Nation Profile
THOUGHT LEADERS
Taking the Turn: Facing an Illiberal Reality Now ‘politically homeless,’ Liel Leibovitz advocates for rebuilding our country, starting in our backyards
I
never want to be part of any group of people,” Liel Leibovitz says, “where a political disagreement could empty your heart of love.” In this episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek discusses topics such as “political homelessness” and rebuilding society from the bottom up with Liel Leibovitz, a senior writer for Tablet Magazine and a host of the “Unorthodox” podcast. He’s the author of the popular Tablet essay “The Turn: When I saw the left give up everything I believe in, I changed politically. You can, too.”
JACK WANG/THE EPOCH TIMES
JAN JEKIELEK: Liel, you
wrote one of my favorite essays of 2021, “The Turn.” What is the turn? LIEL LEIBOVITZ: The
turn is the moment when you call into question everything you assumed
52 I N S I G H T February 11–17, 2022
was the fabric of reality. I grew up with this idea that if you were a decent human being, you were on the left, because the left cared about human rights, women’s rights, gay rights. On the right were people who only cared about money and held benighted and scary ideas. I never doubted that premise. But then, I noticed things on the left you weren’t allowed to say. It was fine to criticize some people for saying objectionable things, but others were somehow beyond reproach. You start asking yourself, what can I say and not say? You figure out that the self-proclaimed party of the working class supports an oligopoly of corporations. You realize the party of science uses media to quash inquiry into scientific issues. And once you discover that, you take the turn.
Liel Leibovitz, writer and podcast host.
