is or is not a “person,” why stop at the unborn? In the Roman Empire, and in later periods (including our own history, of course), slaves were not legally considered full “persons.”Is “personhood” a sliding scale, or an absolute state of being? Can you have “more” or “less” personhood? Are comatose (but stable) human beings persons, or do they lose their legal rights to life, as many seem to think? What about the conscious but mentally challenged? Do high-IQ people have more “personhood” than low-IQ people? You see where this is going, I’m sure. I’ve had many discussions about this, and there is NO criterion that denies full personhood to the unborn that cannot also be used to deny it to the already-born. I think once you hive off human rights from the status of being human, and attach them to some scientifically indefinable status like “personhood,” you go down a tricky path. Because you’re right, of course. “Personhood” is endlessly debatable, because it’s a philosophical and (ultimately) theological concept. It’s like arguing “Who has a soul, and who doesn’t?”But in our tribally inclined species, the question quickly becomes, who is “human” (i.e, like “us”) and who is “other” (i.e., not really “human”) — with the “other” not possessing the same rights. Most names of tribes for themselves translate to “the Human Beings” or “the People” — with anyone outside the tribe being less than human. (Did you ever see Little Big Man?)Of course, as a Christian I believe ALL human beings are also persons, no matter their mental state, helplessness, poverty or low social status. I also agree that all human beings are images of God. For purposes of argument with non-believers, rather than get side-tracked into personhood, I prefer to say that human rights are anchored in (inherent in) humanness, not “personhood.” This requires abortion advocates (if they have the slightest thoughtfulness or openness to engage in actual discussion) to explain how some human beings aren’t “persons” and who gets to make that determination. But any honest abortion defender who doesn’t want to deny non-contestable science must make that distinction.Here’s the difference between personhood in abortion and every other area. One person is literally inside another person’s body. In a society based on property rights, the body itself — “habeas corpus” — is central to freedom and autonomy. Another reader turns to sexuality:I was struck by one of the dissents you ran last week: “No mention of the 63 million babies who were murdered in the last 49 years, but oh how well you stand up for women and their right to have as many one-night stands as they want without consequences, guilt, or their morality even being questioned.”The second half of that sentence is so interesting. The dissenter is not only offended by potential babies not being born, but also by women having sexual fun without life-altering consequences. To the dissenter, one-night stands are an evil (at least, on the part of the woman), and going through a public pregnancy (look at her! shame!) and having babies (no career for her!) is the least punishment the female participants should deserve. The lost babies are bad, but even worse, look at what all those loose women are getting away with!I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that some part of the opposition to abortion in this country is actually driven by people who want to bring back 1950s prudery. They see abortion as an evil precisely because it allows more sexual pleasure — and even more galling, more sexual pleasure on the part of women (because this 1950s prudery so often seems to carry 1950s misogyny along with it). Of course we know many abortion opponents are deeply moved by love for potential babies that aren’t born, but this dissenter shows there’s at least one person out there celebrating Dobbs for the renewed opportunities abortion bans will provide to scare women out of sex or, failing that, shame them and derail their careers as punishment.Another reader turns the focus to me:For some context, I am a Christian who has spent most of my life in the evangelical subculture, but I am more moved in worship by liturgical forms. I am politically anti-Trump and I am abhorred by the current state of the Republican Party, though I am a lifelong Republican. Call me David French-like.I am responding to your dissent from the conservative writer and your comment that consent between adults is the sole limiting factor in sexual behavior. You have likely been asked and answered this question many times, so just send me a link if that’s easier for you: Since you are a Christian, what role does the Bible and/or church teaching have in your understanding of human sexuality? One could argue that in addition to consent, the Bible speaks of fidelity, monogamy, love, nurture, self giving, mutual submission, and adoration in sexual relationships. How do you treat the foregoing characteristics (or others) in your sexual ethic? Does your Christian faith have any role to play in your sexual ethics?I enjoy your writing and the Dishcast, keep it up. Guest suggestions: Kevin Williamson. (He had deep dissents on gay marriage, but culturally that train has left the station, and as you know, he has the added benefit of having been fired by The Atlantic three days after hiring — an early example of cancel culture by the insulated Left). Also Jonah Goldberg.I responded to some of these points on this week’s main page. But I’ve written much more widely on this question — and I recommend Out On A Limb for the rest. The essay “Alone Again, Naturally,” comes closest to answering. But I do not share orthodox Christianity’s Augustinian terror of the body and its pleasures. Your guest suggestions are always appreciated: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Here’s one more from a “20-year Dishhead writing for the first time”:I think Iain McGilchrist would be a great guest for the pod — and for TWO episodes, since the ideas in his recent work are so vast, complex, and far-reaching. (I encountered his earlier book on the Daily Dish.) It seems like IMcG is really working to get out his incredibly important, expansive, but very difficult project out and a couple of good conversations with you would be a great way of doing that, not to mention fascinating for us Dishcast listeners.Thanks for everything that you and Chris are doing with The Weekly Dish — trying to help us all think clearly and openly. My wife and I both appreciate having your voice in our lives each week. She especially likes the dissents!Subscribe to read them all — along with everything else on the Dish, including the View From Your Window contest. There are also gift subscriptions if you’d like to spread the Dishness to a loved one or friend — or a frenemy to debate the dissents with. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Matthew Continetti On Conservatism

