Herein lies the inherent danger of one side or the other on the cultural political spectrum garnering and abusing their temporary hegemony. There will of necessity be a monster pendulum swing back the other direction. This is not a good thing. I have argued for the last few years that the LEFT and the RIGHT need one another desperately. It is pretty easy to howl defiantly right now at the spectacular over reach of the Left in all institutions and then to OVER correct for that when the swing eventually happens. I am a White Southern Conservative Christian MIddle Class Male and I do NOT want to participate in the backlash that is coming. Balance is needed. That is what the ideal of Western Civilisation, exemplified by the uplifting and empowering of the individual in the United States of America is supposed to support.
The general idea French is trying to convey in that the right shouldn't go too far the other direction in reacting to the illiberal left is fine. I agree. But he's clearly stretching in purporting a remotely equal level of illiberalism. No, it is not close to being true that the holocaust is widely debated or controversial. Sure, in some small circles of crazies they still hold on to denial, but no serious person nor any legislation is suggesting that teachers need to find a "balanced" approach to teaching the holocaust. No one. The school administrator that said that was trying to drum up drama hoping the media would latch on to this fake controversy and French has taken the bait. It's a shame because this type of false-narrative-pushing detracts from an otherwise worthwhile conversation.
So you admit that the holocaust example is problematic, but seem to hand-wave it away by saying it was just a rogue administrator trying to drum up drama? How about the opposition to negative depictions of whites in historical contexts, like the pictures of whites protesting Ruby Bridges? That is something that happened, and its being taught seems to have triggered some whites. Does that sound familiar? How is it any better than what the woke cancel mob aims to do to those whom they disagree with?
I think our schools ought to teach facts, not opinions; let people form their own. Doing so fortifies the mind.
I wouldn’t say I was hand-waving anything away. All I was saying was that French has a valid point in that conservatives shouldn’t react to left illiberalism by being illiberal the other direction but that using false equivalencies and examples which are obvious attempts to mischaracterize the laws being put in place, such as this holocaust example, detract from the valid arguments he was making.
I think the vast majority of people concerned with what is being taught in schools just want more context provided. White people stole land and killed natives. Well, all land on this globe is stolen including the land that white people stole in America. Natives that white people stole it from had stolen it from a different tribe. White people enslaved black people. True, but every civilization from all of time had slaves including black slave owners in America. Provide context versus demonizing white people as a whole.
I respect the author’s perspective but still strongly disagree. Teaching young children, in school no less, idiocy like CRT does not serve the children or the public. If parents want to teach their children Marxist ideological crap, that’s fine, but not on the taxpayer dollar.
We ban, or once did and still should, all sorts of stuff from schools. One would find it appalling to say “we should not ban KKK propaganda from schools.” How is this ANY different? I see very little difference between KKK propaganda and CRT propaganda. They push the same bs. Here is the BS pushed by both the KKK AND propers of CRT: Judge people by their skin tone. If the law won’t rid society of the “other,” then you should. All of societies problems fall at the feet of a particular race. Segregation is not only good, but necessary to “protect” people from the evil other race……
It should absolutely be banned from public schools. It’s not education, has absolutely nothing to do with educating kids to have marketable skills (unless being a paid Soros activist is now some mainstream employment field millions of children should be “prepared” for).
I understand the free speech argument, but public education already censors all kinds of speech. You presented no good good argument that a place which bans the Bible should not also be forced to ban text associated with the religion of the woke.
I have never heard of David French before. But I haven’t been following politics in decades. What I have is a practically living experience of being sandwiched between the extreme left & the extreme right. That comes through my formative years spent in the USSR with vivid memories and family history of the communism vs fascism wrestling match. brrrrrr…. Also, I have a good recollection of the Newton Law of Motion #3: “If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.” So, admiring Sir Newton and still recovering from the bruises of the extremists powers colliding I spent last couple of years anxiously anticipating the reaction from the far Right. And though I m endlessly pissed at the Left for creating this dynamics, the Right like the liberty-moms-of-Tennessee won’t see my support. At the same time, the number of comments against David French on this platform made me a bit sad… I feel his was a timely piece. I don’t think we want “Honestly” to become a fan-based feel-good-my-space like the NYT… These were my two cents in favor of further publication like this. 🎩
Banning CRT is deeply problematic for the same reason McCarthyism failed: you're going to war against what appears to be a small band of radical rebels but, in reality, you're trying to strike the heart of the established USG.
