# George Packer On Our Post-Liberal World

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dishcast-with-andrew-sullivan-1371188/george-packer-on-our-post-liberal-world
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dishcast-with-andrew-sullivan-1371188/george-packer-on-our-post-liberal-world.md
Podcast: [The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dishcast-with-andrew-sullivan-1371188)
Published: 2025-12-05T17:23:59+00:00
Episode link: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/george-packer-on-our-post-liberal
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/180152783/e15c750dd6ec5c89ce9a7886510f0e44.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-dishcast-with-andrew-sullivan-1371188/episodes/george-packer-on-our-post-liberal-world
Duration seconds: 3210

## Resource

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com George is a journalist and novelist. He was a long-time staff writer at The New Yorker , now a staff writer at The Atlantic . He’s the author of 10 books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America — which won the National Book Award — and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century . His new novel is called The Emergency . It’s a parable of our polarized times — and a deeply unsettling one. We had this conversation the afternoon after I finished the book, and, as you’ll see, it really affected me emotionally. For two clips of our convo — on the clarity of Orwell’s writing, and the savior complex of the woke — head to our YouTube page . Other topics: raised by two Stanford professors; his dad accused of fascism by his leftist students and red-baited by the right; his dad’s stroke and subsequent suicide at a young age; George’s time in the Peace Corps; how Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia “saved me”; entering journalism at 40; reporting in Iraq; Orwell’s contempt for elites; Auden and Spender; the ideologies of intellectuals; the young turning on their elders; the summer of 2020; Camus’ La Peste ; January 6; Orwell’s bigotries; his love for the countryside and common decency; Animal Farm ; Nineteen Eighty-Four ; Hitchens; utopianism; Nietzsche and slave morality; Fukuyama and boredom; the collapse of religion; intra-elite competition; Mamdani; the Gaza protests; virtue signaling; struggle sessions; mobs on social media; the loss of gatekeepers; the queer takeover of the gay rights movement; the brutality of meritocracy; Nick Fuentes; Trump’s multi-racial win; his Cabinet picks as trolling; the utter capitulation of Vance; Haidt and smartphones; and…

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## Transcript

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