Jonah is a journalist, author, and podcaster. He spent two decades at National Review before joining The Dispatch, where he writes the G-File and hosts the Remnant podcast. He’s also a columnist for the LA Times, a commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The author of Liberal Fascism, The Tyranny of Clichés, and Suicide of the West, Jonah is one of a handful of thoughtful conservatives who have kept their soul this past decade.
An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of our convo — on how Oakeshott is needed more than ever, and how dogs make us more human — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: growing up on the UWS; his legendary mom and her role in the Lewinsky saga; his dad who discovered Dilbert; joining the first co-ed class at Goucher; Clinton’s poor character; the Drudge Report; the Starr report; Mike Kinsley starting Slate; launching the G-File as one of the first blogs; the heterogeneity of The Corner; Mickey Kaus; Breitbart; the power of the hyperlink; Twitter killing the blogosphere; why democratizing the parties was a big mistake; the Iraq War; Liberal Fascism and the administrative state; FDR; Vought and DOGE and performative vandalism; the Biden and Boris betrayals on immigration; oikophobia; the Israel lobby and the gay lobby; Netanyahu’s fuck-yous to Obama; the war for oil in Venezuela; Hegseth’s “no quarter”; Trump’s response to Mueller’s death; weaponizing the DOJ; how the Trump and Obama cults differed; Saul Alinsky; David French and free speech; the debt crisis; the religious right; Bill Bennett’s hypocrisy; and how Trump talks about dogs.
Speaking of dogs, here’s a note from “a subscriber who is sick of your repetitive rants on Trump but loves your non-political pods — with Kathryn Paige Harden, for example”:
I just ran across a NYT book review you wrote in 1996 about Dog Love by Marjorie Garber. It begins:
There are, it seems to me, three categories of people when it comes to dogs. There are those who have no contact with or particular fondness for dogs; those who have grown up with dogs and enjoy some affectionate familiarity with them; and then there are “dog people,” who, for some reason or other, assign to dogs — and to the love of dogs — a kind of virtue unknown even to saints.
I place myself in the second category. Marjorie Garber is clearly, hopelessly, in the third. The significance she ascribes to dogs, the profundity she sees in human relations with dogs, the depth of passion and knowledge she brings to the subject — all these are, I’m afraid, beyond me.
I believe you have softened a bit over the last three decades!
Yes! But that was before my first beagle. Jonah is also a dog lover, so Truman naturally gravitated toward him in the studio:
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” Greg Lukianoff on free speech, and Tom Junod on his memoir and masculinity. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
From a fan of last week’s talk with Matt Goodwin on the political earthquake in the UK:
This is one of the most important discussions I have heard in a long time (and I consume most of the podcasts in your general zip code). I think this episode is so important because it explains much of the light populist frustration that got us to where we are. For example, I think it explains Trumpism in a calm and rational manner, the roots of which are important for everyone to understand.
Another who liked the pod:
I’ve always been a man of the left. (Not radically so — an Obamacrat. But that seems like a left irretrievably gone.) I just finished your chat with Mssr Goodwin. Everything this guy said more or less made sense. Even when I disagreed with him, it’s clear he’s not a raging bigot. He’s a patriot who wants to tackle his country’s problems honestly and in good faith.
Can that still be said of the progressive left, who can’t ever seem to get past their cherished pieties, no matter how obviously they conflict with reality? Boys and girls are empirically different. Wishing something so doesn’t make it so (this seems a characteristic of our age, regardless of one’s political team.) It’s still an open question whether Islam and the West are mutually compatible. Not all migrants are created equal, and a citizenry has the right to decide who gets to come and who gets to stay.
Where are voices like his (or yours) in the American political chorus? I see the wacky left, high on its own supply, and I see Trumpism, a sneering repudiation of anything a healthy politics should stand for. So keep up the good work. It’s been a balm during these bleak times.
Another listener dissents:
I’m a subscriber who began following you to get outside my bubble, but it turns out I often find myself agreeing with you. As a fairly left-wing professor who researches politics, I was intrigued what would come of your discussion with Matt Goodwin. Suffice to say he has a rather particular, and not very positive, reputation within the academy.
There were moments that I found myself sympathizing with Goodwin. Are there powerful, privileged elites in the UK? Are there communities that have been left behind, including because of choices the elite have made? Yes and yes. But does Goodwin or the Reform Party have solutions for any of the problems currently ailing those communities, or the UK as a whole?
From what I heard, no. Except for the problem, in the eyes of some, of immigration; I do believe they would take action on that. But on community breakdown, inequality, national economic stagnation, addiction, climate change, health care, they have no answers. You asked some questions that showed this, and you could easily have asked more.
