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David French Is Not a Serious Conservative
The one area where we have had strong movement, gun rights, he attacks. Idolatry? Please. French wants to compromise and give up on progress made.
But, that is not the real reason he is not a serious conservative. No, this is just icing on the cake. Proof, if you will, of his nature. He proved he was unserious when he genuinely considered Bill Kristol’s plan to run for President and try to get the election thrown to the House. A serious conservative would never have courted a constitutional crisis because he did not like the GOP nominee.
So, of course, French is against standing our ground on guns. What else can we expect from a man who thought it would have been a good idea for our Republic to be selected President after 90%+ of the voters voted for someone else.
Published in General
Yes, I enjoy NRO plus and don’t want to give up my printed version. I can pick and choose what to read and always find some good stuff. I ignore other stuff.
I agree on the compassion point, but I hope the second is a false dichotomy. There are ways to be compassionate that don’t involve throwing money. Democrats oppose school choice, for example. How compassionate is that? They won’t allow all boys’ schools (which can really matter), how compassionate is that. And as for the abandonment of the working person, Amen. They seem to hate the workers these days.
Unless something has changed, the print version isn’t a money maker. NR Plus is a good product. The website is clean and easy to navigate.
I am at the point that if the R nominee is anyone other than Trump I probably will not vote. I didn’t like Trump going into 11/2016, but figured he was better than Hillary. He has been more conservative and pro-American than anyone since Reagan. I don’t argue anymore with people too blind to see that. But I sure am not voting for another milquetoast like Romney or turncoat like McCain. Republicans have lost me.
This is not art, or silly art–pictures. It’s intimidation.
Rappers etc. posing with guns, rapping about guns etc. is not ideal because of the social set up, but I don’t know what to do about it.
That is not a sane view. The NR Institute puts a lot into spreading conservative principles. It has traveling seminars, outreach to college students , and their Burke to Buckley seminars. I have attended some of their intros to them on the cruises and the people they bring in are quite good. There is a weekly one going on now that I didn’t sign up for because I am not free on Tuesday nights. Had they made it Wednesday, I would have paid for the online version. I understand the dislike some have but most of the writers that angered people aren’t there. A few still are. I just ignore them. It would be a big win for the left if they could make it go under. I do my part to keep the left from having that victory.
Not going to pay to read it.
Idiocy
Oh, I don’t think the country is going back to Romney/McCain/Bush/Cheney Republicanism. These are some of the least popular people on the scene. It looks like either Trump or DeSantis will be at the top of the ticket, and I’m okay with that. It’s defeating the Left that matters. Know your enemy.
You can yourself whatever you like. Reagan wouldn’t approve of what Kristol has become
[And agreeing with most of Jerry’s comments] I think Mr. French has misdiagnosed what is happening in “gun culture.” But, I’m not sure Mr. Cooke is correct to say that “nothing in gun culture has changed.” I think defenders of the right of self defense (as documented in the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution) might appear more aggressive in their defense. But I think something has changed – we have lived through the last three to four years. I diagnose the possibly more aggressive defense of the right of self defense (and guns) as a reaction to well publicized events of the last three to four years in which governments (local, state, and federal) have demonstrated an unwillingness to defend citizens against invaders and violent criminals, criminals have become more bold and acted with more frequency under the approval of government agents, governments have imposed illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on the liberties of citizens under the excuse of a claimed public health event, government leaders have increasingly declared the citizen to the be enemy of the government and demonized up to half the population, and people of “the left” have demonstrated intentions to push to a complete, no compromise, totalitarian rule on topics including forcing sexual deviancy onto others including our children, imposing forced drugging on the populace, demanding the right to kill babies, imposing narrow ideological conformity, and making schools the enemies of parents. The “gun rights” people then reasonably conclude based on these recent past experiences that any compromise is likely to lead to more and more compromise until nothing is left. That resistance may look too “defiant” to those who mistakenly believe that forces for gun control might be willing to compromise, but those resisting see it as necessary to preserve any of our liberties, including our right to self defense, and might justifiably conclude they need to be more vocal about their position.
Big Lie – Like “Russian Collusion” – does this count as a big lie?
The Big Lie will be coming from the show-trial committee with Liz Cheney backing the latest attempt to distract from the real damage done to our country
I think it isn’t dislike that drives their comments. We dislike what the left writes but understand them and expect it of them. However, we feel betrayed by some we trusted on our side. For some, it was an unforgivable sin, especially now that the country is crumbling around them and they live under constant fear of what the Democrats will do. The more we see 2020 as the tipping point, the angrier we get. I would be more concerned if they were apathetic.
