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July 15, 2020

Another soft leftist leaves the New York publishing scene

By Andrea Widburg

Andrew Sullivan is a British gay man who had a near-mental breakdown when Sarah Palin appeared on the national political scene.  He despises Trump with a raw, uncontrolled passion and holds leftist views on many issues.  Still, he's classified as a "conservative" and, as such, recently discovered that in today's heated climate, there's no room for him at New York Magazine, where he has worked for several years.

Andrew Sullivan came to American attention in 1991 when he was hired as the editor for the New Republic, a relentlessly progressive magazine.  At that time, he was characterized as a "conservative."  Certainly, he was more conservative than the rest of the writers at the magazine, as evidenced by his support for Richard Herrnstein's and Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve.  That book points out that different races have long shown consistent differences in I.Q. scores, even when the tests have been adjusted for cultural differences.  Sullivan was gone from the magazine a year after showing his support for the book.

Over the years, despite calling himself a conservative, Sullivan has mostly become a garden-variety leftist.  Although he initially supported the Iraq War, he turned against both it and Bush.  Sullivan's real break with conservatism came with Sarah Palin, about whom he wrote some genuinely insane conspiracies.  He's also a NeverTrump.

Sullivan also supported Obama and continues to support same-sex "marriage," social security, progressive taxes, and Obamacare.  He has become increasingly hostile to Israel and opposes capital punishment.

Significantly, though, Sullivan thinks there should be limits on immigration, supports Iranians' quest for freedom, and does not agree with attacks on white people.  That last is apparently a problem in today's New York publishing scene.

In June, Sullivan had the temerity to write a column at New York Magazine defending America and opposing the left's increasingly strident demands for total intellectual orthodoxy.  It's an excellent bit of writing and well worth reading for its defense of both intellectual freedom and America's sterling political, social, and economic virtues.  That article's support for classical liberalism may explain why, a month later, Sullivan is leaving the magazine, with the suggestion that he's been squeezed out hanging in the air:

Just an hour before announcing his departure, Sullivan castigated the leftist mob that drove Bari Weiss, another soft-left conservative, out of The New York Times (you can see Weiss’s J'accuse letter here):

Sullivan's editor at New York Magazine wrote an interesting statement about Sullivan's departure.  As I read it, David Haskell is saying N.Y. Mag is a "liberal" publication and that he wants to maintain intellectual diversity by having conservative voices...so long as those voices don't conflict with the magazine's so-called leftist positions.  That's going to be a hard circle to square:

It's possible that Sullivan, having looked into the abyss of the leftism he's been flirting with over the years, decided that it's too ugly down there.  If he returns to the true liberal intellectual tradition that today is embodied in the conservative movement, that will be a welcome thing, indeed.  As his recent defense of America shows, Sullivan is a gifted writer and a good person to have on your side in an ideological battle.

Image: Wikipedia.

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