7 Posts found for Author: David French

In red world, being called a racist — that accusation has no purchase, really. Here’s what’s the terrifying thing on the right that can be a career- and reputation-ending allegation: “You’re weak. You’re a coward.” So the transformation, this flipping upside down of morality, turning bullying into strength, turning restraint into vice, all of that, what has then happened is it enables the Trumpists and … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: Vox | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy

We don’t know our true values until they’re tested. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” We don’t know if we’re actually honest until we tell the truth when the truth will hurt us.

Authors: C.S. Lewis, David French | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Concepts, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Truth | Right | Wrong

It turns out that people will in fact trust liars — so long as the liars keep telling them what they want to hear.

Author: David French | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Truth | Right | Wrong

I thought ideology defined the community, but the community existed regardless of the ideology, and breaking with the community was the far graver sin.

Author: David French | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Populism is never separate from this “voice of passion.” That is its defining characteristic. It begins in deep grievance. Some of those grievances can be quite real and consequential — such as when modern populist anger is rooted in fury over the Great Recession, long wars in the Middle East or shuttered factories in the Midwest.

Some of the problems, however, that motivate populists aren’t problems … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: The New York Times (February 9, 2025) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: The Atlantic (April 11, 2022) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Freedom | Liberty, Politics & Public Policy

Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?

I’d argue that we face … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: National Review (June 8, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy