David French never saw a leftward drift that he didn't like, which is why it was rather easy to predict that he'd inevitably endorse Kamala Harris in the name of "conservatism."
Shot:
Chaser:
The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance is both hilarious and terrifying, but to me, it makes sense. "Conservatives" like French have always made sense to me, in a way.
See, I don't label myself a conservative like French. To conserve, from the Latin conservare, means to protect or to keep from harm or decay.
But while multiple generations of conservatives appealed to the idea of conserving, they did not adhere to the principle of preserving. Both words have similar meanings, but the prefix "pre-" slightly changes the meaning to "guard beforehand."
Because too many people have been conservatives without being preservationists, GK Chesterton's century-old quip rings true:
The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
Allow me a metaphor to make the point easier to understand. Imagine you were on a survival TV competition and shot a moose. You now have the life-sustaining nutrition you need to make it through the bleak weeks and months ahead.
This food will provide the energy for everything you do. It will be the foundation - the bedrock - for your little kingdom as you fight back the wilderness and the chaos.
In order to survive, you will need to conserve your rations. You can't call it "progress" to gobble down all the food at once or to share the food with the pine martens and the crows and the friendly neighborhood grizzly bear to make your Disney princess dreams come true. If you do that, you will starve.
You have to understand the purpose of the food, how to rightly order your energy toward conserving and protecting it, and what designs are the most proper to those ends.
But conserving your food by protecting it in a food cache and rationing it properly will be completely meaningless if you didn't preserve the food first.
You need to cut the meat into thin strips in order to smoke it. You need to apply salt if you have it. You need to make sure the meat is protected from moisture. You should render the fat and find ways to store it. The food must be prepared before it is stored for the task of conserving it. If it is not, the food will spoil in the nice little box you make for it.
This is what has happened in Western civilization. You have one group of people that says there is no proper design for marriage, sexuality, parenting, community, money, governance, or worship of God. They say reality is whatever you make of it (#LiveYourTruth).
The other group pushes back against this, saying Nature has her laws that cannot be broken. But this second group has too often cut corners and accepted the precepts of the first group.
"Okay, okay," they say. "Marriage can be between two men, just as long as they are monogamous and faithful."
"Yes, our nation was founded on deeply Christian teachings and principles," they admit, "But it would be extremist to push for Christian laws and governance that honor the God who made the universe."
Men who capitulate on the preservation of God's laws - who fail to protect against the first little whispers of the devil - have failed completely in the conservation of those laws, which are the absolute bedrock of our civilization.
Eventually, all you are conserving is rotten, putrid meat, which is fit only for the flies.
This is why conservatism in the 2024 presidential race looks like this:
On the other side, you have people opining about better fiscal policy and smaller government, as if the nation isn't already $35 trillion in debt with the help of both parties.
Men like David French think it is possible to right the boat by letting the current childish state of conservatism burn itself out. He's voting for Kamala Harris like a parent who lets the cops take their rebellious kid in order to hopefully teach them a lesson.
The problem is, cooking the rotten meat isn't going to make it edible. All it will do is throw the rest of the meat that could be saved to a communist bear who says she has the will to do what others do not.
There is still hope, just not in the insanity that "conservatives" like French are peddling.
Yes, the meat has spoiled. The mice have been defecating in it as they nibble away at it because we didn't preserve or conserve it wisely.
But instead of being French and throwing what's left to the wolves, we could use the rest of what's edible to give us energy to go on the hunt once more. Our forefathers hunted a moose, skinned it, carved it up, preserved it, and stored it. They built a civilization for us.
We have squandered what they stored up for us. But that does not mean we cannot reform what is left and build something new. Such things have happened a thousand times over in world history.
Consider the book of Judges chapter two:
That whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors. After them another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works he had done for Israel.
The Israelites did what was evil in the Lord's sight. They worshiped the Baals and abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed other gods from the surrounding peoples and bowed down to them. They angered the Lord, for they abandoned him and worshiped Baal and the Ashtoreths.
The Lord's anger burned against Israel, and he handed them over to marauders who raided them. He sold them to the enemies around them, and they could no longer resist their enemies. Whenever the Israelites went out, the Lord was against them and brought disaster on them, just as he had promised and sworn to them. So they suffered greatly.
We have entered into such a time. Our nation (and all of Western Civilization itself) has "abandoned the Lord," the God of our ancestors, who delivered them and gave them great blessings that they didn't deserve.
As a result, we can no longer resist our enemies. The Lord is against us. Our borders are open. Our bank accounts are in shambles. We spend more on the interest of our debt than we do our military. Predators and perverts now rule our institutions, from the local school to the White House. We work to provide for the lusts of our eyes and our stomachs, but never have enough.
Now, the Lord of Armies says this: 'Think carefully about your ways:
You have planted much but harvested little.
You eat but never have enough to be satisfied.
You drink but never have enough to be happy.
You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm.
The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it.'
- Haggai 1:5-6
But as God did not abandon the Israelites, he will not abandon those who call on His name, even now.
It is true that this election is a choice between saving what's left of the rotten meat or throwing it entirely to the wolves.
But a little bit of order is better than total chaos.
This is why I cannot follow David French into his madness.
It is far better to vote for the MAGA platform, which at least acknowledges Christ's sovereignty and adheres in some form to the founding principles of our nation, than the communist candidate who only uses God's name when liberation theology or other depraved heresies can be used to deceive fellow Americans into adopting profoundly wicked policies.
It is better to vote for the candidate who will have some God-fearing believers surrounding him in his governance than the one who will surround herself with Baals and Ashtoreths and celebrate by sacrificing children to Molech at every opportunity.
And so, while I am still a conservative in the spirit of the actual definition of the word, I do not use the label for myself as it has been applied to politics over this last century or two.
I am a survivalist and a reformer and a builder and a preserver - one who will raise my children in the instruction of God so that they may grow into and inherit nations.
What has been is passing away, but God will save those who love Him. If He does not give us grace and allows our nation to be plunged into the inevitable chaos of Marxist leadership, hold fast.
It's either Christ or chaos, but Christ will overcome the chaos.
