Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
But Does David French Matter?
The lively thread sparked by Joseph Eagar post showed that David French evoked some well-earned antipathy toward his rather tiresome shtick of asserting that his personal brand of conservatism is so pure and enlightened that he is deeply offended by us lesser types daring to claim the same political label. His tweet that the Florida legislation barring mandated indoctrination violated the First Amendment was predictable. His MO is, for example, to call out Christian communities for being insufficiently loving towards the militantly sexually deviant as if that were a greater problem than the array of institutionalized hatred pointed at Christian and Jewish religious life. Or the idea that 2A supporters have “made a fetish” of guns and that is bad for America. His aborted vanity presidential candidacy to express his distaste for Mr. Trump was vintage. Alas, we are unworthy of his guidance.
But Mr. Eagar’s post and its thread tend toward two mistakes. First, even given that the injunctive relief against the Florida statute could be attributed to successful forum-shopping to land a very liberal judge, there is nevertheless a real First Amendment vulnerability here. I don’t think it will be easy to reverse this. Second, people don’t seem to fully understand how utterly useless, ineffectual, and unimportant David French really is and why he should be ignored.
As to the first point, the judge noted correctly that a content-based distinction in legislation is clearly an establishment clause problem. The truth is that employers can assign stupid content. The state can’t just exclude some of it. If an employer does impose some kind of an indoctrination mandate, it just can’t be violative of other rights. For example, a required written exam or a course or certification that has a disparate impact on protected groups can be challenged unless it has some vital relevance to the job. In contrast, an innumerate engineer or an obese jockey can’t easily claim unlawful discrimination.
But what specific rights are violated if a corporation bows to the pseudo-power of social media and makes all staff sit through some con artists’ CRT indoctrination class? Is there a right to be normal, to be left alone and never subjected to vile nonsense? Frankly, I don’t know how to fashion a rights-based case against the uniform capture of the private sector management culture by people who, in truth, despise the freedoms of speech and exercise of religion. God bless Florida, but I doubt the solution is just narrow legislation.
As for Mr. French, the high-minded notion that the real answer is “more speech” has a lovely, bow-tie-on-on-a-law-professor-in-1956 kinda feel but misses the essence of the current crisis. Debate, panel discussion, tolerance for differing views, and a democratic presumption that those who seek to lead us or who would make policy must first assume a burden, a duty to persuade others necessarily relies on “more speech.” But that is exactly the world the left seeks to end. It is not really about better understanding of the role of slavery in American history nor the sociology and definition of race, nor the biology and psychology of sexuality, and the status of the Constitution.
We are instead to be governed by the newly spontaneous certainties about race, sex, and whatever else is mandated. Even if the certainties change, like the war with Eastasia, our duty of uniform acceptance is unchanged. The moral, philosophical, and historical premises that ground the notion of and the need for free speech are being erased. How does anyone debate that particular problem if the available forums are steadily being closed until no university, book publisher, social media company, or journals will permit dissent of any kind?
Either they will win and “more speech” will be a thoughtcrime like “all lives matter” or “woman don’t have penises.” Or there will sometimes be ugly pushback and many messy counterattacks — like the Florida law — as we find our way and recover from the cultural and political Pearl Harbor we are currently living through and achieve a final victory for the normals.
If conservatives do win, David French will still be issuing tiresome, increasingly ignored criticism from the sidelines that did nothing to advance the cause. Or, if the totalitarians win, ironically, David French will be the last conservative silenced precisely because he is no threat to induce serious opposition and is so conspicuously ineffectual that they will delight in propping him up as the opposition for as long as they choose to tolerate the fiction of opposition.
By the very nature of the niche he has carved out for himself, David French does not matter. Stop acting as if he does.
Published in General
I’d say he matters because he’s bamboozled a lot of well-meaning Christians into believing his shtick. I know a few. They seem confused when I tell them that David French is a pharisee and that I recommend they stop giving him any credence.
Jesus spoke out against the pharisees quite a bit. And for that reason we must continue to speak out against the pharisaical Mr. French.
This is the most articulate and relentless burn I have read in a while. Thanks for putting the time in to be so beautifully succinct.
I hope you get to work on the rest of them now.
Short answer: No. Just like Goldberg and Kristol. Once reasonable conservatives who Trump turned into crazy Dems.
