YouSaid · the spoken record

David French

lines on the record: 65
first: 2023-10-12
most recent: 2023-10-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, the law draws some pretty good lines, I think. So the problem you see is when somebody says, I don't just want to be protected from harassment, which is legally you are. I want to be protected from defamation, which legally you are. And there are other categories. But when you say I want to be protected from your idea, that is where you implicate core First Amendment interests. And the First Amendment case law is pretty darn clear. There's no such thing as hate speech under the Constitution. In other words, you're not protected from any idea, but you are protected from these other ways in which people use speech or they might use their voice in ways that are harmful, but you're never protected from an idea.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, learning things that will be valuable to you. But even if you're right, you're often diminishing your ability to engage, to persuade, you're even diminishing the sharpness And again, when you live in this pluralistic society, we have forgotten the art of persuasion. We just move towards, right towards mobilization. There's more of me than there are of you. And especially if you have a minority viewpoint”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Need to understand, and certainly college students, and I'm also, I really like the John Stuart Mill defense of free speech. And Mill says it like this. He says, well, if I'm wrong and you're right and you convince me that I'm wrong and I agree, then free speech has benefited me immensely. It's taken me from error into truth. But what if you and I have a conversation and I still believe I'm right and you're wrong at the end of it? Was that of no value? No, it's of tremendous value because one, I'm going to know you and understand you better. And number two, I'm going to be able to understand my own beliefs better and sharpen them. And so if you live in a world in which you are protecting yourself from the viewpoints that you disagree with, you're kind of doing two negative things at once. You're presuming you know all truth when we all don't. We don't. You're hiding yourself away from.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, That's one of the jobs of every layer of every level. And it just gets more important the further you go. So you're not really preparing kindergartners for pluralism that much, but 10th graders.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, there's, and all of this fight over education, there's this really interesting Supreme Court case that nobody knew about and forgot. They'd all forgotten about it. Everyone had forgotten about it because they thought it was an artifact of a previous time. It's about a school book banning dispute in a school library in the early 1970s. And it was kind of a case forgotten history because we thought that that wave of that kind of thing was over. Well, no, it's not. And so I reacquainted myself with it. And there's this really fascinating line in there about what is the purpose of education. And it was one of the purposes, in addition to, you know, reading and writing and arithmetic and all of that is to prepare students to live in a pluralistic, often contentious society, to prepare us to live in a pluralistic, often contentious society.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Looking for the governor. And this is all in the water. And it's not just about Trump anymore. So, you know, the last really scary moment that we had as a family was related to when I opposed the anti-CRT bill in Tennessee. So I'm not a critical race theorist, but I'm a believer in the First Amendment and I'm a believer that children should be educated in all different kinds of ideas and theories and that a number of state legislatures pass these bills to prohibit certain kinds of teachings on race and the bills were so poorly written they might as well be drafted in crayon. And I was like, wait, we need to, these bills are way over the top in prohibiting people from speaking and they're poorly written. They're vague. They're oppressive. And that when I wrote about that, the response in the backlash was unbelievable.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really is. I mean, just in so Franklin, Tennessee, where I live, if you ever come and visit it, you would think, wow, this is kind of a storybook community, beautiful downtown, beautiful homes, beautiful countryside, the mayoral race right now is between establishment Republican and a woman who Outright neo-Nazis came to the last candidate forum to, quote, provide security for her. Now, she says she didn't invite them and all of this, but she actually was the listing agent when some of them were selling a store that they owned. And you've got actual Nazis who are clustering outside of candidate forums in the small, not that small, but small city in the south. And that's just one place. You know, as we're recording this, there was a guy who showed up in the Wisconsin State House.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have never in my life been more alarmed about the future of this country and about the possibility of widespread political violence. Because David, it is, and I want your listeners to understand this, it's worse than you think. So if your focus is on Trump only and not the way his ethos has metastasized throughout right-wing America, you're not getting the picture. So at the same time that all of this is happening nationally with Trump threatening to execute Millie to investigate news networks, you know, defying judicial, or you just go down the line of the outrageous thing that he's doing and then the indictments stand testimonious to the outrageous things that he's done.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. I mean, I have no, there's no rational reason for him to be the leader, the nominee, but I don't see any basis, I don't see any way that he loses as of right now.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With remarkable resilience and courage and not a little anger You know, when you've seen when your older sibling and you've seen people treat your youngest sister like that makes you angry when you go to college, say and you see sort of the frat bro culture around magaism, it makes you angry. And so, no, they're courageous, they're resilient, but they're more than a little ticked off also.