Goodwin wants to draw a line from the postindustrial problems of his youth (when Thatcher was running the country) to the issue of immigration in 2026 (and Brexit in 2016). The logic is tortured, but I’ll concede it’s working with many voters in the UK and elsewhere. In that sense, the interview succeeded: it provided a microcosmic version of the current conversation in many countries. It showed how populist-right politicians are effectively appealing to grievances that there is no real chance they will seriously address.
You commented during your episodes with Jason Willick and Zaid Jilani that you need more younger guests, but I think you need to balance that with more older guests as well. Sally’s imparted wisdom was inspiring. (And I was charmed by the momentary awkwardness when she was complicit with you in “outing” her age.) Keep up the great work!
I tend to think the older guests are less inhibited. I once had an idea for a talkshow which would feature only retired, over-it, ancient hacks who no longer gave a toss. The Old Timers, or Geezer Hour. But I digress. On another episode:
I typically lack the time to stay up to date on podcasts, but, after seeing Michael Pollan speak a few years ago at a Bioneers Conference (a very Californian thing), I made a point of catching up with your latest episode with Pollan. And I’m very glad I did.
Perhaps the single most interesting thing about AI for me — far more than the technology itself — is the window it has provided into our collective psyche. At the root of it all is a reductive and materialist view of life and the universe. If we, as humans, are nothing more than complex machines, then of course we will feel threatened by an even more complex entity than ourselves — AI.
So full props to Pollan for calling out these materialist assumptions. Simply acknowledging that we don’t really know what consciousness is, or where it originates from, should not be so difficult.
In fact, there seems to be overwhelming pressure on the intelligentsia to at least tacitly accept, if not promote, the view that consciousness emerges from (seemingly material) complexity. But the conversation we should be having — especially before investing trillions of dollars into the materialist assumption — is whether the exact opposite may in fact be true: complexity emerges from consciousness. And if an AI bubble ever does crash our economy, one bright side might be a re-evaluation of our most basic, and clearly problematic, worldview.
Indeed. Here’s a guest rec from a retired teacher:
I got my credential in the early ‘90s when the so-called gifted kids movement was still around, and I did some trainings here and there. So here’s a thought for the Dishcast: What’s the state of education when it comes to high achieving or gifted kids? Where are we? Joseph Renzulli is a popular writer and national leader on it, but I don’t know where he is these days. Is anyone even talking about this anymore?
Good idea. I was a beneficiary of a version of that. And the pressure to define excellence down on the woke left remains intense.
Your coverage of the Iran war is spot on: it needs to be denounced in no uncertain terms rather than bemoaned because the Mad King didn’t follow the right process. The fact that “the great negotiator” could have gotten a very good deal from Iran — as reported by senior British officials who were there — had been scandalously underreported. Keep it up!
Another writes:
Enough with comparing Trump to George III ... it’s unfair to George III. At least the English king was a personally decent man. A more apt comparison would be George IV.
Here’s a dissent:
“Just War Theory,” to my knowledge, has not been accepted as part of any treaty, and certainly doesn’t stem from our Founding documents. While the tenets you claim are its backbone, might be swell if we were having a discussion of moral issues in a vacuum, because they are irrelevant when the shooting starts.
Even if I accepted this theory as gospel, your argument fails because it’s based on a false premise. Even you know the Iranian regime has always held truth in low regard and their word is worthless. Do you really believe they have allowed inspections of their program? The regime has been treating gullible people like you as useful tools since 2012 at least. What good is an agreement without verification?
Your assertion that both the US and Israel are responsible for civilian deaths in any practical way, while ignoring the larger sins of their uncivilized opponents, is right on the edge of unpatriotic. Both militaries, unlike Iran, have policies meant to minimize civilian casualties, but when the enemy places military targets in schools and hospitals, it becomes a trade-off between the lives of our soldiers vs potential civilian harm — an easy choice under my values. Every day for the last three weeks, there are multiple reports of Iran (or their proxies) firing missiles at civilian targets in Israel and its Gulf neighbors. Maybe you should list your values that condone this, as they are not those of any American I know.
In a few more weeks, the world will be a safer place. Iran has been killing Americans — some 600 at least — since 1979. I am so thankful we finally have a president who values doing the right thing, rather than hiding behind political talk and precedent to kick the can down the road. “A time for peace, and a time for war.” Good advice.
We’ll see, won’t we? But the laws of warfare are about us, not them. They are a rare, Western framework for reducing war and its terrible effects. You may gain a temporary edge by flouting them. But you are creating a far more dangerous and evil world. We learned that lesson the hard way in the last barbaric century. I guess we can be doomed to forget, but I won’t.
