Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten

Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) is a screenwriter, bestselling crime and suspense novelist, contributor to publications such as City Journal and PJ Media and proprietor of "The Andrew Klavan Show," a video podcast on TheDaily Wire.

Klavan is witty, he's got a sense of humor and a keen understanding of the importance of narrative and storytelling to culture.

I spoke with him about his intellectual journey from liberal to conservative, the criticality of culture to politics and how conservatives can compete, political correctness, progressivism, Islam, freedom of speech and Silicon Valley and much more.

• Klavan's journey from Hollywood liberal to conservative
• Why the Left dominates in the arts
• Idealism versus materialism and liberals versus classical liberals
• How Klavan would change culture if he had unlimited resources
• The conservatism of "The Sopranos"
• The importance of saying the unsayable
• The power of The Power Broker
• How Hollywood reconciles its progressivism with Chinese funders and Islamic supremacists
• The tyranny of central planning
• The wages of political correctness, trigger warnings, safe spaces, multiculturalism and identity politics
• Donald Trump's presidency as a product of progressivism
• George Carlin and Donald Trump
• Silicon Valley's ideological discrimination and what to do about it

Further Reading

• Show Notes
• Transcript

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Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

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Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal and author most recently of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

Mac Donald, the archetype of an unassuming academic, makes for an unlikely counter-cultural figure. She draws protests and outrage on college campuses across the country because she has the gall to challenge the prevailing progressive orthodoxy about subjects like identity politics, multiculturalism and criminal justice.

Ben Weingarten (@bhweingarten), Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and Senior Contributor at The Federalist interviews the bold, provocative and courageous Mac Donald on her contrarian work in these areas.

• How Mac Donald went from clerking for a leftist Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judge and the EPA to Manhattan Institute intellectual
• The contradictions of the Age of Virtue Signaling
• Why victim status is celebrated -- and how detrimental it is for the victims
• What it's like to walk onto American college campuses as a pariah
• How pernicious ideas in the academy manifest themselves in society
• The ramifications of Google's firing of James Damore
• How to shatter the identity politics paradigm
• Parkland and the "specious school discipline crusade"
• Why the idea that the justice system is systemically racist is wrong
• What law-abiding citizens in American inner-cities tell Heather about law enforcement
• Lessons from New York City on its dramatic decline in crime
• The ongoing impact of the "Ferguson Effect"

• Show Notes
• Transcript

Check out other episodes, show notes and transcripts at benweingarten.com/bigideas.

Subscribe, rate and review: iTunes | Stitcher | Google | YouTube

Follow Ben: Web | Newsletter | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Advertising & Sponsorship Inquiries: E-mail us.

___________

Backed Vibes (clean) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/