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's when I really began to see how deep this rot was, that when you're presented with the darkest side of a dark movement and your response is, well, don't let that deter you from voting for the guy that those people love. The alt-right loves. And that was shocking to me. That was. Shocking to me. And to see it come from people in my own church who I'd known for years and some of the behavior, and in addition to the threatening behavior, there was just pettiness. So, for example, I would come into my kids' basketball game where they attended a small Christian school in rural Tennessee. And there would be a couple of families who would just turn their backs to us. And in that circumstance, it wasn't over Trump. It was over Roy Moore because I opposed Roy Moore, the Republican senator.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People loved that. Yeah, the Times is very, very supportive. They have incredible security professionals who help you. But it never really stopped. And here's the thing, David. There are two aspects of that that were grievous. One is the obvious horror of the, they're not continual, but episodic threatening moments. And some of them would get very, very scary. So that's horrible. But then the other thing that was so horrible is I would tell this story to my Republican friends. And if they were my close friends, they were stricken for us. They were, what can we do to help? Is there anything that we can do? But one step removed. And the main thing they're worried about was whether this would turn me against Trump.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we started to have threats. So she'd grown up around guns, but she hadn't fired a gun in a long time. So she's very responsible. So she said, if I'm going to carry a gun, I'm going to go get trained. And so she went and took a series of classes in self-defense, started carrying a gun wherever she went. And it was very bad and it never fully stopped. So we had.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Saw pictures of her Photoshopped into slave fields. My wife was a writer at Pathios, a religious website at the time, and her blog was filled with gruesome images of murdered black Americans. I mean, just gruesome.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet it's not alt. It's become big parts the right. And so I said, look, this is echoing these white nationalist racist talking points. It shouldn't have any place in the GOP primary period end of discussion. It's like this very brief little post. And you know how sometimes when you do something online and it'll have the pop up it says, are you sure you want to, there should have been a pop-up that said, are you sure you want to change your life with this post? I would have hit yes anyway, but that warning would have been nice because within 30 minutes of that post going up, I think was the first moment I saw a picture of my youngest daughter photoshopped him to a gas chamber, saw pictures of her photoshopped into slaves.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's horrible in one word. And it really started, I will never forget, it was 2015, it was September, I believe, of 2015. And I had watched a Republican debate. And I had seen Trump and then some Trump allies online specifically Anne Coulter echoing what I recognize as talking points from this really new and emerging movement called the alt-right. We don't talk about the alt-right as much anymore because sadly large parts of the alt-right are.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, if he can prevail now, he will project to the world, to his people and a degree of resolve and strength that we will have quailed and backed down in front of. And here's the important thing for no good reason, David, for no good reason at all.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely When I was in Ukraine, I was in Ukraine in Kiev in May. And we were meeting with the then defense minister. And he said something very interesting. He said, look, Putin pushes and then waits for an election. He pushes again and he waits for election. And the interesting thing, and I wrote this in the Times a couple of weeks ago, the interesting thing is there is a way in which if Putin is able to prevail now after all of his initial early defeats, it could even be more crushing for the world order because he has now portrayed as Russia versus NATO. Even though it's only Ukrainians fighting to be clear, but they're fighting with NATO resources primarily American resources.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if you know anything about Russian military history, you know that the failure of the initial plan is not the end of the story.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very worried. I'm very worried about that. And it would be Abomination to abandon them. Let me back up a bit. So this has been one of the things that has showed me That the Trump change and the party was not a blip, but could be something really lasting with world historic consequences. So, you know, a lot of things about the era, a lot of things that we'll talk about, and we have talked about, they kind of ebb and flow through the democratic process. And one side is up and another side's down. And a lot of these things aren't finally settled for a while. The war in Ukraine is we're watching a world historic moment. That if Russia triumphs, and a lot of people have sort of said, well, no, he's already failed. Okay, well, he failed in his initial plan.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that as I was depolarizing was polarizing. So I felt like in my mind and heart I'm zigging one way and the country's zagging in the other way. And it was incredibly powerful and impactful for me.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And all of the atrocities you saw ISIS committing in 2014, 2015 were doing Indiala in 07 and 08. And I felt ashamed, to be honest, like by that comment because there's a huge difference between somebody you disagree with politically, even vigorously, right? Even if it's on big issues like abortion, like we've been talking about, and that. And then the other thing I thought was every single one of us, when you put on the uniform of your country, You're saying you're willing, not wanting, but you're willing to die for your country, which includes millions of people you disagree with. So if I was willing to, you know, if I was willing to put on a uniform and serve them, how could I come home and hate them, right? And so it really changed me. And so I came home to a country.