Matthew is a journalist who worked at The Weekly Standard and co-founded The Washington Free Beacon, where he served as editor-in-chief. Currently he’s a contributing editor at National Review, a columnist at Commentary, and a senior fellow and the Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. We discuss his wonderful book, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two clips of my convo with Matthew — on whether the GOP is destroying the Constitution, and debating how conservative was Obama was — pop over to our YouTube page.A listener looks back to last week’s episode:I enjoyed your discussion of friendship with Jennifer Senior, particularly your observation that a friend is someone we don’t want to change.  It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche: “Love is blind, friendship closes its eyes.”And here’s some insight from Jesus on the subject:Another listener grumbles:Another woman talking about friendship? How novel. How about finding some guys to talk about it? Because it sure is tough for straight men to find new friendships. The old ones fall apart for much the same reason that women's do, but the straight male psyche seems particularly resistant  to making new ones.  The Dishcast, in fact, recently aired an episode with Nicholas Christakis that covered quite a bit about the nature of friendship between straight men. Much of it centers on taking the piss out of each other:Another listener remarks on the part of my convo with Jennifer about the evolving nature of newsrooms — basically that they’re boring now, ensconced in Slack:I agree about the dead quiet in newsrooms these days. I started out in broadcasting in the early ‘80s, with a stint at NPR in the late ‘80s early ‘90s. People would shout and yell and ask questions on spelling, grammar and facts about previous stories, all while rushing to meet the deadlines. Then a few years ago, I worked in a major public radio newsroom and it was dead quiet. The editor sitting behind me would type a question to me via top-line message and I’d just turn around and answer him. It was a major sin! So boring! Thankfully now I work for a small nonprofit newsroom and I’m the head of our tiny audio division. Sadly COVID made our newsroom virtual, but oh how I miss those early, pre-internet newsrooms with people arguing and talking and joking with each other.Here’s what Jennifer and I have to say:Another listener wants more:I just finished last week’s Dishcast with Jennifer Senior. I just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed your conversation. It made me wish I were friends with you both! But at the outset of the show, you said you wanted to talk about her recent essay on Steve Bannon. Unfortunately, the end of the episode came and you’d not broached the topic. I read the piece and it was fascinated, so I wanted to hear more. Please have her back!We do have repeat offenders on the pod, like David Wallace-Wells and Jamie Kirchick, so stay tuned. After the Continetti convo this week, here are a few requests for more conservative guests:Sometimes I feel like you’re a friend of mine, since I’ve been reading you for so long — God, since the ‘80s. The thing is your intellectual honesty, and changing your mind when facts change. So please, please, get Rod Dreher on to talk with you! We love it when you talk to someone who’s in the same area but looking in another direction. What Dreher is going through is just beyond the pale — embracing a strongman authoritarian regime and calling it conservatism. It’s the same as the left embracing CRT and calling it liberal. Yep. I just need to summon up the emotional energy for him. Another asks:Have you ever considered getting Ben Shapiro on? I think he might be a more fun guest than Ann Coulter (even though I enjoyed listening to your interaction with her), and he’s honestly more capable of learning (i.e. I’m hoping it’d be a educational interaction for him).Always open to your guest recommendations — and your commentary on the episodes: dish@andrewsullivan.com.More dissents. First up, from one of the readers who most frequently criticizes the Dish’s coverage of crime:Last week you highlighted Scott Alexander’s column on the 2020 murder spike, calling it “devastating.” In fact, it’s wildly off-base. I’m sure Scott is a smart guy, but he’s wading into an incredibly complex subject with very little respect for or understanding of the work of others.His argument rests on timing. Murders began spiking around the launch of Black Lives Matter protests —  the “structural break” mentioned in the Council on Criminal Justice’s report he cites — so, he says, it follows that one caused the other. This is a version of the “Ferguson Effect” theory, and it’s fared very poorly in the academic literature — though you wouldn’t know it from Scott’s selective citations. That doesn’t mean protests are irrelevant to crime, but the best research on the subject points out something that Scott, in his rush to judgment, misses: people don’t protest for no reason. Instead, protests tend to be caused by external factors, like police brutality. That’s why Rick Rosenfeld, who serves on the Council on Criminal Justice and did much of the descriptive work that Scott cites, argues that crises in police legitimacy, not protests, are what drive increases in violent crime and murders.The distinction is subtle but important, for methodological reasons that needn’t detain us and theoretical ones that should. Specifically, blaming protesters for rising violence is essentially an elaborate way of “blaming the victim.” If protests cause murders to rise, what else are people to do when police terrorize or kill their neighbors — as happened to George Floyd and so many others? Looking further upstream places the blame for degraded police legitimacy where it belongs: on the police force itself. What really irks me about Scott’s column, though, is its certainty in the face of an unbelievably complex social crisis. There’s a reason criminologists (not the most liberal bunch, trust me) haven’t settled on protests as the sole reason for a 30% nationwide murder spike, felt in rural communities as well as cities. Sometimes things really are complicated, and that’s ok.Scott followed up his post by replying to the best dissents from his readers, including Matt Yglesias, who began his reply, “I agree with almost everything in this post except for the media criticism parts.” You rarely see this kind of debate in the MSM. Check it out.Next up, abortion. First, a dissent from the right:Your wrong characterization of the rejection of Roe v. Wade is another example of your conversion to the Left. No mention of the 63 million babies who were murdered in the last 49 years, but oh how well you stand up for women and their right to have as many one-night stands as they want without consequences, guilt, or their morality even being questioned. Instead you should be praising the Supreme Court for finally beginning to bring our democracy back to the original standard — that only the legislature makes laws — not the president and not the courts. You should be rejoicing over the fact that abortion rights are forced back into the hands of the state legislatures, and ultimately (to some extent) into the hands of the voters. It should have been this way for the last 50 years, but a radical leftist cabal took over our Supreme Court and made decisions with very little legal support or logic. If it really is a fundamental right of women to control their bodies and ignore the consequences of killing the babies they produce, 50 years of debate and voting would have proved it to be so, and abortion would be largely legal throughout the US today. But instead, the Supreme Court dictated the law from out of nowhere, dictatorially legislated the law of the land, and the cost has been the unjust murder of some portion of 63 million babies. You should be sickened by it.So today I leave your blog. You’ve transformed from my favorite writer, defender of liberty and “explainer” of the evils of CRT and the transgender movement, to just another gay leftist parroting the lies of immoral people who have no concept of what makes our country different from all the rest. Your conversion is sad and twisted because you have the ability to reach out to the citizens who have no idea how important liberty is or what is required to safeguard it.I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. The entire piece was a defense of abortion as a subject for democratic deliberation and not judicial fiat. That’s been my view for years. In this fraught and complex topic, I think a compromise on the European lines is the least worst option. I also believe — and have said so on multiple times — that I share your view that abortion is a moral evil, and the taking of human life. I could never be a party to one. But many disagree with me and you. And we live in a pluralistic society. And the question of when human life becomes a human person is a highly debatable one. Banning all abortion would be a disaster. Limiting and regulating it is a far better option. As for sexual freedom, you’ve got me there. As long as it’s between adults, and consensual, I have no problem with it, and lots of experience with it. I truly don’t think it is intrinsically wrong. Human beings’ sexuality is far more expansive and diverse than most other species’, and if children and marriage are not involved, I see no reason to curtail it, and many reasons to celebrate it.Next, a dissent from the left:You seem to argue from the perspective that Roe was not a compromise. It was. It was a politically failed attempt to pick a middle ground. Culturally, Roe succeeded. If you check Pew Research Center, the majority of Americans favor unrestricted abortion early in pregnancy, allowing a woman to terminate a pregnancy for any reason. Americans favor restrictions later, allowing for life of the mother and viability of the fetus concerns. This is the compromise between no abortions even for pregnancies of non-consensual sex and abortion on demand for any reason.In vitro fertilization remains a corner case. Generally, fertility clinics have legally binding contracts saying what should be done with unused embryos if a couple separates. However, if state laws regard all embryos as human beings, this raises important questions. Can a couple discard viable embryos when their family has reached the size they desire? If there is a dispute, does the party who wishes to bring an embryo to term have a right to do that over the objection of the party who does not? If a couple is conceiving through IVF to avoid a serious genetic anomaly, will it be legal to discard a viable but non-normal embryo, such as one with trisomy 21?What to do about pregnancies conceived through non-consensual sex continues to be the biggest challenge for the right-to-life movement. If the State can compel a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, even if the sex act was non-consensual, what other things can the State compel regarding our bodies? Surely states could compel mandatory vaccination, which is much less invasive and less likely to result in negative outcomes.Following that, what about states that forbid abortion but do not engage in good-faith efforts to catch and convict rapists? The map at End The Backlog does not correlate well with states based on their abortion laws. The map shows Alabama as “unknown.” A quick Internet search of “rape kit backlog Alabama” pulls up articles about backlogs of over 1,000 kits. One article talks about a community that can’t gather evidence anymore because they don’t have any specially-trained