I should have said I don’t assume he’s a bad person. As you said earlier, for all we know he eats babies.
Not a particularly high bar 
Fair enough. I thought you raised some valid points. My amusement derives mainly from this being the best Kristol thinks he can throw at Trump’s Hannibal (as in Hannibal is at the gate). I think I’d heard French’s name mentioned here and there, but wasn’t solidly aware of him until now either.
Yes, a collective “Who?” doesn’t really reflect a good choice.
And his last name is French. WTF? Trump will have a field day with that.
wipes brow with white hankerchief
“OH, sorry sport, didn’t mean to use your family’s flag like that.”
I did the 2nd Punic War and Hannibal for my Honors English Senior paper. I remember who he was.
Can I pay my half in pocket lint and empty Mt Dew cans?
My thought exactly.
You certainly come across as the kind of guy who takes to heart Edmund Burke’s admonishment that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Just didn’t want any confusion with the Lecter fellow. Trump is horrible, but not that smart.
I honestly can’t tell with these people anymore. I just can’t.
I am amazed that even a skilled ghost writer could fill a book with interesting information about Bristol Palin.
Thanks especially for this:
For French newbies, more on his interesting beliefs: After Dylann Root’s racial mass murders in Charleston, French wrote a post called “If One of the Churchgoers in Charleston Had Been Armed . . .” and it’s just what you imagine, ending in a Paen to The Gun:
Don’t just carry. Don’t just go to the state-mandated training, buy a weapon, and then forget about it… Practice with a handgun until you can take it from a position of safe carry to active engagement within seconds. Then practice that again until you’ve beaten your best time. Then practice again. And realize that practice isn’t a burden but a joy…
Exactly the kind of POTUS we need, one who can outshoot his Secret Service agents! Unless he’s too relaxed from all that masturbating with his gun.
Bill Kristol’s real David French:
I wouldn’t be married to someone who wants to control my communications with the outside world, no. That’s pretty sick.
There’s a difference between a specific malactor and wanting to control all communications because the husband decrees that all men are malicious. That’sl
when you get into his right wing regressive ideology. If you don’t trust your partner as well, you have an objectively shitty marriage. You can pretend it’s all in her interest if you want, but people accept emotional abuse, even if they don’t deserve it.
Not to pile on or accuse you of anything – I think what I’m about to say was unintentional on your part. But I think you should have bit the bullet here and said: “yes, when a woman consents to having an affair, I blame her.”
It seemed like you were using “prey” to mean “seduce” rather than “rape” before. So if a woman is seduced, but you do not blame her for her actions…
…then you seem to be denying her moral agency in general, in a sort of “women are too weak-willed and frivolous to make decisions for themselves” kind of way.
Again, I don’t think this is really your attitude – I’m just pointing out how what you said could be misinterpreted.
Why would you think otherwise? It’s what is being stated here. The women are obviously encouraging those “predatory men” by talking to any and all men once they are married… and who needs other friendships?
No, he is not a candidate. He is currently the subject of speculation by Bill Kristol, and nothing more. He’s not an actual candidate until he announces a campaign.
Because love god carry gun in church?
Genuine WTF. I mean this is a guy who didn’t want money with some non-jewish person’s face on it in church.
Though I suppose he did allow knives for the sacrifice. And wine and stuff. So maybe he would be down with bud light and MAC 11s too for all I know.
I am not defending this guy.
The two guys my ex-SO had flings with, and ultimately left me for one were very close friends. One of our last conversations after i had been away for work she said, “if you are gone travelling, I will be with other people”. I empathize with the paranoia not because they lack agency, but because they have it in spades.
This guy sounds like exactly what the US doesn’t need. Mistrust, paranoia, and misplaced aggression would only lead to more foreign policy catastrophes.
Don’t tire yourself out too much beating up that strawman.
Some times. Certainly it takes two to tango. Some people actively look for another person to have an affair, some times it is two people and it just happens, and often times it is one person explicitly looking to exploit a situation. It is harder to blame a women who is in a less than ideal situation and someone moves in and manipulates her. This isn’t because she is “too weak-willed” as woman, but because she is human. Men are just as susceptible, probably more so.