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, I think the two great threats to America are jihadists abroad and radical leftists at home, and I feel called to combat both. And yay, you know, everyone claps in this thing. And then I go. And by the way, I'm serving next to people who are way to my left. The guy I was closest to was all in on Obama before it was cool to be all in on Obama. And I'm sitting there all in on Mitt Romney. And you cannot separate us. We're tight as brothers. And so, and then I saw what an actual enemy is. You know, the atrocities of Al-Qaeda, this was the precursor to ISIS.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So much in a couple of different ways. So, one is remember, I was pretty partisan Republican and I was a conservative movement lawyer, right? And I remember giving a speech before I left that I even hate to bring it up because I'm embarrassed by it. But I think it's an important point. So someone asked me, they said, You're doing all this great work here in the United States. Why are you going to Iraq? And I very like self-righteously, you know, in this group said.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But she said, yeah, do it. And so it's kind of funny. I go to the recruiting office in Center City, Philadelphia, walk in just as bald as I am now, much more out of shape than I am now, and said I want to be a jag officer because who needs an overweight, out of shape infantry officer? But I had legal training, I could bring that to the cause. And they didn't know what to do with me except put me, send me to Fort Dix for a physical that I almost failed. And I was so out of shape, David, that to get ready when I first started running to get ready for Officer Basic, I pulled my hamstring in the first quarter mile. It was pitiful, but I made it through, I made it through Officer Basic, and I deployed in 07 during the height of the surge with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I have to be honest That kind of stung, right? And I remember in 05, I was reading a story about how the military, the army in particular, was taking pretty high casualties and was having difficulty recruiting. And I just felt this incredible sense of deep moral conviction that I couldn't keep supporting a war, that I wasn't willing to deploy to myself. And my dad, my math PhD dad, taught me that you walk your talk. Like you live your values. And so I was 36 at the time. They had just raised the maximum age to 35, but I knew I could get an age waiver if I could pass the physical. So, you know, I told my wife, I said, I think I should do this. And she was initially not a big fan of the idea we had two kids at the time. I was running a nonprofit civil liberties organization in Philadelphia called Fire.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So many ways. So I made the decision I'm sure you remember in the run up to the Iraq war, there was this argument that people made online calling supporters of the Iraq war who weren't willing to enlist. They called them chicken hawks.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About very weighty moral issues. And historic religious traditions and teachings and theologies, which I wouldn't have signed to the statement if I didn't agree with this historic Christian teachings, can have a perspective on everything from sex to gender identity, et cetera. But at the same time, I should defend the civil liberties of people who strongly disagree with me on this point. They have the same free speech rights that I have.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you say I'm going to ban Drag Queen Story Hour, you're banning expression. You're banning expression either because you don't like the nature of the expression or because you don't like who's engaging in it, right? And so I have been. Just embroiled in this unbelievable argument over these drag queen story hours, where I've said, wait, this is free speech, right? This is civil, these are basic. And so this kind of goes back to that very thing I was talking about earlier We in this country can have really different ideas”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, goodness, no. I mean, Some of the stuff that I see coming out of the right is unbelievably some of the rhetoric that I see is just unbelievably appalling. And then I've started to see things where, you know, in sort of the paradigmatic part of this is where people are saying, I want to deny basic civil liberties. Now, this is imperfect because I know that I'll bring up a concept that's been really contentious drag queen story hour, for example. It's been very contentious around the country. A lot of states have moved to ban it, for example. And I know not everybody who's a drag, it's not exactly one-to-one to say somebody's a drag queen is trans. Bear with me”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting. We'll see if that works out. And it has. So Supreme Court authority ever since Obergefell has been very protective of free speech and religious liberty. So it is in fact the case that you can have same-sex marriage and free speech and religious liberty side by side, which was what I thought was possible in 2004, for example. And so then in 2022, after Dobbs' decision and there was a lot of concern that Obergefell might be overturned when the coalition of democratic and republican senators said, hey, let's pass this respect for marriage act that makes this bargain concrete. And to me, that was what pluralism is. It's people with different worldviews creating a space in which they can live consistent with their values.