"If you strike the king, you best kill him"
Yea, well, this attempt to ban CRT is a few orders of magnitude too little to kill the USG so this anti-CRT movement will fruitlessly burn political energy until eventually being crushed, punished, and sent to the same historical dustbin as McCarthy.
The answer, of course, is not to give up & embrace CRT. The answer is to wake up, see the USG for the mad king it truly is, and bide our political energy until we can come up with a way to strike against & kill it once & for all.
Equating the alt-Left to the alt-Right is unwarranted and suffers from the logical fallacy of the middle.
The alt-Right (or far-Right) has no intention of overtaking the state and imposing authoritarian and fascist government on the masses and minorities. They generally subscribe to individual freedoms and liberties, and free expression. This usually translates to human rights. Capitalism is the great guarantor of liberal democracy. If the right institutes economic or political fascism, it will be the free markets that will suffer the most, and that is unacceptable to them. Their gripe is socio-cultural, and not politico-economic.
On the other hand, the alt-Left has no such compunctions. They are at war with the markets and with private ownership and free enterprise. They will dismantle capitalism, institute socialism, outlaw private ownership, and with that do away with liberal democracy. The working class and the business class will be destroyed as they become vassals of the state.
Trying to navigate a middle ground between those wanting the state to exit socio-cultural/ ideological matters, and those wanting to overthrow the state and institute totalitarianism is akin to seeking safety by not jumping out a towering inferno from the 20th floor, but by jumping out from the 10th floor.
To rebut French by analogy, if a horde of rampaging zombies is on the verge of wiping you out, "shoot first and ask questions later" becomes a morally acceptable strategy, even though it would be appalling under more normal circumstances. To criticize the zombie-shooters is to suffer from a serious perspective issue.
Like a quintessential Leftist, he cites statistics like "60% of attempts to get college professors fired came from the Left" as though we're to believe that in the cases where right-wing people tried to get professors fired, their reasons were as frivolous and extreme as the reasons for which left-wing people try to get professors fired.
I grew up during the civil rights movement in the 60s. I watched (albeit at a young age) Newark burn and saw MLK assassinated. I was being educated at the same time in public school, and learned about slavery, Jim Crow and the issues blacks had faced upon coming to the US as slaves. It was not a 'detailed' analysis of the issue, but it was in my eyes and the eyes of most of my classmates wrong.
However, I was never made to feel either responsible nor guilty for the actions of ancestors long dead. Nor was I taught that I was inherently worth more (privileged) or that blacks were worth less. And so I've never felt that way about myself or about them. Back then, a lot of us had a dream. Today, not so much.
It's troubling in the extreme to have watched the progress that the minority community has made in this country, which to be clear in the 60s was VERY racist, the sacrifices that great men and women made in order to overcome that racism, and to now come full circle back to where we started, IE all whites are inherently racist and need to relearn how to be 'anti racist'.
Personally, I reject that teaching out of hand. I'll not honor the memory of the civil rights leaders who died to bring about the changes this country needed to make by telling their offspring that I'm a racist and they are victims of my racism. The only people that benefits are people with a lust for political power.
Teach sections on the black experience in schools. That is done in my district during black history month, and if the curriculum isn't deemed detailed enough, tweak it so that it is. But under no circumstances make one race feel guilty and the other feel like victims. That way leads to division, not inclusion. And is antithetical to the efforts of all those great civil rights leaders of the past.
Had it not been for the rise of Wokedom and the spread of Ingsoc-like ideologies of the CRT variety, the illiberalism of the Right would be a minor problem.
When the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones breathlessly informed the nation that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was a slaveowner, I was not shocked, having learned this interesting fact over the course of my twelve years in Catholic primary and secondary education in the Fifties and Sixties. I also learned about the origins of American slavery and how it was finally abolished. There was no "white supremacist" conspiracy to suppress these facts.
Later in life I went to college, earning a BA in history with a minor in English literature, followed by an MA in modern European history—this before Wokedom and its phony academic disciplines established a bridgehead on campus. Consequently, I had no trouble spotting the dishonesty and fraud of Woke ideology, particularly as it bore upon the rewriting of American history. Many American parents lack this advantage, but even so they know b.s. when they smell it.
