There’s been a debate raging on the Right between David French and Sohrab Ahmari that is ostensibly about civility in the political arena. What it’s really about is a struggle for who will dominate conservatism: the plucky culture warriors of the populist, Trumpian Right, or the hand-wringing sellouts of Conservatism, Inc.
That’s a story for another SubscribeStar Saturday, but is relevant to this topic. Ahmari and other First Things writers signed their names to a manifesto in March detailing their resistance to and struggle against the prevailing liberal-progressive orthodoxy. In his controversial follow-up piece, “Against David French-ism,” Ahmari soundly rejects hyper-individualism (and the kind of weak-willed ineffectualism of libertarian solutions to political and social problems) and vaguely calls for a state more attuned to Christian principles.
Critics are accusing him of advocating for a Catholic theocracy, which is, of course, completely unworkable in the pluralistic United States. But I don’t think that’s precisely what Ahmari has in mind (although it’s a bit unclear). He is correct that the United States was founded to be an implicitly Christian country.
To read more, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or higher. Surely you want to read how I support such a sweeping claim, yes?
The Portly Politico 
[…] “Christians Protect Other Faiths” – Christianity gets a bad shake, considering it built Western civilization (with an alley-oop from ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel). The tolerance Christianity teaches is a boon to believers of other faiths, as Christ teaches conversion through persuasion, and the basic dignity of all people, Jew and Gentile. […]
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[…] in-laws, thinks Jews are up to something. The bigger threat to Jewish Americans isn’t white American Christian conservatives; it’s radical Islamists that Democrats insist on importing by the […]
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[…] “SubscribeStar Saturday: Christians Protect Other Faiths” – While we’re talking about subscriptions, why not subscribe to my SubscribeStar Page, hmm? I’m no Gavin McGinnes, but you get exclusive content every Saturday (and Sunday, if you’re shelling out $5 a month). If you’re subbed for $1 a month or more, you can read “Christians Protect Other Faiths“—one of the earliest subscriber-only posts. In this post, I was addressing the big split in conservatism in 2019 between the David French-style neocons of National Review and the Sohrab Ahmari traditionalists at First Things, specifically Ahmari’s powerful critique of noodle-wristed neoliberalism/neoconnery, “Against David French-ism.” I also looked at a now thirty-three-year old piece by a Jewish rabbi arguing that American Jews were wrong to denigrate American Christians, as the latter were the protectors, not the enemy, of the former. Upon rereading my scribblings, I think it’s definitely worth a buck to read! […]
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