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then that's not the deal. That's not the bargain, right? And so I had said, look, if the bargain is that you're going to diminish religious liberty, if you're going to take these religious institutions and override their rights of conscience, no, I don't agree with that. And then in 2015 in Obergefell, Kennedy, just as Kennedy, who was keenly aware of all of this because he had long been one of the more solid justices on free speech issues Also, probably the leading justice in many ways on LGBT rights. So he writes in Obergefell, this really interesting thing. He says he has this whole aside that he says, people of goodwill coming from religious traditions have different views. And we should respect those views. And I remember thinking, huh.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I was very troubled by that because the argument that had been made, Andrew Sullivan brilliantly made it, John Rausch, my friend John Rausch, had brilliantly made it, was that, wait, the fact that I can marry the person that I love is not, how does that hurt you? Right. But if the legal regime says the fact that I can marry the person I love means that the church that you belong to, the school that you belong to, has to conform to our viewpoint or will face state punishment.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. If the flip flop flipping was an event, so in 2004, like early on, was it 03? I can't remember. 03 or 04, after right after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Legalize same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. I said, fine. You know, look, if two people want to get married and two people of the same sex want to get married, fine. It's not impacting me. No problem. And then I began to see in my work on religious liberty and free speech that a growing movement that is essentially saying, wait, if same-sex marriage is going to be legal, then all of the institutions of American life, including religious institutions, need to be on board with this or we're going to start to diminish their liberty.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then the Christian nationalist camp. And that's where you get the fight between those who want to uphold American pluralism and those who sort of want to eradicate or dominate their opponents. And so I'm a believer in a very healthy, thick pluralism where many different kinds of American communities can live true to their values and will protect each other's liberty. A Christian community should protect the religious liberty of a Muslim community or should protect the free speech rights of atheists, for example, because that's what it means to live together in this pluralistic society. But the sort of the Christian nationalist brand says, well, no, religious liberty is really only for Christians, that America should be more explicitly or be explicitly labeled as a Christian nation.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should then be reflected in civil law. Okay, so that is where you're going to have a lot of agreement amongst evangelicals, Catholics, et cetera. Not everybody, of course, about traditional Christian sexual morality. And then you're going to end up with a lot of disagreement about how should the law reflect that, or if it should at all. Okay. And so that's where things start to get really contentious within the Christian world is less over what is the traditional statement of Christian belief on sexual morality that sex is reserved for a marriage between a man and a woman versus okay what should the civil law be and this is where you start to see the big fight between the christian nationalist world and the more libertarian world which that's i'm in the much more libertarian camp”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the national statement was a theological statement. Okay, so it was this is what is the traditional teaching of the church on human sexuality. So it was not a statement of this is what the law should be, right? This is much more like if you're talking about what's the statement of faith or the belief system of a particular denomination or set of denominations. And so that was a traditional classical statement of Christian sexual morality very much in line with traditional Catholic thinking, with traditional Protestant thinking. So that is a statement of Christian belief. What then is the big contention with”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. And so, and then the other thing is there's this sense of existential threat. And so, if you combine a sense of existential threat with no formation in politics centering around humility or kindness, then what do you get? You get, as I just said earlier, you start to get the logic of religious war, which is that's what you saw in January 6th in some ways.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, said no, it just stops at justice. And you're going to get my justice good and hard. And they abandoned these concepts of kindness or humility or the fruit of the spirit.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life Yeah. You know, it's a great question. I know we have a mutual friend in Russell Moore. And we have talked about this and talked about this. And I think there's several things going on at once. One of them is it might be surprising to know this considering how dedicated to politics so many Christians are, especially white evangelicals. But there was, if you grew up in the evangelical church, there was almost no moral formation around politics. And what I note what I said about moral formation, there was a lot of issue formation. Like Christians, what Christians should be for is this or against this. So it's all issues. But there was no real education into how to live as a Christian in the political space. And so a lot of that Micah 6.8 act justly, love, kindness, walk humbly. Those last two are the how with humility, with kindness. Well, a lot of Christians...”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a complicated. Now, I don't put all of that on complex social phenomenon rarely have a single unitary cause. But here's one thing that I will note about the Trump term. Multiple major indicators of what you might call sort of the hope index turned negative. So the marriage rate had been going down for a long time. It stabilized during the Obama presidency and then plunged under Trump. Marriage is a tangible kind of marker of hope. You know, here's another human being I want to build a life with, right? Murder rates just skyrocketed by the end of Trump's first term. If you look at deaths of despair, they had been going up for a while, but at the very end of his term, they really shot up again. And so all kinds of factors that indicate that are sort of, do I have hope for the future or do I not really turn negative under Trump? And now, can I lay all of that at him? No. But does name like I can't think of one thing that he would have done as president that really would have”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Movement said Donald Trump's the most pro life president in America he nominated the justices that overturn Roe. On the other hand, if your real concern is ending abortion, not necessarily banning abortion, Donald Trump was a catastrophe for the movement. It was under his presidency. It was a change of a form.