To be clear, I'm not in favor of censorship. But I see nothing wrong with ensuring that the classroom remains a place where kid learn things without being politically indoctrinated. In this I'm at one with the parents who have risen up in protest over the debased condition of public education in this country. Beyond that, there are legitimate questions of age-appropriateness where reading assignments are concerned. Third- and fourth-graders most definitely should be shielded from "gender studies" and the like. And in general, I reject the proposition that insisting on an intellectually respectable curriculum constitutes censorship or an infringement on teachers' freedom of speech. Teachers in public schools are public employees, answerable to the public and to parents in particular. Their freedom of speech in the classroom is not unlimited.
I agree with Mr. French that many of the anti-CRT laws passed thus far are poorly conceived and may do more harm than good on balance. But they wouldn't have been needed at all if the public schools had not been seduced and corrupted by zany postmodern notions of race, gender, etc. And I'm inclined to think that the best remedy is not counter-censorship but rather the spotlight of truth. Under its pitiless glare Woke "education" will shrivel up and die.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m clearly in the anti CRT camp, so it’s good for me to be reminded that legislation isn’t always (or even usually) a very good answer. Public opinion will carry the day.
I don't support banning WHAT is being taught. I do support banning HOW and WHEN it is taught.
Everything that can legally be done to prevent our children from being indoctrinated by any radical political or socioeconomic ideologies should be done.
Over the last few years many of us have grown increasingly frustrated as radical liberals smashed the political playing field by injecting political and socioeconomic issues into every aspect of our lives. Sports, colleges and the workplace are a few good examples. But kids are where it crosses the line with me.
I have no problem with this stuff being taught in college campuses since the students are old enough to think for themselves, but any younger than that is brainwashing. It is wrong and it must be stopped.
Mr French never once mentions that the main thrust of the complaint in Tennessee is that this intense material is being disseminated, heavily, to second graders. That’s kids who are still 7 and 8 years old. He tries to dress the material up as best he can but if you read the complaint (and the letters from two parents at the very end of the complaint who describe how it impacted their childrens' lives and emotions) you’ll see why the parents are angry about the material in their kids' classrooms. Bari get this lying clown David French off of your otherwise solid substack.
Herein lies the inherent danger of one side or the other on the cultural political spectrum garnering and abusing their temporary hegemony. There will of necessity be a monster pendulum swing back the other direction. This is not a good thing. I have argued for the last few years that the LEFT and the RIGHT need one another desperately. It is pretty easy to howl defiantly right now at the spectacular over reach of the Left in all institutions and then to OVER correct for that when the swing eventually happens. I am a White Southern Conservative Christian MIddle Class Male and I do NOT want to participate in the backlash that is coming. Balance is needed. That is what the ideal of Western Civilisation, exemplified by the uplifting and empowering of the individual in the United States of America is supposed to support.
The general idea French is trying to convey in that the right shouldn't go too far the other direction in reacting to the illiberal left is fine. I agree. But he's clearly stretching in purporting a remotely equal level of illiberalism. No, it is not close to being true that the holocaust is widely debated or controversial. Sure, in some small circles of crazies they still hold on to denial, but no serious person nor any legislation is suggesting that teachers need to find a "balanced" approach to teaching the holocaust. No one. The school administrator that said that was trying to drum up drama hoping the media would latch on to this fake controversy and French has taken the bait. It's a shame because this type of false-narrative-pushing detracts from an otherwise worthwhile conversation.
So you admit that the holocaust example is problematic, but seem to hand-wave it away by saying it was just a rogue administrator trying to drum up drama? How about the opposition to negative depictions of whites in historical contexts, like the pictures of whites protesting Ruby Bridges? That is something that happened, and its being taught seems to have triggered some whites. Does that sound familiar? How is it any better than what the woke cancel mob aims to do to those whom they disagree with?
I think our schools ought to teach facts, not opinions; let people form their own. Doing so fortifies the mind.
I wouldn’t say I was hand-waving anything away. All I was saying was that French has a valid point in that conservatives shouldn’t react to left illiberalism by being illiberal the other direction but that using false equivalencies and examples which are obvious attempts to mischaracterize the laws being put in place, such as this holocaust example, detract from the valid arguments he was making.
I think the vast majority of people concerned with what is being taught in schools just want more context provided. White people stole land and killed natives. Well, all land on this globe is stolen including the land that white people stole in America. Natives that white people stole it from had stolen it from a different tribe. White people enslaved black people. True, but every civilization from all of time had slaves including black slave owners in America. Provide context versus demonizing white people as a whole.
