David French, writer for National Review, joined Dan and Amy to talk about the recent attacks on him from Sohrab Ahmari, who wrote an essay in First Things entitled “Against David French-ism”. French has responded to that attack in his own column but in this interview, he expanded on his thoughts.
This is a rush transcript. Please excuse grammatical errors that may have occured in transcription.
Dan Proft: Alright, we’ve got a lot to cover here. And Mr. French has been making a lot of news this week, some of it, not of his own doing. And there’s a lot of news that we want him to comment on as well. So let’s get to it. David French: writer, National Review, contributor to TIME, constitutional lawyer, author, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. David, thanks for joining us again. Appreciate it.
David French: Thanks for having me.
Dan Proft: Well, you have been quite the hot topic this week. And, you know, the back and forth between you and Sohrab Ahmari, and then everybody else who’s piled in. It is interesting because, I mean, if you can strip some of some of it away, civility, pugnacity, or something else, and two writers who I think you otherwise enjoy Rusty Reno and Matthew Schmitz at First Things …
David French: I do not otherwise enjoy them.
Dan Proft: Oh, you don’t enjoy otherwise enjoy them?
David French: Yeah.
Dan Proft: Okay. All right. Well, then.
David French: I have no respect for Matthew Schmitz.
Dan Proft: Okay … All right. Well, this this is going to be even more interesting then. Okay, so Reno and to some extent Schmitz are saying the same thing, that civility / pugnacity, that we’re at a time in the face of cultural Marxism, controlling most of the civic institutions in American society, that there was a requirement for “a something else” that binds us together. And I wonder how you react to that argument, as opposed to the civility / pugnacity binary.
David French: Well, so there’s there were three things going on here in this … in the attack, all of them are troublesome in different ways. So number one was the original attack was essentially said that, “David, you need to understand that politics is war and enmity.” Okay. It is not. It is not. I’ve been to war. This is not war. Okay. So it is not war. We are talking about fellow citizens of our country. And so when you say politics is war an enmity, I mean, I wonder how many people put on 70 pounds of body armor ammunition and, and arm themselves with weapons to go in and talk to Jack Dorsey of Twitter about Twitter censorship. I mean, this is absurd. It’s ridiculous. So it’s not war. Then they said … made a direct attack on civility and decency and politics. And now this is curious. Now, if you’re not a Christian, you know, this … It’s one argument that First Things is a Christian journal. Sohrab is a Christian convert. Rusty Reno’s a Christian. Matthew Schmitz is a Christian, and there’s direct Scriptural absolute … I mean, there’s absolute direct command in Scripture about how you are to deal with people. And they know mandate things like loving your enemies It mandates treating even opponents with kindness. I mean, like, this is not, “Hey, this is your tactic you have to use until you need to own the libs.” These are commands. They don’t even deal with that at all. They talk about this in secular terms. And then the last thing is they essentially make a frontal attack on the American in … Let’s just be really blunt about, it on the core claim of the American Declaration of Independence, which are that we are endowed with our Creator, by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are constituted, instituted among men to secure these liberties. So this is the core of the classical liberal framework in the United States. It is one in which the government safeguards liberty, that is, its principal purpose. Now, it has other purposes as well, but its principal purpose is to safeguard liberty. And there’s this weird idea that this focus on the government and securing liberty is inherently destructive to what they would call the higher good or the common good. That rather than placing the responsibility for virtue onto the citizen, they would say, well, there is the government is indispensable through the political process for instituting the higher good. Now, this isn’t the Founders vision. John Adams said, the Constitution was made for a moral and religious people, totally inadequate for the governance of any other. In the same letter, he noted that our Constitution was too weak to correct for the depravity of the people if the people became depraved. In other words, our Constitutional structure is not designed to implement a top down version of virtue. That comes from the grassroots up.
Dan Proft: Okay. Okay. But on that score, though. I don’t think … and i don’t think you’re saying this … I don’t think Sohrab Ahmari or Rusty Reno was advocating a theocracy, or ,,, but I think there’s a recognition that every law is a reflection of someone’s morality. And so the law should be reflective of the values, morality, if you will, upon which the nation was founded and conceived as a free society.
David French: Well … no. What they’re saying essentially, is that the … Let’s just take the example that launched this whole thing. Ahmari got really angry that Sacramento public library is hosting a drag queen story hour, right? That’s when he launched a gratuitous attack on me, saying there’s no polite David Frenchian way through this. And now, let’s talk about this. Let’s suppose Sohrab wants to … What does he want to do about drag queen story hour? Well, if you want the government to ban drag queen story hour, what you’re doing is you’re going to be saying, liberty, which this is an exercise in liberty, it’s free association, it’s free speech, is going to be subordinated to this their defined version of the higher good or the common good. Now, this is a change in our … This would necessitate a pretty dramatic change in our legal jurisprudence around free speech and free association, to privilege and to a greater degree, a much greater degree, the ability of the government to decide which speech is good for us and which speech is not. That not work out well for us.
Dan Proft: But that’s what’s … exactly what’s happening in K-12 institutions, and so many other government arenas today … They’re … But they’re privileging the drag queen and the other instruments of cultural Marxism over those who would dissent.
David French: Well, and what’s our principal defense to that? It’s the institutions and legal doctrines of classical liberalism. That’s where you defend … you allow … You go in court. And you allow Christian student groups to operate in those spaces. You allow Christian student groups to even get funding from universities in those spaces. You protect the ability of Christian professors and teachers to continue to keep their jobs. All of that is … All of that is protected by the institutions of classical liberalism and individual liberty. And if you degrade that, if you say, “No, no, we’re not going to, we’re not going to do that anymore.” Because what instead what we’re going to do is we’re going to try to replace the very legal doctrines that are most protected for religious liberty in the United States, in favor of a series of doctrines that will allow the government to suppress those liberties, when the government believes the higher good conflicts with individual liberty, you’re changing America fundamentally, that’s a direct attack on the founding.
Amy Jacobson: So you think drag queen story hour should remain?
David French: I don’t like drag queen story hour.
Amy Jacobson: I don’t, I don’t like it either.
David French: But I don’t think that the government should ban drag queen story hour.
Dan Proft: No right … Of course. I’m in agreement with that. And so my, my take on this is, is that this is sort of about unilaterally disarming, not taking the Left’s approach, the Left’s intolerant, central command control approach, in advance of conservative principles, but conservatives who disarm in the face of the aggressive, amoral, cultural Marxist, who is in charge of these institutions.
David French: If that’s what it’s about, why attack me?
Dan Proft: Well, no. I’m not defending the attacking of you. I’m just saying, I’m just saying, you know, the ground that I that … I’m just sort of articulating the ground I think we should be fighting on, I’m not necessarily taking sides in the Ahmari versus French versus … yeah.
David French: But you know, that’s the whole point. The whole point was … this is an example of what the kind of politics they want. So this began by an attack on me that was based and has multiple fundamental misrepresentations in it. For example, he said in his piece, that my solution to ideological monocultures in universities was, “better work life balance.” I don’t even know where he gets that. And my, my solution to ideological monocultures in universities was to launch a wave of litigation that has offended speech code and freedom of association from coast to coast. That was my response. And instead, it was just, “a better work life balance.” That is a lie. That is a lie, and as a result of those lies, I have been an object of hate online for ten days. It’s absurd. And this is what you have to understand. That’s the point of this. That this is demonstrating how they want to fight. How they want to fight is to take a person and they could take a person lie about a person, misrepresent the person, try to expose them to public humiliation and public ridicule in the hopes that, what? I’m going to abandon my convictions? That are retreating into a hole somewhere? People have been trying to make this high-minded. People have been trying to make this something sophisticated. It was not from its inception, it is not now. it is not high-minded. It is crass. It is not sophisticated. It is stupid.
Amy Jacobson: Yeah. It sounds like you’re standing strong, but what is the worst? Have you gotten any threats? Or people just ripping on?
David French: Yeah, I can’t really discuss the full extent of it. But it is, you know … I will just say this, there are people who are trying to rescue something good from this ruin, that are trying to say, “Okay, well, let’s have a really interesting talk about, you know, classical liberalism versus statism.” Those are interesting philosophical comments. And those are interesting philosophical discussions or have it about fusionism versus nationalism, which is what Ross Douthat tried to make it New York Times, right? That was not what this was. That was not. Now, we can have those debates, and we shouldn’t have those debates. And I’m happy to have those debates. But this was not that. This was, this was something else entirely.
Dan Proft: But the discussion of it, so a bit earlier in the week, we spoke Noah Rothman. And we brought this up. And he mentioned, you know, he’s, he’s friendly with both you. Sohrab, and so he sort of didn’t want to get into the middle of it. But, but it’s just interesting what this and I’m, and again, even though, I know you’ve been tough on Trump sometimes, and there’s people that come after you because you’re not as pro-Trump as they would like everybody to be. And I made the same point that you just made about your own record of being, you know, on the battlefront fighting for and litigating for religious liberty and so forth. So just because stylistically or even on particular issues, there may be disagreement doesn’t mean that this is not a comrade-in-arms talking about you. But there is something though, that was disturbing about my conversation with Noah Rothman who has been on the show many times, and I like, and he’s smart guy and all that. But there’s almost with him there was almost like, there’s not a cultural war. I mean, I know you didn’t hear it, so I don’t want you to comment on something you didn’t hear. But our audience will confirm, but it was this kind of like, “Well, we control some state legislatures, and they control most of the universities, but we control some universities, too.” There was sort of this middling of the threat faced to culture by the Marxists, the sentimentalists, that I thought really was, frankly, disturbing. Because I think Noah Rothman was completely … And ironically, he wrote a book about social injustice. But I think he was sort of under estimating what’s at stake if you cede turf to the cultural Marxists, just say, well, we have to have a civil debate even while you’re tearing asunder the foundations of the country.
