Andrew Sullivan: Campus Leftism ‘A Kind of Secular Religion’

During a discussion of the unrest surrounding Charles Murray’s speech at Middlebury College on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” New York Magazine Writer-at-Large Andrew Sullivan argued, “This is a kind of secular religion. You have to believe, if you’re on campus you have to believe certain things, or you are a heretic. What you saw here was the burning of a heretic.”

Host Bill Maher began by saying that he’s “so worried about liberalism. … I worry that liberalism is at a perilous point.” Maher added that he thinks Murray engages in “thinly-veiled racism,” but “there is a way to fight that, and that is to debate him.”

Sullivan stated, “[I]t leads to this big climate of shut it down, shut it down. And afterwards, a mob actually attacked…and a female professor…suffered a concussion. This is not an argument. This is a religion, Bill. This is a kind of secular religion. You have to believe, if you’re on campus you have to believe certain things, or you are a heretic. What you saw here was the burning of a heretic.”

Former Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) slammed the conduct of the students at Middlebury, but argued that he doesn’t think it represents liberalism. He added that there’s “an intimidation factor.” And that if you polled students at Middlebury, most wouldn’t agree with the violence.

Sullivan added that such behavior is due to faculty “fermenting this stuff.” Maher agreed, and stated that there was “something very wrong with the parents, and the way they raise their little f*cking brats.” Sullivan further argued that campus leftists would rather attack others on the left than the right, citing attacks on Yale’s leadership as white supremacy, “when you actually have a white supremacist running for president.”

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