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, look, from a pro-life perspective, the situation is really grim. Here's the basic reality of what happened. If you look, if you go to the end of the Obama administration, there were about, I don't have the exact number right off the top of my head, but it was about 338,000 fewer abortions than at the start of the Obama administration. So this is a pro-choice administration, but there were 338,000 fewer abortions. So Obama, there was a decline in abortions under Obama, under Bush, under Clinton, under Bush 1, under Reagan. There was an increase under Carter. But after Carter, every presidency abortions decreased until Donald Trump. Donald Trump abortions went up. There was about 60,000 more abortions at the end of Donald Trump's presidency. So on the one hand, the pro-life”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pro Life movement was not ready for that. It was not ready for that. That bear hug of Donald Trump in many ways was utterly catastrophic for the moral witness of the pro-life movement. Because remember what I said earlier about N's justifying means? That cannot be part of the pro-life movement. And so if you say, well, for this cause, what we're going to do is we're going to embrace cruelty or even be cruel. We're going to embrace dishonesty or be dishonest, embrace conspiracies, et cetera, et cetera, all for some greater good. Sorry, but unless you're just drinking your own Kool-Aid, like mainlining your own Kool-Aid, that is not convincing to anybody. And one of the things that the returning this to the democratic process meant is you have to win people over. You have to.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is in many ways more viable than the row formulation. The row was a very deeply destabilizing decision. Now, if you liked it, you know, you might be less keenly aware of its destabilizing effects. But for a very long time, what's happened is you took this incredibly intensely difficult moral issue that is not resolved in the text of the Constitution. And you removed it from the Democratic process. And so the returning it to the Democratic process to me was the constitutionally sound thing to do. The problem was that, again, this is coming from a pro-life perspective.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That when we abandon that mindset, when we say that the people who disagree with me on matters of deep importance somehow are less worthy, are somehow less valuable, or should be treated as less worthy or less valuable, that's a conversation stopper. But what I tried to do is I try to lead with humility. I don't have all the answers, you know, and maintain kindness even as we might disagree over what justice requires.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. You know, I think you have to begin with sort of some shared starting positions. And one of them is the ends don't justify the means. In other words, you can't take this position that just because somebody disagrees with you even on an issue as important as that or one where the feelings are so deep-seated, that the fact that you disagree with me means that I'm relieved of all moral obligations as to how to treat you as a human being. I was deeply influenced by Pope John Paul II's Gospel of Life, small book he wrote in the mid-1990s. And one of the presuppositions of it is that every human being possesses incalculable worth, every human being. So if that's true, you know who possesses incalculable worth? The human beings who disagree with me, right? So if they possess incalculable worth, how should I treat someone? And so, but when we abandon”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The secular conservative group was sort of early proto-trolls, many of them. So these more secular guys, many of them, there was a, I can't remember as a professor or a student who compared some negative rhetoric to the Holocaust. And so way over the top, right? So a bunch of these sort of right-wing kind of Trollish personas every time something would come up and people were expressing anger at what they said, they would go, oh, is it the holocaust? They would use that and wield that back in a trolling kind of way. And so it was just nasty and toxic. But my community, the Christian community that I was a part of, we were not a part of that. Now, you know, sometimes I'd be on the receiving end of it and I know that I had a bit more of an attitude than I have now.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was such a small group. I was in the religious conservative side of the conservative movement there. And most of the folks that I was, we most of them were not really that political to be honest, like between religion and conservatism, religion was way higher in their priority than their politics.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My literal inbox, not my no email then. And it was full of paper. And I remember briefly thinking, oh, I just tapped into the latent pro-life movement at Harvard Law School. That was not it. And remember opening the first sheet of paper and it was something like, why don't you go die, you effing fascists? And, you know, these are my classmates. So that part was that part was profoundly negative. But a lot of also at that time, I met progressive students. I loved. And we formed fast friendships. And so for me, it was this really interesting environment of just sort of seeing the best of the left folks who are to the left of me and the worst of folks who are to the left of me. And so it made a deep impact on me.”
2023-10-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 552 — David French · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source