Another dissent:
A just war is one you plan for when your enemy is weak, not when they are strong. Last Friday, Iran’s launching of a medium-range ballistic missile (which Iran claimed it did not possess) at the US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia proved to the world that Iran had nefarious interests. This just war shows that if Iran’s capabilities are not managed, they would threaten Gulf countries, block Straights of Hormuz, and send a nuke into Europe.
And please don’t tell us that Iran would never do it and was just building this arsenal for self-defense. This does not stand under scrutiny of Iran’s active funding of proxies that do their dirty work, namely Houthis in the Red Sea. If the Iranians felt they could directly attack the Great Satan, they would, because this war just exposed their capabilities.
During your talk with Eli Lake, you said that the US gets little from its $4 billion-per-year investment in Israel. While Israel stands by the US to challenge an existential enemy, the EU hems and haws and complains about their rising energy costs. That’s the thanks the US gets for 80-100K boots stationed in Europe and $30- 50 billion in direct costs for EU security. In that perspective, Israel is great return on investment.
The folly of Obama’s and Malley’s acquiesce to Iran has been proven. Let’s hope the Iranian people will take this once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the regime and bring peace once and for all to the Middle East.
Let’s agree to disagree. The weakness or strength of an enemy should not change the parameters of a just war. And to choose aggression because an enemy is weak is immoral. No one is saying Iran is harmless. We did just bomb their nuclear program to bits before we went for regime change. It has long been containable. Israel? Not so much. Its aggressive expansion is constant.
One more on the column:
I appreciated your elegant review of the best of the Western values under just war theory. However, I think you and most commentators on Iran have missed what Israel has introduced to modern warfare: war by assassination. It’s pretty obvious Israel is killing off any Iranian leader Mossad thinks could speak for the nation in negotiations over a ceasefire, exit ramps, or an end to the conflict. Within a few days of the war, Trump himself described Iranians with whom he thought could talk to. Unfortunately he added, “They are all dead” — killed by the Israeli military. The implications are tremendous.
Only the most advanced and tech-skilled countries could even think about starting a war with such an advantage. Today Israel, tomorrow Beijing ... or Washington. Smaller, less sophisticated countries not as clever as Iran wouldn’t stand a chance against invasion, border disputes, or pre-emption. Enter the dystopian, unapologetic future.
Yes, the Israeli championing of assassinations has made the entire world a far more dangerous place.
On a brighter note, last week marked the 500th installment of the View From Your Window contest — and we left it outside the paywall, if you want to check it out. One sleuth wrote:
Congratulations on 500! I know the VFYW takes a lot of work (maybe AI can help you?), but the weekly email is a highlight of my inbox. I speak for many who say this contest provides a welcome distraction from a seemingly chaotic world, and you’ve created a unique global community that leads to a simple truth: looking out a window reminds us how big a world it is, and yet how our common humanity overrides our differences.
Many sleuths shared their favorite memory of the contest over the years. Here’s one:
My favorite moment was when I won #312: Grytviken, South Georgia, Falkland Islands. Not just because I won (though there is that!), but because it was so utterly random in all regards. We were still in COVID times, and I was on a weekly Zoom call that my two sisters and I had established. For the first time, I showed them the View I was working on:
Grytviken, South Georgia, Falkland Islands
The very next day, my sister who was active on Twitter saw a post from the BBC that looked interesting to her. She checked it out, then followed the link to an article ... only to see exactly the same View I’d just shown her the night before. I thought for sure the submitter of our View had to be the photographer for the BBC article, but no. Random, random, RANDOM!
Another favorite moment:
My first contest was #204 (Colombo); and I won #220 (Manzanillo). By then I was hooked, and for good reason: the jolt when you suddenly recognize the spot you are looking for after a long chase; using half-forgotten skills, learned in school long ago, to try to locate the right window; finding out that Chris posted your message; or even better, receiving the kind email he often sends when he didn’t post it.
Then there are the targets you set for yourself — the streak of correct guesses, or the sum of correct ones — and the satisfaction when you achieve a new silly personal record. These are all small joys, sure, but aren’t small joys more constant and much less subject to disillusionment than big ones?
Then, abruptly, it all ended in February 2015, when the Daily Dish retired. I was a little sad for a while, and I thought back to the VFYW contest as a source of great fun, but gone for good.
So, what is my favourite moment of the contest? When, against all hope, it came back after five years — and felt like only a week had passed.
That’s all a massive and well-deserved tribute to Chris, who has created this amazing newsletter and evolved it in ways beyond creative and engaging. I’m so grateful and proud that this spur-of-the-moment idea many, many moons ago led to such a fruitful flowering of fun and fascination.
See you Good Friday. Have a blessed Holy Week.
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