The great Al Bundy of Married … With Children once said that you can see how big a man is by looking at the size of the things that irritate him. David French is almost like a piece of chewing gum stuck to the heel of my shoe, but more easily ignored.
To me the most weird result of the last 6 years is the belief that an arrogant New York real estate mogul and TV star who was a democrat for years and ran for President would actually govern as a conservative. But that is what he did to my surprise. Because he was a capitalist to the core. Nasty tweets, for sure. Never been on Twitter could not care less. And governed like it. Knew less taxes and regulation would lead to economic growth. Who’s a thunk it? Only a business guy. But these idiots can’t forget the mean tweets against their MSM pals.
Mostly he doesn’t, but he might get to thinking he does if there are not regular reminders – right in his face – that he doesn’t.
It seems to me to fall under the freedom of conscience (which right, not appearing explicitly in the Constitution, I think would pass the Dobbs tests.) Training in critical race theory is political speech. If so, then mandatory training implies that the company is making it’s employees listen to its political speech on pain of losing their jobs. Perhaps a more pleasant way to spend an evening than watching Harvey Weinstein shower, but the ‘watch or starve’ principle is the same.
Jeez IH. You had to come up with a Weinstein analogy? Nasty.
BINGO
As it turns out I’m going to have to walk back my statements somewhat. Looking up the law, as quoted in the decision:
I stripped out a bunch of lawyerly synonyms, and there are six more provisions, but this is enough to get the idea. The law as written here isn’t “You can’t force employees to participate in these things” but rather “You can’t, in your mandatory training, espouse these eight principles that we’re describing right now.” In other words, nothing in this law says that Harvey Weinstein can’t make you watch him shower.
To be clear I still think there’s a right to freedom of conscience, and that if anyone the Florida legislature has the ability to make laws protecting it even at the expense of limiting the free speech of other actors. It seems though that the legislators tailored this law to be only a restriction on free speech and not an affirmation of the right to freedom of conscience generally. In that sense the law probably deserves to be overturned.
I agree with you here. The following was adapted from a comment on Joseph’s post.
If the rule of law is going to limit freedom of association and freedom of speech, it should be based on prevailing cultural norms. And this is what’s in dispute.
We have freedom of association, which is not freedom of speech. Freedom of association has already been essentially done away with by the codification of equal rights. For examples, if a Black person tried to come and work for me, or sit at my counter and buy a product from me, I can’t refuse for the reason that he is Black; and if access to a men’s club is desirable to women for some reason, even women cannot be barred from a men’s club — functionally eliminating the fundamental character and purpose of the club.
Additionally, just because a Black person chooses to work for me (that is, to associate with me), I can’t advocate and compel certain kinds of speech, say, pro-KKK talking points, as a condition of employment if these words go against his creed or religion.
On the other hand, you can be fired from your job for certain forms of speech, say, saying that in South Africa you are protected from getting AIDS because you’re White, or contradicting or violating ESG.
Now with the situation regarding associating with others, we have gone from: one is supposed to agree that by law some speech that is preferentially prohibited (pro-KKK) to: agreeing that by law some kind of speech that is preferentially required (pro-CRT/ESG).
These determinations seem to be made to reflect what in societally accepted, that is what’s normal and good and what is not, but there is no consensus on what is normal and good — and what it not. Normal and good is therefore being decided and dictated by the state in terms of what is legal.
This is the nature of the dispute.
I get the feeling part of our disagreement is over the value of the Civil Rights Act. Certain people seem to be relishing the corrupt non-enforcement of that act as an opportunity to severely limit it and are seemingly disappointed at the idea that conservatives might save it by a combination of state legislative action and judicial reforms.
Exactly. Conservatives are resorting to blunt-force displays of political power because political power is the only kind of power the right has. If regulation of speech offends David French (and maybe it should), then I’d like to see him support an effort to draft conservatives into positions of leadership in academia and the corporate world. Affirmative action for the right! Because it’s sort of hard to have a “marketplace of ideas” when only one idea is on offer. When 99 percent of people in an institution agree with each other, there won’t be much of the polite debate French says he desires. So, what do you say, David? Want to fix this problem?
But something tells me he’d shoot this down, too.
Were it not for Ricochet, I would have no idea who David French is. I feel quite certain that most non-Ricochet readers have no idea either. Not to worry about this guy.
Who is David French, and no, he doesn’t matter.
I only heard about David French when Bill Kristol tried pushing him for President in 2016. Had never heard of him before that. About 5 minutes of reading his stuff during that campaign told me he wasn’t worth my time.
So I do know who he is, but Columbo is correct “he doesn’t matter” to anyone who thinks for themselves.
Now the problem may be do we have enough people who still do that?
Unfortunately, that’s not true. I have well-meaning friends who regularly share his articles as if they were pronouncements from on high. I react as anyone might react if invited to join in a feast laced with strychnine. What? No?! Why are you consuming that stuff!?! “Friends don’t let friends read David French” I tell them. And then I’m forced to explain all the issues I have with the guy.
The problem is he couches all his political views with appeals to scripture and Christianity, and too many don’t have the discernment needed to see how slippery he is and get sucked right in. Why, he’s a Christian just like me! I need to trust what he’s saying is true! I need to do as he admonishes!
NO NO NO NO NO!
And that’s why I say we can’t just ignore him, because low-information voters — particularly of the evangelical variety — are too easily swayed.
These former and/or fake conservatives (Goldberg, Kristol, Hayes, French, et al) need to be combated until they lose enough influence that the preference cascade turns against them. Until the majority sees them as punchlines and not even a low-class outlet like MSNBC will give them airtime.
When the only outlet left to them is The Bulwark, that’s a good sign we’ve done our jobs right.
But that’s cancel culture!
Damn straight it is.* Do you want to win or not?
* It’s not really cancel culture because we’re not doing what the White House is doing, for example, and demanding that Big Tech forcibly remove them from their platforms. We’re going to engage them on these platforms with FREE SPEECH until the market turns against them.
Until Romney and French field their own Never Trumper candidate from the new group outside the Republican Party, we really can’t know how influential they are.
I’m guessing that their following is not as large as they think it is. Life was pretty good under Donald Trump.
French and Romney have lost their Norman Rockwell sense of humor and love for the unpredictable and surprisingly always victorious American mind.
The NeverTrump movement was just a bunch of guys poised to say “We told you so” after Trump’s term was a failure. When Trump proved to be very largely successful, they had no plan B other than to cheer Mueller. When Russiagate fizzled, they just carped pathetically as they drifted into dhimmitude under DNC rule.
The illusion of their own purity makes them prone to exaggerate the apparent flaws of others on their side while their own lack of self-examination persists.
Yeah, I used to refer to French as the “King of Clickbait” but then I realized that title could just as easily refer to the entire New York TImes and Washington Post editorial staffs, not to mention the staff of the Atlantic and a dozen similiar rags.
What is frightening is the number of bozos who read these rags and actually believe what they read.
When I’m down on a Sunday afternoon there is no better tonic than some vintage David French bashing. And no one does it better than Old Bathos.
Ricochet is where I learned about him. Maybe somebody on Twitter has mentioned him, too; I’m not sure.
No, not even a little bit.
Indeed. They are the Pharisees whom Jesus takes to task in today’s reading for all Catholic masses in the world today. See Matthew 23: 13-26 The Seven Woes to the Blind Pharisees (they “know” so much, that just isn’t so!). The foolishness of being false/blind/wrong. And they do know that they are a small ignorant fraction of the non-democrat party. They even admitted to the analogy of the Japanese soldiers who were unaware of the war being over. Billy Kristol, weak son of Irving, first attempted this via a laughable third party in 2016, that potentially could have put Hillary Clinton in the White House to name SCOTUS judges that President Donald Trump eventually did. So blind to their actions being in direct conflict to their words and previous beliefs. All because of President Donald Trump. Sad.
FWIW I found Mr. French tiresome before 2016. His use of Christianity as a cudgel to admonish the Right to always turn the other cheek was a bit too sanctimonious for me. I knew I was supposed to like him because he was a “Conservative” and a “Christian”, as am I (without the ” “s). But nothing other than tribal loyalty caused me to give him any mind. His jeremiads seemed to always devolve to the equivalent of “well her skirt was too short” blaming the victim.
Same here.
Prior to his going round the bend, I did appreciate his take on the illegal John Doe raids in Wisconsin where private citizens who committed the sin of donating to conservatives faced pre-dawn raids, their computers confiscated, and orders to not speak a word of it lest they be charged.
But for some reason the raid on Mar-a-Lago is perfectly acceptable to him.