Divided We Fall
Chapters 11 - 15
Please use this thread to discuss the above referenced chapters.Chapters 11 - 15
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Excellent summary, DWill. My initial interest in reading Divided We Fall was to get a better understanding of conservative politics. But my real takeaway is perhaps a better understanding of why conservative Americans can feel disenfranchised by a culture war that usually favors liberal ideology. Hopefully I’m not quite so out of touch as I used to be.DWill wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 10:16 pm It seems important to listen to what French, a true conservative, is telling us. I won't be able to decide for a while the full extent of my agreement/disagreement with him, but he's made me consider a different perspective--and in large part his entire book is about considering other perspectives, instead of rejecting as alien whatever our tribe has proscribed.
Whenever I heard that left/liberalism was ascendant, I rolled my eyes because politically the right had made deeper inroads than the most liberal wing of the Democratic party had. But for French, the more important part is how the culture is trending, and the trend leads to political change. That's how we came to have wide acceptance (perhaps grudging) of homosexuality and gay marriage, even among Republicans. Another example might be pot: it seems that these days conservatives are as likely as liberals to favor legalization.My initial interest in reading Divided We Fall was to get a better understanding of conservative politics. But my real takeaway is perhaps a better understanding of why conservative Americans can feel disenfranchised by a culture war that usually favors liberal ideology. Hopefully I’m not quite so out of touch as I used to be.
Unfortunately, it seems that French is something of an outlier these days. We get a glimpse of this when we read Sohrab Ahmari’s piece “Against David French-ism”. Even since 2020, when French wrote this book, the battle lines between the left and the right (and the right and the far right) have become even more pronounced.
Winner-take-all and might-makes-right have definitely increased. I had looked up what French might be thinking about the SC abortion decision. and came to that article. Part of me thinks he was a bit naive ever to have thought that militant anti-abortionists cared so much about loving these children who would now be born. French is a decent guy, so he was also shocked that the thrust of the new laws some states are passing are so punitive toward women. He apparently is dead certain that the Constitution offers no support for the right of abortion; the idea is anathema for him.By the way, French, who is pro-life, wrote an interesting article in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade. You get a sense of where he stands with the title: Roe Is Reversed, and the Right Isn’t Ready
Yes, a RINO for sure!So while I’m encouraged to see a conservative who actually supports pluralism and tolerance, the right edge of the Overton window seems to be pushing David French’s opinions into irrelevance. He is a moderate in a world that is rapidly becoming more extremist.
A hint I get that French is originalist was his statement that we must follow the Second Amendment, and the entire Bill of Rights. That's a minimum for him that needs to be accepted by both sides. But, of course, the original intent of the 2nd Amendment is disputed; "originalism" is really just another opinion about what it means. I think originalism is one of the weaknesses of conservative philosophy. I was reading something from a historian, who said that even in the Founders' own time, the Founders disputed the meaning of what they had put into the Constitution. So how could a modern judge claim to know an original intent to stick to? Even simple common sense should tell us that the wise men who wrote the Constitution would not have believed that it would serve the country, exactly as written, for all time.Lately, I’m also wondering about originalism, the idea that the Constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding "at the time it was adopted". It seems to give a lot of wiggle room for the interpretation of various “unenumerated rights.” Something like abortion, which is not mentioned in the Constitution can be protected by one Supreme Court and taken away by another. And as DWill already mentioned in another thread, the 2nd Amendment can be seen as almost nonsensical in modern times. Our forefathers had no concept of modern military style weapons which can be purchased easily by almost anyone, thanks to lax gun regulations and (arguably) continued misinterpretation by the Supreme Court.
Hi DWill, I think this quote is from you although you wrote it as a quote from someone else.DWill wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 1:06 pmPart of me thinks he was a bit naive ever to have thought that militant anti-abortionists cared so much about loving these children who would now be born. French is a decent guy, so he was also shocked that the thrust of the new laws some states are passing are so punitive toward women. He apparently is dead certain that the Constitution offers no support for the right of abortion; the idea is anathema for him.
Yes, the quote was mine. For some reason I couldn't get the formatting to behave.Robert Tulip wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:05 pm
Hi DWill, I think this quote is from you although you wrote it as a quote from someone else.
Is it true that the left used the Supreme Court to establish a right to abortion? The case arose in Texas, and a Texas court upheld the right of McCorvey (aka Roe) to have the abortion. Dallas District Attorney Wade appealed the decision to the SC, which agreed to take the case. and decided in favor of the woman. I'm not aware that before that time any attempt had been made to legislate a right to abortion. Was abortion rights a particular area of left/liberal activism before that time? I don't know.My view is that abortion gained such high political traction on the right only because the left used SCOTUS to get around their inability to legislate a right to abortion. And that inability was purely due to the corrupt filibuster requirement for a 60% majority to change the law. Without the undemocratic filibuster, the Senate would have passed abortion rights into law.
I think the anti-Roe movement indeed began as a moral issue, in the minds of all of these activists. 1973 was a time not enough like our own polarized era for the beef to have been about what we now refer to as the Red/Blue divide.The political traction against Roe is about the imposition of a rule that is resented. It is primarily about power, not morality. There is a tiny minority with extreme moral views against abortion who found traction for their views in the popular red resentment against autocratic blue central power.
I don't see it that way. State rights was a cover for slavery before the Civil war. Primarily, the anti-abortion faction wants abortion gone. Yes, states can now decide they can ban it, but it's also a goal to make it illegal everywhere, denying state rights to continue the practice. Mike Pence jumped on a national ban instantly after the SC decision.The punitive emotion is about State's Rights. Abortion is the new Slavery, and the punitive legislation is the new Jim Crow.
It was argued, and I think still can be argued, that the right to privacy confers a right for a woman to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term. But the right was limited, not of the on-demand sort. Roe was the needed compromise, and it's a terrible shame that it's gone.I think it is very clear there is no right to abortion in the Constitution. Roe involved pure manipulation to construct a desired result that has no basis in the original document. That manipulation naturally produced fury among those who did not share the policy objective of enabling abortion on demand.
I took the liberty of fixing the formatting, DWill. Hopefully I didn't mess up!PS--the formatting of this post appears screwed up, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it!
Apparently even Ruth Ginsberg thought Roe v. Wade was the "wrong case" to settle abortion issue. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/ ... -roe-wade/)DWill wrote:It was argued, and I think still can be argued, that the right to privacy confers a right for a woman to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term. But the right was limited, not of the on-demand sort. Roe was the needed compromise, and it's a terrible shame that it's gone.