I think any Republican that wants to see anything they advocate done in government better understand that they will likely have to reach across the aisle for some support. That includes when Republicans have POTUS and both houses of Congress.
I will sign up to VDH’s. Meant to some time ago but have been real busy.
I thought Mark Levin was really good on this last night. Monday show. I think from the start.
I can explain some of it and will at some point.
I’m sure Democrats are my enemy. The problem is I don’t believe any more that Republicans are my ally. If it is DeSantis I’ll likely vote for him. But beyond that I don’t trust Republicans to be any different from Democrats when it comes to conservative values.
The problem is that the GOPe idea of “compromise” is that the left gets some of what it’s asking for and conservatives get jack squat. For example, instead of piling new gun laws on top of all the ones that we already have, insist that some of the existing laws be repealed before adding more. Maybe pick the ones that the leftists refuse to enforce against their constituents. Make the “compromise” so that we actually get something, rather than just giving up less than the left wants us to.
Not to be overly and unnecessarily combative but is there something preventing you from clicking the link provided in the first sentence of the OP? This seems to be a very easy answer to obtain…in fact, much easier than typing “Just curious. What was that subtitle?” Considering I spend a large part of my time here questioning people’s intellectual integrity and pointing out their obvious lack of good-faith, this kind of avoidance of easy data gathering tends to make me suspicious. Not that I have any specific memory of any lack of good faith on your part…I even went back to my touchstone (i.e. the juvenile emotionalism of the comment section under that silly J6 Main Feed post) and found nothing through the first 20 pages of comments to fan that suspicion beyond the spark generated here. Therefore…wait, what was the question again?
The subtitle is: “As American gun culture moves from defense to defiance, it puts our democracy at risk.”
These may not have been French’s words, but I think that they are a fair summary of his article. Among other things, the body of the article stated:
I think that French makes one reasonable point, though I don’t know if the problem he identifies is as widespread as he indicates. He argues that:
I do agree that this presents a problem. If you’re going to a political protest or rally, carrying an assault rifle could understandably be perceived as a threat. Even open carrying a handgun could look threatening. This is a genuine problem, though it does not lead me to reject the idea of open carry. The circumstances matter, though. Open carry can transition into intimidation pretty quickly.
The public display and (reported) increasing carry of weapons is a symptom, not a cause, David F French.
Gun rights are increasingly under threat along with all of our other rights. This does not bother the left, as they trust government to begin with, and they are not targeted anyway.
It is not possible to explain the um “lived experience” of the right to the comfortable now-mainstream loony left. They retain no connection to this culture, the Constitution, or anything it says.
Guns are more visible, more present, and more valuable now because the need for them is increasing.
I am a polite, wary, discreet gun owner. I am well-trained, I’m damned good with a pistol, and I do not engage in minor arguments when armed. Man pees on the sign in front of my building. I’m armed so I literally look the other way. Why? Because that’s not worth shooting over, and you never know where something will lead.
Keeping that particular powder dry for the real fight.
I no longer travel to DC. Ever. I went to some protests/demonstrations in 2020. That place, with its hostile, violent, democrat supermob majority and the fact that the good guys are disarmed, is a recipe for disaster. And I wouldn’t count on the junta there helping.
Context matters. Black Panthers showing up armed at polling places should be illegal, if not already illegal. Family pics at home are benign. Some pics the grabbers use have no context.
Wrong. Now try some of that logical contortionism with the First Amendment. Or with the “threatening look” of the ANTIFA garb as they gather for the circumstances of their next
insurrectionriotmostly peaceful protest.Constitutional rights matter.
They hate NR but not all the writers who contributed. In fact, only three were NR writers. I have kept the issue handy all these years. It was a big screw up but I defended it against attackers. The writers gave their rationale. Some were right and others were wrong. I wish I had a mea culpa issue to go along with it. What matters is what they did after the primary until Election Day 2020.
Right. If you’re threatened by open carry, stay at home for your own peace of mind. If you just don’t like it but can manage not to cringe cry and scream, then maybe just keep it to yourself.
There are how many millions of conservative/Republican voters?
And how many hundreds or thousands of NR subscribers?
Based on Jerry’s 1 of 1 small poll (so far) a few threads over, I’ll sustain Phil’s objection. Of ALL PLACES, this place should have a pro-NR biased membership. Doesn’t seem to.
Sorry, I took you to mean that you had gotten past the paywall in order to see the subtitle. A misreading, or assumption, on my part. Happens often when I am doing crosswords, too. Also, glad to hear I’m OK by you.