Author, free-thinker and provocateur Andrew Sullivan is, often, alone—fired from New York magazine, slammed for his views on…just about everything, writing from a “small room in Washington, D.C.”, out on a limb (as it were) even when there is no one there to defend him. And that is exactly what makes him the American intellectual we need in our times. 

Sullivan’s new book, Out On a Limb, is a compendium of his essays over the last 30 years; taken together, they’re a testament to the power of one man’s ideas, and also a love letter to what has become so endangered of late, quaint notions like pluralism and liberal democracy.

As part of Citizen Speaks powered by Comcast NBCUniversal and Fitler Club, Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt spoke with Sullivan via Zoom last week about presidents (Obama and Trump); free speech (he still has it, thankfully); liberalism (at risk); the perils of Wokeness—and how we will emerge with our freedoms intact.

“I am relatively optimistic that if we soldier on and keep manifesting and practicing liberalism that we will slowly regain it,” Sullivan said. “It’s going to be a hard slog. But the only way to save liberal society is to enact it.”