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David French Accidentally Admits He Was Never Conservative

The more David French tries to act as the arbiter of conservatism, the clearer it is that he never understood what American conservatism is trying to preserve.

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David French was never conservative.

He is currently a Kamala Harris voter who left his church in a huff, supports same-sex marriage, and earns a living by bashing Christian conservatives for The New York Times. Nonetheless, he claims to be conservative, and even many of his critics on the Right would grant that he was once one of us.

However, one of his recent columns illuminates that he was never really a conservative. While critiquing Vice President J.D. Vance, French explained what he thinks conservatism means — and there is nothing conservative about it. Rather, it is a libertarian-infused variety of secular liberalism; though French eschews the label of “libertarian,” he nonetheless describes himself as “libertarianish.”

It shows in his rhetoric, which proclaimed that “there is no one innately better qualified than you to decide your own destiny,” and “Unless I harm someone else, it’s not the government’s job to determine whether I’m virtuous enough to enjoy liberty, including economic liberty.” In French’s view, conservatism is not about conserving, but about expanding personal freedom. He claimed that before Trump the “standard conservative understanding of the American experiment” was that the “role of conservatives was often to nudge (and sometimes try to shove) our nation in the direction of more freedom and more choice.”

In this view government must avoid judging between different visions of the good, true, and beautiful, for it is not competent to do so, let alone push people toward the right way to live. People must figure out virtue and the good life without the government nudging, let alone shoving, them toward it. Government should be neutral on such matters and instead focus on protecting everyone’s liberty, which is done by protecting everyone’s rights.

French argued that, in contrast, the vice president is eager to throw liberty under the bus to advance a more sectarian vision:........

© The Federalist