nurses. Texas is listed as having over 6,000 backlogged kits. Oklahoma has 4,600. (To be fair, California’s backlog is almost 14,000 and New York’s is unknown.) Ancestry DNA websites have made even very cold cases possible to solve. Yet, our society continues to let rapists repeat.You wrote: “I also believe that the Court could approximate your vision, in defending minority rights. But women are hardly a minority, and many women — at about the same rate as men — want abortion to be illegal.” You also wrote: “Those rights are related to minorities who cannot prevail democratically — not half the human population.”Rights are defensible when they belong to the minority — but if the right belongs to the majority, it doesn’t need to be defended? I know you are a fan of George Orwell, but this is sounding a lot like, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” I thought rights were rights regardless of how many or which people have them. Isn’t that the point?I'd love to see you engage with what should be the conservative argument for widespread access to contraception and abortion in the first trimester. If the conservative goal is a society where everyone contributes and rises or falls on merit, then access to reproductive health care should be a conservative priority. We know from developing nations one of the best ways to improve standards of living is to improve family planning. Most women will size their families to match the resources at hand. If conservatives want to reduce the welfare state, affordable and accessible family planning would go a long way toward doing that. Instead, the poorest states and most conservative states in our country are the ones who make it difficult.Conservatives are the ones arguing for limited government. Getting in the middle of one of the most difficult decisions anyone will ever make does not look like limited government.As always, thank you for an engaging read, even when I disagree.I truly don’t think Roe is in line with public opinion, or a compromise. Here’s where Americans stand on the question from a recent Marist/PBS poll:Nearly seven in ten (68%) support some type of restrictions on abortion. This includes 13% who think abortion should be allowed within the first six months of pregnancy, 22% who believe abortion should be allowed during the first three months of pregnancy, 23% who say abortion should be allowed in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person, and 10% who say abortion should be allowed only to save the life of the pregnant person.Even 52% of Democrats think limits should be put on abortion.Roe mandated the most expansive abortion regime in the West. A democratic adjustment to the Western norm does not seem to me to be an outrage — as the polls suggest. Yes, I do think that rapists should be brought to justice; that a complement to abortion restrictions should be much more accessible healthcare for pregnant mothers before and after birth; more distribution of contraception; greater availability of adoption options; and medical exceptions for late-term abortions where the mother desperately wants the child but deformity or genetic disease makes delivery traumatizing, and the child’s life almost certainly short. Which is to say: in that situation, it should be up to mothers and doctors. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Jennifer Senior On Friendship

Jennifer Senior was a long-time staff writer at New York magazine and a daily book critic for the NYT. Her own book is the bestseller, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. She’s now a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she won a 2022 Pulitzer for “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” a story about 9/11. But in this episode we primarily focus on her essay, “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart.”You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two clips of our convo — on why friends with different politics are increasingly rare, on how Jesus died for his friends — pop over to our YouTube page. A new transcript is up in honor of what we are still learning about Trump’s attempted violent coup: Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on the perpetual peril of Trump. Below is a segment of that convo — probably the most significant one we’ve had on the Dishcast yet:Turning to the debate over abortion in the ashes of Roe, a reader dissents:I’m having a hard time understanding why you’re so misleading about abortion rights in the US compared to other nations, and naive about protection of the other rights under the 14th Amendment. Germany allows abortions up to 12 weeks for any reason, but what’s remarkable about Germany is not the 12-week mark, but that Germany offers pre-natal care, child care, employment guarantees, etc. that make it much easier for a woman if she chooses to go through with her pregnancy. The US doesn’t have anything like this. And even with the new right in America pretending to hop on board the social insurance train, passing any laws in a conservative-majority Congress that would provide more social services to pregnant women would deliberately NOT address or protect the right of a woman to control her own fertility — that is, to decide to have a child or not. In other words, the interests of a woman’s bodily autonomy and reproductive control would be denied. That makes women, on the whole, unable to live freely in society. But we don’t have to hop over to Europe to run a comparison. Canada protects abortion rights for any reason, with most clinics providing the procedure up to 23 weeks. This aligns with the (previous) fetal viability cutoff that Roe protected. And recently Mexico decriminalized abortion entirely, which paves the way for full, legal abortion rights.The US is now the regressive anomaly, not the progressive outlier you insist we are. And your idea that abortion can just be decided via democracy is cute — maybe that would’ve been true in the past — but SCOTUS could care less about the legislative process. You only have to look at their recent gun decision to realize that. You should make these things clear when you discuss abortion, instead of conveniently obfuscating the context and facts.As far as your confidence that the other rights under the 14th Amendment — gay marriage, access to contraception, etc. — will stand firm, I’m not sure why. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett evoked stare decisis in their confirmation hearings, and this turned out to be a shameless lie from all of them. With the conservative majority in place, they could then take up the Dobbs case and use it to overturn Roe entirely — stare decisis be damned.Alito left the door open to address Obergefell, etc. in his draft opinion, so why would you think Thomas taking it a step further is just him “trolling”? The majority of Americans wanted Roe left in place; its provisions were the compromise that balanced the interests of the woman with that of the fetus that you incorrectly thought was lacking. (Listen to Ezra Klein’s podcast with court expert Dahlia Lithwick to understand why that is). Yet despite its popularity, Roe was struck down. The majority of Americans support gay marriage. But the conservative court has publicly stated now that they don't care about what Americans want or think. Alito and Thomas have clearly said what they're willing to go after next. Kavanaugh playing footsie with the idea that those other rights are safe is just another lie that you are too willing to fall for, as I was too willing to think they wouldn't, in the end, touch Roe.As far as healthcare access in Germany, Katie Herzog made that point during our “Real Time” appearance last Friday:From a “Real Time” watcher:I disagree with you on quite a few issues, but appreciated your level-headed commentary on Bill Maher’s show. You’re one of the only people I saw today who forcefully made the point that the SCOTUS decision still allows for action by Congress — it’s a crucial point that has been totally lost in this discussion.From another fan of Bill’s show:I appreciated your take pointing out that the US is the only country that has made abortion rights a constitutional right, and I do understand your argument that this is something that needs to be decided through the democratic process. But I’m wondering if perhaps, on a deeper level, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Your attitude has been for a long time that America is unique, exceptional, in its supposed commitment to individual freedom, as reflected in its constitution. Doesn’t that imply that enshrining personal rights in its constitution is in fact a perfect evocation to our country’s exceptionalism, what sets it apart from the cynical bickering and proceduralism of European parliamentary systems?I believe in democracy, tempered by constitutional restraints. So the kind of judicial supremacy you seem to be advocating seems outside that. I repeat that I would not have repealed Roe, for stare decisis and social stability reasons. But for the same reason, I wouldn’t have voted for it in 1973. I also believe that the Court could approximate your vision, in defending minority rights. But women are hardly a minority, and many women — at about the same rate as men — want abortion to be illegal.Many more dissents, and other reader comments on abortion, here. That roundup addressed the concern over stare decisis that readers keep bringing up. As I wrote then:Yes, I worry about stare decisis — but it is not an absolute bar to changing precedents. Akhil Amar, the renowned constitutional scholar at Yale, rebuts the same argument. Amar also just appeared on Bari’s podcast, in an episode titled, “The Yale Law Professor Who Is Anti-Roe But Pro-Choice” — a great listen.Bari addressed the Dobbs decision in her new piece, “The Post-Roe Era Begins.” Another reader looks at the legislative route:I think President Biden and the Democrats as a whole would be in a far better position with voters today if over the past 18 months they had taken that same “small bites” approach on a variety of other issues: border security, election reform and just about any other challenge where they now have nothing to show the American voters because they approached those issues if they had significant majorities in each house. They could even take this “small bites” approach right now on the abortion issue, given (as you’ve documented) that the vast majority of Americans favor access to abortions with reasonable restrictions. Instead, Chuck Schumer runs a bill that’s even more permissive than Roe.I know it’s naïve to think we can take politics out of policymaking, but maybe, given the election hand they were dealt, it would have been good politics to pursue progress over progressivism. Right now they’d be running on a far different record (one of being the adults in the room) and could present a much stronger claim for leading our nation. Instead, they wasted a lot of time and opportunity pretending they had the clout to adopt the entire far-left progressive agenda.Another reader delves into the Court precedents that Democrats are wringing their hands over:You wrote about Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell: “Thomas also concedes that there could be other constitutional defenses for these previous decisions beyond ‘substantive due process.’”There is one defense, at least. The 14th Amendment has a due process clause and an equal protection clause. When Casey upheld Roe, the right to abortion was based upon due process, not equal protection. Dobbs found that due process did not guarantee the right to abortion. Equal protection of the laws is different. If a state allows an opposite-sex couple to marry or have sex, but bans a similarly situated same-sex couple from doing so, then equal protection of the laws is denied based upon sex, in violation of the 14th Amendment. If there were a state where females were banned from obtaining abortions but males were specifically permitted to have abortions, then that would be a denial of equal protection, based upon sex. But there is, of course, no world in which that would happen, and if there were, the state could simply ban males from having abortions as well and cure the equal-protection problem. Obergefell was based upon both due process and equal protection, so if due process is removed we still have equal protection. Lawrence was decided on due process alone, but it easily could be upheld based upon equal protection. (Justice O’Connor, in concurring in the ruling, said she would have relied upon equal protection instead of due process.) So Lawrence and Obergefell seem safe. Griswold does not seem safe under equal protection, but it may be safe under other provisions, although no state is currently seriously trying to ban the sale of contraceptives. Although Bostock was a decision based upon the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and not on the Constitution, Gorsuch ruled that the law that banned sex discrimination in employment applied to gays and transgender people. His reasoning was that if you fire a female employee for being married to a women but don’t fire a male employee for being married to a woman, then you are discriminating based upon the employee’s sex. There is a very strong argument that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause works similarly. I broadly agree with this. Speaking of the transgender debate, a parent writes:While I generally agree with your balanced approach, I think you are still missing what is fueling the alarm on the right. As a parent of a 14 year old, I’m very aware of the extraordinary confusion that some teens now face because of the mainstream promotion of gender identities. For many kids, all this is harmless and ridiculous, and they tune it out. For a very tiny number of kids, this information may be extremely necessary, and perhaps even lifesaving, so they don’t feel so alone.  But unfortunately, I believe there is a quite significant number of kids that have come to believe that all their teen problems will be solved if they simply lop off a few body parts. A few days ago I caught up with a friend who is a wreck because her 14-year-old daughter asked if she could cut off her breasts. This girl has some issues with body anxiety and acceptance, like the majority of teen girls, and has now decided she can avoid all the bad aspects of maturing into a woman by simply becoming a man, which in her mind is closer to remaining a girl, which is what she really wants. The mother is trying to help every way she can, and is about as caring and progressive as a parent can possibly be. But you have to understand how parents today are simply helpless to combat the flood of bizarre, foolish, and/or utterly toxic information that their kids find on the internet, or in social media with their classmates. We entirely ban our 14-year-old from all social media, and from all internet sites except for those needed for school, because we have seen time and time again how kids’ lives are getting wrecked from all that sludge. Most parents are simply not equipped to handle it. Many aren’t able to police their child as thoroughly as we do, and for those on the right with kids, I believe this very real damage has caused some to turn to any platform such as QAnon or other fringe groups that can make sense of this real trauma and harm to their kids. If you don’t have kids, it’s very easy to dismiss this as hysteria. But if you are aware of what's happening to kids nowadays, it’s truly terrifying.Lisa Selin Davis would agree; her new piece on Substack is titled, “It’s a Terrifying Time to Have a Gender-Questioning Kid.” And I completely understand where the reader is coming from. I find the relentless promotion of concepts derived from critical gender and critical queer theory to be destabilizing to kids’ identities, lives and happiness. These woke fanatics are taking the real experience of less than a half percent of the population and imposing it as if it is some kind of choice for everyone else. This is called “inclusion.” It is actually “indoctrination.”Telling an impressionable gay boy he might be a girl throws a wrench into his psychological development, adding confusion, possible generating bodily mutilation. Making all of this as cool as possible — as so many teachers and schools now do — is downright disturbing. The whole idea that all children can choose their pronouns because the tiniest proportion have gender dysphoria is a form of insanity. But it’s an insanity based on critical theory whose goal is the dismantling of all norms, and deconstruction of objective reality by calling it a function of “white supremacy.” This next reader has “a theory I’ve wanted to float by you”:I’m increasingly becoming of the opinion that the modern trans/gender movement is the twisted offspring of something in the gay rights movement that we thought was a good thing but actually wasn’t: the notion that someone is “born that way.” Today, we increasingly feel the need to diagnose children who were “born a certain way” and then provide medical interventions for something that is aggressively conflating the physical and the mental. (I’m using the historical Abrahamic distinction between the two here, sure there’s a philosophical debate about whether or not this distinction exists.) And that makes perfect sense if you think that the foundation of acceptability for these immutable identities is determined at birth — we have medicine in service of zeitgeist.I think the original sin here is going with “what we could get done” in the gay rights movement and stopping before we finished the job — of letting everyone know that these are preferences, and you need to respect and love people regardless of the choices they make and not just because they “can’t help it” because they were “born that way.” If we were to do away with this biological imperative driving identity, we’d end up with what we should really be striving for: radical acceptance of personal choices, and deconstruction of gender roles and stereotypes without engaging in pseudoscience.The trouble with this argument, I think, is that it doesn’t reflect the experience of most gay people. We do not “choose” our orientation. That is the key point — whether that lack of choice is due to biology or early childhood or something else is irrelevant. And genuinely trans people do not choose to be trans either. It’s a profound disjunction between the sex they feel they are and the sex they actually are. It also may be caused by any number of things. But it is involuntary.The queer left rejects this view entirely — because, in their view, there is no underlying reality to human beings, biological or psychological. It’s all about “narratives” driven by “systems of power,” and being gay or trans is infinitely malleable. That’s why they continuously use a slur word for gays — “queer” — to deconstruct homosexuality itself, and turn it merely into one of many ways in which to dismantle liberal society. I regard the “queer left” as dangerous as the far right in its belief that involuntary homosexual orientation doesn’t exist. Lastly, a listener “would like to make a couple of suggestions for Dishcast guests”:1) Razib Khan — he has been blogging for 20 years on genetics, particularly ancient population movements (e.g. Denisovans and Yamnaya). His Unsupervised Learning is currently the second-highest-paid science substack after Scott Alexander. To give you a flavour, his post on the genetic history of Ashkenazi Jews was very popular. Khan also does culture war stuff, mostly because he is a scientist and believes in truth and science. He has subsequently been the subject of controversy, as you can see from his Wikipedia page — which isn’t really fair, but gives you a flavor. His post “Applying IQ to IQ: Selecting for smarts is important” is the kind of thing that gets him in trouble. He is my favourite public intellectual, in large part because he combines actual hardcore science information with anti-woke skepticism. And he is just generally a very smart and interesting guy. Though I’m a fan of his substack, I’d like to hear him on your podcast because I’d like to find out more about Razib as a person, how he feels about the controversies, etc.2) Claire Fox — Baroness Fox of Buckley — is a former communist turned libertarian and Brexiteer, once a member of European Parliament and now a life peer in the House of Lords. Her Twitter feed gives a pretty good idea of her interests and views. Here are some clips on cancel culture in higher education; single-sex spaces for women; and a libertarian view on smoking. She broadly belongs to the British “TERF island” of gender-critical feminists. I know you’ve had Kathleen Stock on your podcast already, but Fox’s background, libertarian views and current membership in the House of Lords make her particularly interesting.I know Razib and deeply admire him and his intellectual courage. And it’s true that, in real life, he’s a hoot, a lively conversationalist, with an amazing life story. Because of his views about the science of genetics and human populations, he is, of course, anathema to the woke left. One good reason to invite him on. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Jill Abramson On Journalism And Beltway Scandals

Jill is a journalist, academic, and the author of five books. She’s best known as the first woman to become executive editor at the New York Times, from 2011 to 2014. She’s currently a professor in the English department at Harvard. We’ve been friends forever.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two clips of our convo — on whether women are better observational reporters, and looking back at the Supreme Court saga of “Long Dong Silver” — head over to our YouTube page.We have a new transcript posted for posterity: Jamie Kirchick on his new history of gay Washington, recorded in front of a live audience at Twenty Summers in Ptown. If you missed it, here’s a teaser:With Pride still marching along this month, a reader writes:You frequently cover the takeover of the gay rights movement by transgender ideology, and how that can be at odds with the sex-based rights our generation fought for. I want to share a glimpse that I got at another under-discussed appropriation of the movement that’s significantly less threatening, but still leaves me feeling a bit out in the cold as a gay man: Pride going mainstream.I live in a small Midwestern exurb that recently began hosting its own Pride parade. This is not a small event — the banners go up well before June and stick around much of the summer, and it draws a crowd on par with our largest town festivals. I’ve generally avoided it, assuming it would be chock full of pink-and-blue flags and wanting to spare myself the political frustration. I also figured that a Pride parade in a town like mine indicated how unnecessary Pride parades have become.But this year I found out my (straight) brother was bringing his family, including my very young nieces and nephews. I wanted to see the kids, and I hoped my presence might provide some contrast to whatever left-wing antics they saw there. I was also curious how a Pride parade could possibly be family friendly enough for elementary school kids.Long story short, the whole thing was incredibly anodyne. I saw a couple drag queens and exactly one trans flag, but otherwise you would think it was a parade to celebrate rainbows. There were a few other older gay men wandering around, looking as awkward as I was. I had been worried about how to explain things to the kids, but I don’t think they even realized there was any connection to myself or my husband — they were in it mainly to catch candy. I don’t even recall seeing the words “rights” or “equality” mentioned. The messages were along the lines of “Be Yourself” and “Love Wins!”Afterwards, I learned that this event had been founded not by a homosexual, nor by a trans person, but rather by someone’s mother. Her daughter came out to her (I’m not even sure as what) and the mother decided she needed to show her daughter she was loved no matter what. And it all suddenly made sense. This was what a well-meaning mom wants to see when she sees gay pride. Be yourself! Love wins!I don’t want to say this kind of thing should stop. It was a nice enough time, and I don’t disagree with the message. But, I do wish more people understood exactly how unrooted “Pride” has become from the gay culture that started it and the reasons it was necessary. As I explained to my own mother afterwards, I don’t know of any man who had ever been imprisoned or assaulted just for loving another man. It was always about