Like when people were down on Tiger Woods for cheating. “Oh I would never cheat on my wife.” Someone pointed out that they never had the opportunity. If the average guy had the same same number of hot women throwing themselves at them like Tiger Woods did, most men would fail that test.
Ah - but here is the rub - It appears she DID make the decision for herself! I know, it is something maybe you wouldn’t do or your spouse wouldn’t do. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t something that someone else wouldn’t do. Not because they don’t trust themselves or are too afraid of losing control, but because they love their partner and don’t want to add to the stress of the situation.
Like I have said, I know people who have joint Facebook accounts. I have never explicitly asked why they decided to go that route (none of my business). I am guessing it is partly due to keeping away unwanted advances. But this is in no case an example of being weak willed or frivolous decision making or a controlling husband. Their relationship is one of the stronger ones I have known. High school sweet hearts who married. She manages two banks and wears the “pants” around the house when it comes to financial decisions and the like. It was an arrangement that they came to together.
Fair enough, though I have tried to clarify.
Well, you seem to be determined to pick a fight either way:
I agree it’s weird for people to try to control who their partners talk to, but once they’ve not only talked but engaged in an extramarital affair then we not only can but should “seriously blame women people for this shit”. (Gender is actually pretty irrelevant here.)
But honestly I kind of agree with @Mister44 here and I’m glad to have him as part of the conversation as a corrective to rush to judgment on this French guy. French had a concern that was based in fact (the fact that military deployment overseas heavily strains relationships and often results in infidelity) and addressed it by communicating with his wife. If more people addressed their anxieties about their relationships by sitting down with their partners and having difficult conversations, there would probably be a lot less IPV and heartbreak in this world.
I wouldn’t come to a similar arrangement with my partner, but I don’t know all the details and it’s not really any of my business anyway. It’s actually pretty prurient to judge the guy on this basis.
Especially when he has so many batshit crazy publicly aired political views you can criticize him for.
Well, he’s still a public figure. But poring over his private life like this doesn’t strike me as so different from conservatives who are obsessed with teh homo.
I’m talking about a hypothetical woman making a hypothetical decision to have a hypothetical affair, not this real woman making a real arrangement with her real husband.
Edit:
Anyway, I think I disagree with you on this. If my partner had an affair, I would hold her responsible for her actions – not the person who took advantage of the situation. That person doesn’t have the same moral obligations to me that my partner does.
I probably would too. Or at least 50%. But at the same time, when people are manipulated in other situations they are usually seen as a victim. So why would we not in some cases like this?
If the person was single and manipulated to sleep with someone who “hits it and quits it”, would one be more likely to say, “That’s what you get for being stupid.” Or “That guy was a lying asshole! It isn’t your fault!”
And @wysinwyg, If you sleep with someone you know is committed, you have the moral fiber of a banana. Full stop. It is always a choice by the counterparties.
The tiger woods example had me shaking my head. There are soo many alternatives to taking your pants off. Source: me, cause I get hit on 
Yeah, true, the whole concept of moral culpability is fraught.
In the hypothetical example where my partner engages in an affair, I would hold her and her counterparty culpable of very different sorts of moral failings. I think (and of course it’s hard to know for sure without it actually happening) that I would be much more concerned about the betrayal by someone I loved, but the specifics of how things went down could make a big difference in how things are weighted – depending on the specifics of the “manipulation” in question, for example.
In fact, terms like “predatory” and “manipulation” are, I think, intended to push the moral calculus towards one side or the other (in this case, towards the side of blaming the seducer, but of course there are other words for pushing the moral calculus the other way).
I guess the takeaway for me is that there is no fact of the matter in who is to blame – ethical obligations and moral culpability are negotiations we make with each other implicitly to try to minimize conflict in our society. They’re tools for getting along with each other better, not eternal truths to be used as rhetorical cudgels.