I respect the author’s perspective but still strongly disagree. Teaching young children, in school no less, idiocy like CRT does not serve the children or the public. If parents want to teach their children Marxist ideological crap, that’s fine, but not on the taxpayer dollar.
We ban, or once did and still should, all sorts of stuff from schools. One would find it appalling to say “we should not ban KKK propaganda from schools.” How is this ANY different? I see very little difference between KKK propaganda and CRT propaganda. They push the same bs. Here is the BS pushed by both the KKK AND propers of CRT: Judge people by their skin tone. If the law won’t rid society of the “other,” then you should. All of societies problems fall at the feet of a particular race. Segregation is not only good, but necessary to “protect” people from the evil other race……
It should absolutely be banned from public schools. It’s not education, has absolutely nothing to do with educating kids to have marketable skills (unless being a paid Soros activist is now some mainstream employment field millions of children should be “prepared” for).
I understand the free speech argument, but public education already censors all kinds of speech. You presented no good good argument that a place which bans the Bible should not also be forced to ban text associated with the religion of the woke.
I have never heard of David French before. But I haven’t been following politics in decades. What I have is a practically living experience of being sandwiched between the extreme left & the extreme right. That comes through my formative years spent in the USSR with vivid memories and family history of the communism vs fascism wrestling match. brrrrrr…. Also, I have a good recollection of the Newton Law of Motion #3: “If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.” So, admiring Sir Newton and still recovering from the bruises of the extremists powers colliding I spent last couple of years anxiously anticipating the reaction from the far Right. And though I m endlessly pissed at the Left for creating this dynamics, the Right like the liberty-moms-of-Tennessee won’t see my support. At the same time, the number of comments against David French on this platform made me a bit sad… I feel his was a timely piece. I don’t think we want “Honestly” to become a fan-based feel-good-my-space like the NYT… These were my two cents in favor of further publication like this. 🎩
My congratulations, Common Sense, on running a piece with some balance of viewpoint. Breaks up the tedium of a constant diet of anti-wokism.
Banning CRT is deeply problematic for the same reason McCarthyism failed: you're going to war against what appears to be a small band of radical rebels but, in reality, you're trying to strike the heart of the established USG.
"If you strike the king, you best kill him"
Yea, well, this attempt to ban CRT is a few orders of magnitude too little to kill the USG so this anti-CRT movement will fruitlessly burn political energy until eventually being crushed, punished, and sent to the same historical dustbin as McCarthy.
The answer, of course, is not to give up & embrace CRT. The answer is to wake up, see the USG for the mad king it truly is, and bide our political energy until we can come up with a way to strike against & kill it once & for all.
Equating the alt-Left to the alt-Right is unwarranted and suffers from the logical fallacy of the middle.
The alt-Right (or far-Right) has no intention of overtaking the state and imposing authoritarian and fascist government on the masses and minorities. They generally subscribe to individual freedoms and liberties, and free expression. This usually translates to human rights. Capitalism is the great guarantor of liberal democracy. If the right institutes economic or political fascism, it will be the free markets that will suffer the most, and that is unacceptable to them. Their gripe is socio-cultural, and not politico-economic.
On the other hand, the alt-Left has no such compunctions. They are at war with the markets and with private ownership and free enterprise. They will dismantle capitalism, institute socialism, outlaw private ownership, and with that do away with liberal democracy. The working class and the business class will be destroyed as they become vassals of the state.
Trying to navigate a middle ground between those wanting the state to exit socio-cultural/ ideological matters, and those wanting to overthrow the state and institute totalitarianism is akin to seeking safety by not jumping out a towering inferno from the 20th floor, but by jumping out from the 10th floor.
David French. Hmm.
To rebut French by analogy, if a horde of rampaging zombies is on the verge of wiping you out, "shoot first and ask questions later" becomes a morally acceptable strategy, even though it would be appalling under more normal circumstances. To criticize the zombie-shooters is to suffer from a serious perspective issue.
David French is deeply, deeply lost.
Like a quintessential Leftist, he cites statistics like "60% of attempts to get college professors fired came from the Left" as though we're to believe that in the cases where right-wing people tried to get professors fired, their reasons were as frivolous and extreme as the reasons for which left-wing people try to get professors fired.
The devil's in the details.