David French: Well, so there’s cultural war there. I mean, of course, there’s a cultural war. What I think, if I understand his argument, because I’ve heard him speak, there’s, there’s a part of it that I agree with. And it’s … we can’t be catastrophizing, when things. look … A lot of the cultural war and the intensity on both sides comes from the conviction on both sides, believe it or not, I’m going to tell you something, and you’ll laugh at this. But there is a conviction on the Left that they’re losing the culture war.
Dan Proft: Yeah, but they … but I guess that’s what what Noah Rothman was in part saying is like, they do that to foment their base and to keep the fight up, and the same way conservatives do. But you can say that, but you’re right. It’s a laugh line. Because we look at the scoreboard.
David French: Well, yeah, so they look at the scoreboard and they say we just passed more heartbeat bills and has ever been passed in the history of the United States. And which is a really, very, very positive development that depends on a culture of life, I think we’ve nurtured and sustained and actually grown in this country since Roe. So the bottom line, is there two culture wars, there’s not just one. So culture war number one is the classic one that we have been thinking about for years, you know — life, or abortion, religious liberty, gun rights. You know, the sort of the God, guns, gays formulation that Obama talked about back in the day. That’s sort of the shorthand for the classic culture wars. So that’s, that’s one culture war. But there’s another one that’s emerging right now, and that’s liberal versus illiberal. And so the most toxic form of this, of the culture war, is illiberal, using illiberal means to fight for destructive policies. And that’s your sort of your woke social justice warriors. These are the people trying to silence and de-platform and all of that. So they’re, they’re not only on the wrong side, in my view, of the cultural issues, they’re on the wrong side of the illiberal versus liberal. But what we’re having emerging on the right is a battle over illiberal versus liberal, as well. And they’re using the illiberalism of their opponents to mimic their tactics, and in very important way to mimic their philosophy.
Dan Proft: I hear that, and I have a concerns in that same direction. But let me ask you this, do you think it would be helpful to to blunt the those tendencies or impulses, if we made it clear that hey, look, you know, very much like we talked about this in the context of geopolitics, you know, one of the things you have to understand is that Putin doesn’t want what we want. So if you don’t understand what Putin actually wants, then you’re not going to engage him in the right way, for example. And so the same thing, bears … forgive the autocratic comparison … But the same thing here. The cultural Marxists, they don’t actually want the same, and we’re not all trying to get to the same place. They don’t want the same thing that people who believe in free minds and free markets and in a free society want. And if you don’t understand that, then you’re not going to get to … You’re not going to engage them in the right way.
David French: Then you also need to understand that Sohrab does not want you what you want if you’re using the term, “free minds and free markets.” So he might be on your side on a life issue. But he’s not on your side on individual liberties. Not on your side on free markets, and he’s not on your side on the power of the state. So this is what something that’s happening in a pretty interesting way on the Right. And I utterly opposed to it. Just as I’m about to this, you know, this cultural Marxism construct. The the issue here with that we have is this … If you want free minds, and free markets. If you want individual liberty. If you would like to see religious liberty and free speech and freedom of association and due process protected for all Americans, increasingly, you’re going to find the two-front war. We’re going to be fighting against the opponents, if you’re a conservative, that you’ve long known and understood for most of your adult life. And you’re also going to be fighting against a cohort of people on the Right, I’m not going to call them conservatives, who are fundamentally illiberal, who fundamentally believe in dramatically expanding the power of the state, who fundamentally believe in undermining the First Amendment and other individual liberties in the Bill of Rights to fight their own culture war. And that’s what this is about. It’s not fusionism versus nationalism. It’s not Trump or not Trump. It is liberalism versus illiberalism. And the reason you’re deceived often into thinking that these people quote unquote, are on our side is because on specific individual issues, they’re going to agree with you. They’re going to be against abortion, for example, which is huge. It’s hugely important. But to them to say, well, that very phrase that you said, “free minds and free markets,” will cause a Rusty Reno nowadays to break out into hives. This is called this is what they call “libertarian conservatism,” and it’s the enemy to them. And I think that what we have to understand is what is actually happening here is a fundamental change amongst many people, and their view of the role of the government, in their view of the power of government, and their belief in free markets. This is a big change happening and one of the ways … and it’s combined with a change in the way that conservatives have traditionally believed that they should interact with the culture. They have allowed about the 8% of the country that are sort of the extremely progressive — the people who disproportionately populate big tech and Hollywood and the academy — to just sort of with twist and warp their thinking in the way that they interact with the entire culture, from a position of hostility, from the position of combativeness, often from a position of outright cruelty. And I don’t think that’s, that’s the way conservative should interact with the culture, period.
Dan Proft: He is David French, writer at National Review, contributor to TIME, constitutional lawyer, author, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. David, thanks as always for joining us. Appreciate it.
David French: Thanks for having me.