Note: This article is about a religious figure, one who spends a lot of time instructing people in his religion on what he thinks God demands of them. As such this is gonna get pretty dang religious at some points. If you aren’t into that, cool. I just wanted to let you know.
I came here from ACX, and I was with you for a lot of this and gave you a lot of leeway given the recommendation, but you seriously think 'let's ban abortion but decriminalise the aborting mother' is a liberal left framing? You even outright say that decriminalised is the same as legal, which is astounding. I'm confused as to how I was directed here from a rationalist website, even.
I'll admit, French's abortion article was worse than I expected. I'm not fully sure how I should judge my prediction given that he does claim to be in favor of the ruling and of making abortion illegal from the supply side (though, as you note, he doesn't say what penalties he would be okay with—I now predict 70% that he would favor jail time for abortionists conditional on him making his views on the matter public). In any case, his current position is not what I had in mind when I said he would be "strongly" in favor of the ruling, and I think I was too confident.
Nice write up. I hadn't been entirely aware of who David French was, other than vague name recognition, but I recognize the type. The past 3-4 years seem to have been particularly bad for that sort of thing, although the notion of "RINO" and the like goes way back. I wonder how much folks like David French actually talk to a conservative, right wing audience as opposed to simply performing for the left, like a more serious "Colbert Report." I can't think of any examples on the left, but then I am not really looking from a leftist perspective so I probably wouldn't notice them if I saw them.
Huh, I get you disagree with him, but why the animosity? I use to subscribe to David French's letter. (I'm the ~centrist ~liberal that you say he appeals to.) I want to say that reading your piece, I was reminded of David Brooks, who I use to listen to on npr (back in the pre-Trump era.) He was like the perfect 'conservative/ republican' for npr. Brooks had a conservative view on things, but he never strayed too far from the liberal 'ideal', and so he was liked as a commentator. Now French is filling a similar role. (At least that's my reading.) So what? Both David's struck me with a certain level of honest/ integrity. That is/ was their appeal.
"Every one of the arguments he makes in support of keeping abortion completely legal from a demand-side perspective also works for something like the following, which I fully predict he will say as soon as he has anecdotal ammo..."
It took me a full second to drag my eyes back up from the block quote that follows this, which I assumed to be, like the other block quotes, an actual part of French's argument. Maybe he will actually get to that point. There are a lot of former conservatives who have reneged on their ideological commitments over the last six years.
But in the meantime I think it's dishonest to put words in his mouth just because they're ostensibly compatible with his argument.
For that matter, my hunch is that *most* pro-life people in the US are much keener on making it illegal to perform an abortion (supply-side restrictions) than making it illegal to procure one (demand-side restrictions). This might not totally cohere as a matter of moral philosophy, but I don't think they're all hypocrites. Heck, that might even be my position.
I came here from ACX, and I was with you for a lot of this and gave you a lot of leeway given the recommendation, but you seriously think 'let's ban abortion but decriminalise the aborting mother' is a liberal left framing? You even outright say that decriminalised is the same as legal, which is astounding. I'm confused as to how I was directed here from a rationalist website, even.
I'll admit, French's abortion article was worse than I expected. I'm not fully sure how I should judge my prediction given that he does claim to be in favor of the ruling and of making abortion illegal from the supply side (though, as you note, he doesn't say what penalties he would be okay with—I now predict 70% that he would favor jail time for abortionists conditional on him making his views on the matter public). In any case, his current position is not what I had in mind when I said he would be "strongly" in favor of the ruling, and I think I was too confident.
Nice write up. I hadn't been entirely aware of who David French was, other than vague name recognition, but I recognize the type. The past 3-4 years seem to have been particularly bad for that sort of thing, although the notion of "RINO" and the like goes way back. I wonder how much folks like David French actually talk to a conservative, right wing audience as opposed to simply performing for the left, like a more serious "Colbert Report." I can't think of any examples on the left, but then I am not really looking from a leftist perspective so I probably wouldn't notice them if I saw them.
Huh, I get you disagree with him, but why the animosity? I use to subscribe to David French's letter. (I'm the ~centrist ~liberal that you say he appeals to.) I want to say that reading your piece, I was reminded of David Brooks, who I use to listen to on npr (back in the pre-Trump era.) He was like the perfect 'conservative/ republican' for npr. Brooks had a conservative view on things, but he never strayed too far from the liberal 'ideal', and so he was liked as a commentator. Now French is filling a similar role. (At least that's my reading.) So what? Both David's struck me with a certain level of honest/ integrity. That is/ was their appeal.
"Every one of the arguments he makes in support of keeping abortion completely legal from a demand-side perspective also works for something like the following, which I fully predict he will say as soon as he has anecdotal ammo..."
It took me a full second to drag my eyes back up from the block quote that follows this, which I assumed to be, like the other block quotes, an actual part of French's argument. Maybe he will actually get to that point. There are a lot of former conservatives who have reneged on their ideological commitments over the last six years.
But in the meantime I think it's dishonest to put words in his mouth just because they're ostensibly compatible with his argument.
For that matter, my hunch is that *most* pro-life people in the US are much keener on making it illegal to perform an abortion (supply-side restrictions) than making it illegal to procure one (demand-side restrictions). This might not totally cohere as a matter of moral philosophy, but I don't think they're all hypocrites. Heck, that might even be my position.