I grew up during the civil rights movement in the 60s. I watched (albeit at a young age) Newark burn and saw MLK assassinated. I was being educated at the same time in public school, and learned about slavery, Jim Crow and the issues blacks had faced upon coming to the US as slaves. It was not a 'detailed' analysis of the issue, but it was in my eyes and the eyes of most of my classmates wrong.
However, I was never made to feel either responsible nor guilty for the actions of ancestors long dead. Nor was I taught that I was inherently worth more (privileged) or that blacks were worth less. And so I've never felt that way about myself or about them. Back then, a lot of us had a dream. Today, not so much.
It's troubling in the extreme to have watched the progress that the minority community has made in this country, which to be clear in the 60s was VERY racist, the sacrifices that great men and women made in order to overcome that racism, and to now come full circle back to where we started, IE all whites are inherently racist and need to relearn how to be 'anti racist'.
Personally, I reject that teaching out of hand. I'll not honor the memory of the civil rights leaders who died to bring about the changes this country needed to make by telling their offspring that I'm a racist and they are victims of my racism. The only people that benefits are people with a lust for political power.
Teach sections on the black experience in schools. That is done in my district during black history month, and if the curriculum isn't deemed detailed enough, tweak it so that it is. But under no circumstances make one race feel guilty and the other feel like victims. That way leads to division, not inclusion. And is antithetical to the efforts of all those great civil rights leaders of the past.
CRT is a warfare against America. “anti-CRT” equals - PATRIOTIC. AMERICAN. CRT equals - ANTI-AMERICAN.
Had it not been for the rise of Wokedom and the spread of Ingsoc-like ideologies of the CRT variety, the illiberalism of the Right would be a minor problem.
When the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones breathlessly informed the nation that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was a slaveowner, I was not shocked, having learned this interesting fact over the course of my twelve years in Catholic primary and secondary education in the Fifties and Sixties. I also learned about the origins of American slavery and how it was finally abolished. There was no "white supremacist" conspiracy to suppress these facts.
Later in life I went to college, earning a BA in history with a minor in English literature, followed by an MA in modern European history—this before Wokedom and its phony academic disciplines established a bridgehead on campus. Consequently, I had no trouble spotting the dishonesty and fraud of Woke ideology, particularly as it bore upon the rewriting of American history. Many American parents lack this advantage, but even so they know b.s. when they smell it.
To be clear, I'm not in favor of censorship. But I see nothing wrong with ensuring that the classroom remains a place where kid learn things without being politically indoctrinated. In this I'm at one with the parents who have risen up in protest over the debased condition of public education in this country. Beyond that, there are legitimate questions of age-appropriateness where reading assignments are concerned. Third- and fourth-graders most definitely should be shielded from "gender studies" and the like. And in general, I reject the proposition that insisting on an intellectually respectable curriculum constitutes censorship or an infringement on teachers' freedom of speech. Teachers in public schools are public employees, answerable to the public and to parents in particular. Their freedom of speech in the classroom is not unlimited.
I agree with Mr. French that many of the anti-CRT laws passed thus far are poorly conceived and may do more harm than good on balance. But they wouldn't have been needed at all if the public schools had not been seduced and corrupted by zany postmodern notions of race, gender, etc. And I'm inclined to think that the best remedy is not counter-censorship but rather the spotlight of truth. Under its pitiless glare Woke "education" will shrivel up and die.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m clearly in the anti CRT camp, so it’s good for me to be reminded that legislation isn’t always (or even usually) a very good answer. Public opinion will carry the day.
I don't support banning WHAT is being taught. I do support banning HOW and WHEN it is taught.
Everything that can legally be done to prevent our children from being indoctrinated by any radical political or socioeconomic ideologies should be done.
Over the last few years many of us have grown increasingly frustrated as radical liberals smashed the political playing field by injecting political and socioeconomic issues into every aspect of our lives. Sports, colleges and the workplace are a few good examples. But kids are where it crosses the line with me.
I have no problem with this stuff being taught in college campuses since the students are old enough to think for themselves, but any younger than that is brainwashing. It is wrong and it must be stopped.
Mr French never once mentions that the main thrust of the complaint in Tennessee is that this intense material is being disseminated, heavily, to second graders. That’s kids who are still 7 and 8 years old. He tries to dress the material up as best he can but if you read the complaint (and the letters from two parents at the very end of the complaint who describe how it impacted their childrens' lives and emotions) you’ll see why the parents are angry about the material in their kids' classrooms. Bari get this lying clown David French off of your otherwise solid substack.