Is any working American writer better at exposing elite clowns than The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner? His exposure of Alan Dershowitz in the matter of Dershowitz’s alleged cancellation by the Chilmark Library on Martha’s Vineyard was a defining classic of the genre.
The thing that makes Chotiner such a great pantser is that he doesn’t sneak up on a subject and yank down their trousers. He asks questions with a straight face, and they expose their asses all by themselves.
Legal scholar Cass Sunstein is the latest victim. Here’s how Chotiner sets the stage for the interview:
Sunstein has written a new book, called “On Liberalism,” which is a defense of the idea of liberalism at a time when Sunstein believes it is under threat from both the right and the left. The book barely mentions Donald Trump or contemporary politics, however, and instead provides a defense of a general liberal belief system, which Sunstein breaks down into eighty-five features. Sunstein’s conception of liberalism is quite capacious; it includes New Deal liberals and so-called classical liberals, including Friedrich von Hayek and Robert Nozick, as well as politicians such as Ronald Reagan.
If that sounds absurd, that’s because it is, as Chotiner goes on to demonstrate. Here’s an excerpt, but go read the whole thing if you can.
Chotiner: Hayek talked about disliking “Near Eastern” students because they were “fundamentally dishonest.” He said that he had a “profound dislike for the typical Indian students at the London School of Economics, which I admit are all one type—Bengali moneylender sons.”
Sunstein: I didn’t know about that. Wow. Hayek was a very complicated figure. He wrote a lot. Some of it’s not so good. The Hayek that I admire is the Hayek who was an extremely persistent and repetitive and powerful critic of socialist planning on the ground that it couldn’t be made to work because the socialist planners won’t know enough, even if they’re competent and well motivated. And also the Hayek who would occasionally say that liberty has an economic foundation, but also a moral foundation. And, in a time like ours, Hayek as Mr. Liberty—that’s someone who we want to be in the same club with.
Chotiner: Hayek supported the 1973 coup in Chile. There are lots of things that don’t make him seem like such a democrat or liberal, correct?
Sunstein: The criticisms are either accurate or, in some sense, fair. So when I say Hayek is a great figure or a great part of the liberal tradition, I don’t mean to endorse everything he said.
Chotiner: You mentioned Murray Rothbard as another figure on your team. He was also controversial: he talked positively about David Duke’s 1992 Presidential campaign, and he said that he wanted to replace America’s government with some sort of anarcho-capitalism. Given where our politics are now, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that so many of these figures were important for the conservative movement. How do you think about that?
Sunstein: Rothbard is not my favorite by any means.
It goes on like that, and can you believe it, Justices Alito and Thomas are also on Team Liberal! The interview ends on a question about Henry Kissinger, a monster whose friendship Sunstein treasured because Kissinger was nice to Sunstein about his (Sunstein’s) book launch.
Chotiner: But your wife [Samantha Power] is one of the great human-rights experts in the world. I asked you about [Kissinger] being anti-liberal, and your response was that he was very nice to you about your book.
Sunstein: About Star Wars.
Chotiner: It is certainly a touching story. But that’s not totally an answer to the question.
Sunstein: Yeah. Well, I don’t know. What he would think of this book I’d love to know.
Chotiner: But no second thoughts about being friends with him or anything?
Sunstein: I feel generally very grateful for friendship, and he was, when I knew him, a person of immense kindness. Those who think of him as someone who was something horrible or worse, I don’t know what to say about that.
I’ve never been fond of the expression “Don’t be so open minded that your brains fall out” because, in my experience, it’s usually said by the same sort of people who believe things like “God said ‘Adam and Eve’ not ‘Adam and Steve'” are devastatingly clever witticisms.
But by cracky, the former adage seems to actually apply here with Sunstein. Here’s a bonus axiom: If Chotiner calls, destroy your phone and go to ground.
Me if I ever see “Isaac Chotiner” pop up on my phone.
— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) September 24, 2025 at 8:38 AM
I am grateful to be beneath his notice!
Open thread.
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