Andrew Sullivan edited The New Republic in the early 1990s before launching The Daily Dish, one of the first mainstream political blogs. Today, he publishes the newsletter The Weekly Dish and the podcast The Dishcast. As a moderate conservative, he made an early case for marriage equality from the right and consistently opposes both religious fundamentalism and identity politics. These excerpts track his work across several decades of journalism on faith, political tribalism, and the media.

Visual summary of operating lessons from Andrew Sullivan.

Part 1: Blogging and Digital Journalism

  1. On the nature of blogging: "Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic (November 2008).
  2. On pacing: "A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing." — Source: [The Atlantic]
  3. On digital burnout: Blogging's once-unimaginable pace had become "the default for everyone." "If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out." In his last year of blogging his health gave out, with four bronchial infections in 12 months. — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "I Used to Be a Human Being," New York (2016).
  4. On self-correction: Bloggers "had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screwup," which made the form more accountable, not less. — Reference: The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog" (2008).

Part 2: Conservatism and Politics

  1. On humble faith and liberal democracy: "From a humble faith comes toleration of other faiths. And from that toleration comes the oxygen that liberal democracy desperately needs to survive." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "When Not Seeing Is Believing," TIME (2006).
  2. On democracy's weak point: Reading Plato during the 2016 campaign, he warned that "democracies end when they are too democratic": when elites lose all authority, a demagogue can offer relief from "democracy's endless choices and insecurities." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny," New York (2016).
  3. On Trump: "In terms of our liberal democracy and constitutional order, Trump is an extinction-level event. It's long past time we started treating him as such." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny," New York (2016).

Part 3: Faith, Religion, and Catholicism

  1. On the nature of faith: "If we have never doubted, how can we say we have really believed?... Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "When Not Seeing Is Believing," TIME (2006).
  2. On the limits of knowing God: "If God really is God, then God must, by definition, surpass our human understanding." So no one can proclaim religious truth "with a capital T." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "When Not Seeing Is Believing," TIME (2006).
  3. On fundamentalism: "Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith, and to say it is, is the great lie of our time." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "When Not Seeing Is Believing," TIME (2006).
  4. On practice over theory: In a nonfundamentalist faith, "practice is more important than theory, love is more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "When Not Seeing Is Believing," TIME (2006).

Part 4: Marriage and LGBTQ Rights

  1. On the case for marriage: His conservative case for gay marriage: it "merely asks that gays be allowed to join in," harnessing an established social convention to "the yearnings for stability and acceptance," and it "places more responsibilities upon gays." — Reference: The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, "Here Comes the Groom" (1989).
  2. On Biology and homosexuality: Abandoning the biological basis of sex in favor of gender ideology might support transgender individuals but fundamentally undermines the definition and meaning of homosexuality. — New York Magazine

Part 5: Tribalism and Polarization

  1. On tribalism as the default: "Tribalism, it's always worth remembering, is not one aspect of human experience. It's the default human experience." American democracy was a precarious bet that "deep divides can be bridged by a culture of compromise, and that emotion can be defeated by reason." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "America Wasn't Built for Humans," New York (2017).
  2. On welcoming dissent: "Liberals welcome dissent because it's our surest way to avoid error." He argued that anger at an opponent "is rarely a good frame of mind to pursue the imperatives of reason." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "We All Live on Campus Now," New York (2018).
  3. On why ideas matter: Campus culture matters "because I believe ideas matter": when elite universities adopt a worldview, "sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "We All Live on Campus Now," New York (2018).

Part 7: Life, Illness, and Health

  1. On mindfulness and meditation: After quitting the web he went to a silent meditation retreat, where after a few hours the quiet "deepens into an enveloping default." — Reference: New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan, "I Used to Be a Human Being" (2016).

Part 8: America and Culture

  1. On Obama as the conservative option: "Against a radical right, reckless, populist insurgency, Obama is the conservative option, dealing with emergent problems with pragmatic calm and modest innovation." — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "America's Tory President," The Daily Dish (2012).
  2. On humanizing enemies: "Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder." If they are human, they cannot be treated inhumanly. — Reference: Andrew Sullivan, "The Abolition of Torture," The New Republic (2005).