By: David French – frenchpress.thedispatch.com – November 2, 2021

Last week my friend Bari Weiss reached out to me and asked me to write a guest post on her indispensable Substack, Common Sense. The subject was an extension of a debate I had with Chris Rufo on her podcast months before and something I’ve written about at length at the French Press—the threat to free speech from the anti-CRT laws that are sweeping America.

When I first debated Chris, the threat was theoretical. I was anticipating what these laws would do. Now we know what they are doing, and it’s not pretty. I’d urge you to read the entire post for the details, but we’re witnessing in real time increasing efforts to ban books, including books that no person could possibly label as critical race theory, efforts to identify key “trigger words” to identify grounds for making complaints under CRT law, and even efforts to ban photographs and other images from our nation’s history.

For example, in my home county a group called “Moms for Liberty” has filed a complaint under the state’s new anti-CRT law that takes aim in part at Norman Rockwell’s famous depiction of Ruby Bridges desegregating Little Rock public schools. It’s a tough painting to look at—it contains the n-word—but it portrays an American hero, standing tall, in a moment of incredible distress.

But that’s not the focus of this newsletter. I want to expand on a bit on the paragraph below. After describing the very real threat of left-wing illiberalism, I wrote this:

But something is going wrong on the right. An increasing number of politicians, lawyers, and activists are responding to fears of left-wing intolerance with their own efforts to censor, suppress, and cancel. They’re doing so in different places and different jurisdictions—the very places and jurisdictions where the right is dominant and where, all too often, the echoes of America’s most painful past can still be heard.

Here’s where we are—while it is absolutely the case that our nation is awash in conspiracy theories and paranoia, there is enough absolutely real intolerance and illiberalism on both sides of the political spectrum to cause rational people to be tempted to retreat toward tribalism as a means of perceived self-defense and self-preservation.

In other words, each side looks at the other’s abuse and takes extreme measures in the jurisdictions it controls, all to declare we can’t let that happen here.

Beginning back in 2016, just as I was beginning to be shocked and angry at Trump’s relentless rise, I made a very conscious change in my social media and reading habits. I intentionally tried to follow and read roughly equal numbers of thoughtful people on the left and the right.

Note I said “thoughtful.” I try to follow the best of both sides. And it was a transformative experience. Time and again, I’d see different people write compellingly about different outrages, and the stories and takes were all true. The injustices they described were all real.

Let’s take these two truths, for example. My good friends (and former colleagues) at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education have compiled a sobering list of 471 scholars who’ve faced threats of termination since 2015.

Here’s one partisan truth: “The left is responsible for 65 percent of attempted cancelations!”

Here’s another partisan truth: “The right is responsible for 60 percent of the physical threats!”

Then, here’s the partisan argument: “Your problem is worse than my problem!”

Online, this observation is called “both sides-ism,” and people hate it. They demand that you declare which side is worse, and then dedicate the lion’s share of your efforts to defeating the true threat.

And those critics have a point. There are greater and lesser threats, and one of the hardest parts of my job is discerning the difference. Cancel culture is a long-term threat to America’s culture of free speech, but if Mike Pence had made a different choice on January 6, the entire republic could have faced an immediate, mortal threat.

My friend Jonathan Rauch calls this distinction the difference between a heart attack and cancer. When a person is facing a heart attack, you focus your efforts on making it through the next hours and days. But that doesn’t mean you don’t also keep treating the cancer.

At the risk of being incredibly bleak, I’d diagnose the political patient like this—the American political culture has cancer, but Trumpism in its purest form risks the heart attack.

For a long time I’ve argued that the right ultimately has to fix the right, and the left ultimately has to fix the left. Yes, conservatives and progressives can and should write informed and thoughtful critiques of each other’s policies and ideas. That’s an indispensable part of a robust marketplace of ideas. Yet while external critiques matter, I still don’t believe they make as much of an impact as internal debate.

When it comes to party politics, however, I’m increasingly worried about the efficacy of “family” conflict. As a practical matter, this posture places an extreme emphasis on primaries. Yet in many ways primaries are part of the problem (see, e.g., everything Jonah has written about bringing back the smoke-filled rooms). And after every primary (no matter its outcome) the imperative is the same—rally around the flag.

Time and again, motivated minorities dictate terms, and then people are left with the dreaded “binary choice.” And when confronted with that binary choice, you’re choosing between representatives of movements that have committed outrages, that do contain radicals, and that will empower many of those radicals if they win.

So this gets me back to the third-party concept. And it makes me think of the possibility of a reboot. A fresh start. And the more I think about it, the more I think differently from Jonah—the man who launched the third-party debate on the right.

He envisions a “conservative party,” one that would operate almost like a watchdog of the GOP. When the GOP runs a decent candidate, the conservative party stands down. It endorses the GOP candidate and campaigns for his or her win. If the GOP runs a Madison Cawthorn or a Marjorie Taylor Greene, then the conservative party stands up. It puts a better person on the ballot. Even if it loses, it teaches the GOP that there’s a price to pay for conspiracies and extremism.

I think it’s a good idea. If a conservative party emerged, I’d be thrilled. But I wonder if there’s a different idea that could meet the true magnitude of the moment. What about a party that matches these characteristics:

1. Ideologically heterodox—it can run different kinds of candidates in different places.
2. Temperamentally reasonable—it places an emphasis on character and finding consensus when possible.
3. Anti-extremist—Not everyone has to be moderate. The party could house conservatives and progressives. But no radicals, please.
4. Classically liberal—committed to civil liberties and the structure of American constitutional government.

Does this sound impossible? Not really. For two reasons. First, I’ve just described (in slightly different words) the “exhausted majority” of Americans I write about frequently. And second, I’ve also described the coalitional nature of American political parties before the present ideological polarization.

It’s hard to remember now, but parties used to contain multitudes. Ronald Reagan’s GOP never controlled the House, for example, but he was able to repeatedly construct working majorities for his agenda by appealing to different Democratic coalitions. Relatively recent American history is full of examples of significant legislation passed through bipartisan coalitions assembled like a political jigsaw puzzle.

Those days are gone now, but are they gone forever? Possibly, but I’m not remotely ready to say for certain.

And then here’s the last factor, and it’s important. A truly heterodox third party would enter the American public square with no record of wrongs. No American constituency would have a list of grievances against it. A key part of its appeal would be the reboot itself. Ideally it would possess the energy and enthusiasm of the best entrepreneurial efforts, those new companies and institutions that burst on the scene with the vow, “This time we’ll get it right.”

Heck, in a way I just described The Dispatch. We’re a media version of a third party. And our realistic pledge isn’t perfection (nothing is perfect), but substantial improvement. “This time, we’ll do it better.”

One of America’s greatest qualities is that it’s a land of fresh starts. It’s a land of fresh starts for immigrants, and it’s a land of fresh starts for its citizens. How many millions of Americans have pulled up stakes in places where they couldn’t thrive, driven across our beautiful landscape and walked into a new community with the conviction that better days are ahead?

I’ve done it. I can imagine that many of you have done it as well.

This is all a thought experiment. I know that. But it’s a thought experiment connected to real data (there is an “exhausted majority”) and real experience. Everywhere I go, I meet people who are positively hungry for hope and—this is important—hungry to build, not destroy. It’s a long shot. We all know it is. But there is something deeply American about new institutions and new hope.

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Source: When Everyone Is Right That Everyone Is Wrong