sex, and it’s still about sex. We just can’t mention that at Pride anymore, I guess.I suspect a great deal of this is a function of getting what we asked for — and the consequences of that taking root. Pride now is for straights as much as for gays — just as all the old super-gay events — like the High Heel Drag Race for Halloween in DC - went from being broken up by the cops (in my adult lifetime) to being packed with countless young straight women trying to be cool — and parents and all the letters of the alphabet. I’m made uncomfortable by some of this mass cultural appropriation — but that’s just my nostalgia for an era which I’m glad is now gone. We need to take yes for an answer, and as I wrote nearly 20 years ago, a very distinctive gay culture will end because of it.If you missed last week’s pod with David Goodhart, here’s a primer:This listener enjoyed the episode:On the conversation with David Goodhart, I want to chime in about your argument that one of the great contributions of Christianity, historically, has been reminding smart people that they aren’t any better than anyone else — and might indeed be worse, because of the arrogance and ambition that often accompanies that trait. It reminded me of a seminal moment in my childhood. I was 10, and I had just lost the regional spelling bee in a hard-fought match in which the last kid and I went several rounds before I made an error that he capitalized on. I turned to shake his hand. My dad told me later that night, “When you shook that boy’s hand, I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of you. You showed graciousness in a bitter moment, and it’s one of the hardest things to learn to do. I’m never going to be proud that you’re smart. That was a genetic luck of the draw and you had no more to do with it than you did with having brown hair or being a little scrawny. But how you responded is your character, and I DO care about that, and I am immensely proud of you.”I think the fact that that was a consistent message at home when I was getting a lot of accolades at school probably made me marginally less unbearable than I would have been otherwise. I should say that my family is Southern Baptist; our faith was part of the warp and woof of daily life and the lens through which my parents interpreted life and what was worthy and valuable. Being smart was nice, but not nearly as important as being kind and generous and forgiving. I’m very grateful to have been raised like that.Me too. Another listener also took the convo personally:I’m so grateful for your episode with David Goodhart, which covered a topic that is both intensely personal and professionally important to me. My father is one of seven children of an Italian immigrant who was a short-haul truck driver. He almost flunked out of high school and only finished because his father threatened to kick his ass if he didn’t. Talking to my dad, any highly educated person would instantly dismiss his opinions and observations. But he wouldn’t care. After high school he started his own business — a car repair and towing company. After 40 years he retired with one million dollars, having bought our family home outright and having sent both my sister and myself to college, and me to law school.  Yes, he did this through hard work and persistence, but he also did it through extremely competent business management and strategic savvy. He survived the shutdown of a local mine (70% of his business at the time), the recessions and gas shortages of the 1970's, cyclical recessions and more.  You don’t do that unless you know how to identify risks and opportunities and exploit them to your own advantage. If that isn’t intelligence, I don’t know what is.  I myself work at a talent firm. My job entails creating a business model to help move junior enlisted veterans without college degrees into good-paying jobs with our skilled-manufacturing clients. It’s been fascinating to talk to companies who are still resistant to paying living wages at entry-level positions in the face of literally one million-plus competing job openings. I agree with Goodhart that reality is going to force a lot of rethinking about the value of labor of all kinds. It may take a while, but we are already seeing a few companies that are all-in on paying enough to attract this talent. They are far less nervous about the future.Thank you for this episode, and please find more guests who want to discuss this topic: How to recognize and reward everyone’s strengths, and how to measure success in new ways.  Another listener recommends a guest:I’d love to see you interview Greg Clark, economic historian at UC Davis. His work on the heritability of social status is fascinating. Using surname data from England, he’s found that social status is strongly heritable but that it drifts back to the mean over many generations. So everyone’s ancestors will be elite or downtrodden eventually, but it might take 400 years. The key factor is assortative marriage and mating. Even before women had careers and got educations, you could predict the type of person a woman would marry by looking at the social status of her brother. Clark has shown how the same phenomenon exists in Scandinavia, China, etc. Most interestingly the data show that although income inequality is less in Scandinavian countries because of redistribution, educational and other achievements like admission to scientific societies, it’s just as unequal as other countries. They also show that even communist revolutions in China and Hungary didn’t prevent people with high social status names from reasserting dominance within a generation or two.Twin studies and data where unexpected parental deaths happen show that the differences can’t be environmental. It’s just amazing and totally under reported for obvious reasons, but I do think this data will blow the lid off our current debate. It’s also great that Clark’s data is about white English people and doesn’t involve race at its core. (Here’s a link to one of his key research papers.)I’ve been impressed with Clark since his book, A Farewell To Alms. It’s a great reader suggestion. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.