The Notorious R.O.D.

Damon Linker is back on the pod to talk about another former guest, the notorious R.O.D., Ray Oliver Dreher Jr. — i.e. Rod Dreher, one of the more fascinating, tragic, and infuriating writers of the Christian right over the last few decades.Linker and Dreher first met back when Linker, who is now a man of the solid center-left, was a conservative and an editor at the Catholic conservative magazine First Things. They bonded over their shared horror at the Catholic priest abuse scandal, a lot of details of which were unfolding at the time, and also over their shared frustration with various figures on the Catholic right, including some important people at First Things, who seemed to be in some kind of denial about the severity of the scandal, or if not in denial about the severity of it then intent on shifting as much blame as possible away from the Catholic Church and onto other folks or forces.The two remained friends over the next decade and a half, even as both of them went through various evolutions and migrations. Linker migrated towards the left, although not too far to the left, and Dreher went through a series of shifts, or perhaps repetitions, ever in search of some kind of structure or vessel or institution to contain or pacify his various aspirations, contradictions, and demons.A few years ago they broke, as Dreher has broken with many former friends and comrades over the decades, over what Linker would characterize as Dreher’s extremism, though they’ve been in touch a bit more recently in the aftermath of Dreher’s public denunciations of the right’s tolerance of anti-Semites within its ranks.In a recent essay, Linker writes of Dreher:I’ve written enough posts about Rod Dreher down through the years that I could almost dedicate a stand-alone section of this newsletter to him. (That’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Here is the most recent post, from just a few months ago, in which he plays an important part.) When I write something on him, my most engaged readers usually respond in comments that they used to admire Dreher and read him fruitfully but that at some point he became a reactionary and racist crank they could no longer abide. I’ve had periods when I’ve felt like that. But I keep coming back to him, even as he’s drifted further and further away from the (perhaps idiosyncratic) skeptical and pessimistic liberalism I affirm in my work.One reason why I keep coming back to Rod is that I know him personally, we developed a friendship nearly a quarter century ago, and I don’t believe in dropping friends for political reasons. There are limits to that, of course. (A friend who began telling me Adolf Hitler made a lot of good points in Mein Kampf would no longer get invited over to dinner.) But I try as best I can to exemplify the ancient virtue of liberality in my dealings with people. That means demonstrating generosity and openness to difference.But it wouldn’t be entirely honest to suggest I remain drawn to Rod purely out of a principled commitment to tolerate a longstanding friend who holds views with which I sharply disagree. The truth is that I feel like I “get” him on a deep, spiritual level.I don’t feel like I get Dreher on a spiritual level, but I do feel like I perceive him insightfully, from the outside, on a psychological level, and though my perceptions and Linker’s don’t perfectly align, they end up proving (as you’ll appreciate it you listen to our conversation) quite complementary.For both of us, Dreher is such a compellingly open wound of a person. He’s endlessly vulnerable, incredibly affable in one-on-one interactions (as I learned when I did my interview with him), reliably hysterical and apocalyptic when he’s dealing with the broad sweep of things, and also very principled in his idiosyncratic way, unable to gloss over the sins of his own side, in the name of unity, when they conflict with deeply held values of his. This all is, in other words, primo Eminent Americans content, and it was a pleasure to have Linker back on for it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe