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The Continued Betrayal of David French
It’s always sad to see someone you once respected be clown themselves, alas Mr. French seems to want to take it to the next level. In a recent op-ed for the NYT, he joined with three other authors to decry the efforts by various States to slow down Critical Race Theory (CRT). You can read it (shouldn’t be a paywall even) here. (EDITED to correct link)
It’s not clear what parts of this Mr. French actually wrote, but since he signed his name to it, one has to assume that he agrees with it in toto.
The oped is fraught with problems, mostly with assigning pure and noble intention to the proponents of CRT and ascribing only the most vile intentions to its opponents. That has been Mr. French’s opinion of conservatives (that do not agree with him) since 2015. He is, of course, entitled to his views, but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be criticized for that betrayal. I take it further that he, and many others like him, have betrayed the very essence of the conservative political movement by failing to express conservatives views in ways that win adherents to the cause.
As an example:
Indeed, the very act of learning history in a free and multiethnic society is inescapably fraught. Any accurate teaching of any country’s history could make some of its citizens feel uncomfortable (or even guilty) about the past. To deny this necessary consequence of education is, to quote W.E.B. Du Bois, to transform “history into propaganda.”
Why is it that teaching that the essential founding of the U.S. is flawed and thus that the US is a flawed country not propaganda? Why is, as Kendi proclaims, that the govt must favor certain races to ensure equity of outcomes not propaganda and indoctrination? The authors, and especially Mr. French are desirous of destroying the value of our founding on Natural Law to replace it with what exactly?
There was a dust up on Twitter about how CRT should be replaced with Natural Law in our schools. I’d say that prior to CRT, we, mostly, taught Natural Law. That we are all equal, endowed with unalienable rights, and that the role of govt is to secure those rights and protect them from infringement (especially by the government). This shared mythos of our founding and arc towards improvement and the fulfillment of those ideals is the story of the U.S. A decent study of history emphasizes that as opposed to undermining it.
Over on The Federalist, there was a summation of the Twitter fight that is worth reading as well. The idea that Natural Law is now White Supremacy shows a remarkable lack of…well intelligence, or perhaps wisdom is the right term. When one defines that the US was founded to promulgate slavery as the 1619 Project attempts, then one might easily make the jump that the Natural Law that the Founders based their opinions on would be White Supremacy. That Mr. French appears to agree with this continues his slide into, I’d say it relevancy, but as he moves more to the left, or at least becomes a tool of the left by being a “critical conservative” he will become more popular in the mainstream.
Published in Education
CRT does have a place – as a whacko theory in colleges in an elective taught by lunatic professors. Primary education must steer clear of abstract ideas and teach basics. Our founding based on ideals administered by imperfect men was the best possible outcome given the circumstances. However, we strove to make things right, and got rid of slavery and Jim Crow. Things were getting better until Obama and Biden.
Obama did and Biden is continuing to set race relations back. CRT is nothing more than a metaphorical fire hose turned on whites, a payback that cheapens the struggles of real civil rights activists who had actual fire hoses turned on them . . .
Nobody knows. The teacher, even if they have no intention of promoting such ideas, won’t know if what they are teaching happens to trigger some sense of offense in a particular student. Or, what if the students begin to argue about it among themselves, and now “division” has been promoted. The student complains. The statute is so vague that the teacher’s conduct can be said to violate it. Next thing you know, the school loses funding. That’s a problem.
I think you could draft a clearer statute which prohibits these obvious and egregious cases. Just adding something like “intentionally” include or “directly” promote, or “reasonable discomfort,” would help, though by themselves may not be sufficient to fix it.
Agree EJ. So of our three kids only one went through public HS from sophomore year to graduation. Both had very good teachers but it was clear from day one that, unlike the private schools where the clients are the parents, in public schools the parents were just folks to put up with. And this was in schools with good reps, lots of bright Asian students, but the standards were much lower than in the (admittedly expensive) private schools. Cannot imagine how difficult it must be for parents to get any attention in the minority public schools.
He’s not advocating CRT. He clearly opposes it. He’s just pointing out that these statutes are a bad way to combat it.
Are you basing this argument on the actual law text or French’s characterization of it?
I’ve gone over the NYT piece–the subject of this thread– in the interest of hoping to know what I’m talking about. At a minimum, if French “clearly opposes it,” he was ill-advised to put his name on this piece regardless of his views on the various statutes. The editorial itself is nothing but a series of euphemisms about CRT wrapped around an attack on attempts to regulate it.
Nowhere does it come close to acknowledging that, if these laws are imperfect, their existence is fully dependent on the content of what is being taught, which is defined by imperfection. If one did not exist, neither would the other.
It’s rather mind-boggling that the authors would go here without a recognition of the obstacles CRT presents to being “well-informed” and “discerning.” But not a word.
But let’s not cite chapter and verse on the CRT concepts that have prompted these laws, and why the “expression of ideas” is an inaccurate euphemism for a radical redesign of history. This, says the piece, is just a “disagreement” about our “nation’s history.” Right.
As I noted in another post, it is not unusual to have concerns about laws drafted in haste and French may be on a degree of solid ground there. But he’s chosen to keep company with those who are uninterested in categorizing CRT for what it is, or taking the courageous path of condemning it while proposing different means to correct it.
The actual text. I can’t pull up the link on my phone at the moment, but it’s not hard to find, and it’s not a long bill. At least not that I recall.
Isn’t that the point of disagreement between what French wrote and what the Statue actually says?
It is not whether it triggers any individual, it has exactly nothing to do with the response of feelings of any student. It is not the teacher saying slavery and Jim Crow existed and then a white student feeling guilty (this is perfectly fine) it is a teacher saying slavery and Jim Crow existed and you white people ( who are children and were not alive for any of it) should feel guilty.
You can not say all white people, because of their skin color and past generations racism, are inherently racist and evil. You can say that there was and are some racist and bad things happened in the past.
Yes, there are ways a teacher could obviously violate it. That’s not the problem with vague statutes. The problem is the myriad of ways it can be non-obviously violated. The “should feel” language, without more clarification, could still be a very subjective-to-the student standard.“The teacher made me think I should feel guilty for being a white southerner when he said …” The teacher will have to be extremely careful, and you end up with some really sterile, weird version of history.
And that’s before you get to the “promotes division” language, which is also too vague.
SO. Correct. I kept reading how it would have been fine to have The Hillary elected and that we would just have survived it. No. And we may not survive Old Joe. Our culture has been pushed to the very teetering edge! When someone says that seeing American flags flying at houses in neighborhoods is a sign of White Supremacy then we’re waaaaaay down the road to losing the United States of America. It totally is no longer the “united” states at this point.
YES! It’s like some kind of disease they’ve contracted. They’ve really lost their ability to be rational.
If that is really his concern, he needs to pursue it with different allies.
There you go. For sure, Biden et al don’t think THEY would ever be in chains.
I think, again, if that’s really his concern, he needs to be addressing it with different “allies.”
More pay, for more lawyers! Is anyone surprised?
Except French is in the position of supposedly making a nuanced argument, in a joint editorial column with what could be described as rabid anti-gunners.
Another problem there is that it becomes the parents having to fight it over and over, as it keeps coming back with each school board election, new district superintendant, or what-have-you.
And then SCOTUS decides that nobody has “standing” except for the students, and the students don’t have “standing” because they’re underage, and then when they turn 18 it becomes “moot.” You know, just like elections…
They seem to think they don’t share in that risk, but they’re probably in for an unpleasant surprise at some point.
Gold.
What are you, some pro-slavery islamophobe?
I might go along with that, as soon as they stop passing laws making it a crime to use the wrong pronoun, or to “dead-name” someone, etc.
The left is relentless. We need school choice. If we rely on government or lawyers the left wins. Never fight according to the enemies plan.
I am embarrassed that this post was elevated to the Main Feed. I listened to David French explain why a litigation strategy was better than the poorly worded anti-CRT laws. His point was that when he started to litigate against speech codes in Universities, he only needed to win a few cases, and thereafter universities started to cave. See this page which explains the Evanston-Skokie case which is a test case going on right now. https://www.slfliberty.org/case/deemar-v-evanston-skokie-school-district-65/
Still, there are the David French haters. I suggest that they invest $10 a month or $100 a year to get a subscription to The Dispatch so that they can make up their own minds.
Not.
Gonna.
Happen.
My wife says that either is acceptable, but that neither is the best way to state what I was trying to say. That is why she is a writer and I am an IT Consultant that posts on R> from time to time.
You commented 11 times in a row in this post in comments 72-82. Perhaps that is appropriate in a Member Feed Post, but not a Main Feed Post, in my opinion.
Nigel Tufnel might beg to differ.
Who is that?
I heard a conversation between Chris Rufo and David French on Bari Weiss’ Substack: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/should-public-schools-ban-critical I think you have to be a subscriber to hear it, but if I remember correctly, Chris Rufo made this same point, if not here then somewhere else. The legislation gives some backing to these parents who otherwise are left to their own devices to take on school board after school board. David French kept taking the same tack: the legislation is too broad and won’t stand up in court, although the language I’ve read in these bills makes it pretty clear that they are looking for history to be taught as a discipline, the good and the bad, without ideology injected. Seems right to me.