PragerU: PragerU Live: David French (4/27/17) | Speeches and Events

hey everyone here with uh David French senior writer for the National Review we just filmed a video with David here in the Prageru offices and he is on his way to LAX to catch a flight back to Nashville and so we're going to keep this short and sweet but we did want you guys to meet David so David thanks for coming well thanks for having me so first question you just wrote a big piece on The Rock in National Review Dwayne Johnson everyone's heard of him and I'm a fan and I was a fan back when he was a you know a wrestler is he conservative that's my big question what's the deal with The Rock well so the the the title of the piece is The Rock is the celebrity that we need and he yes he's a registered Republican but the point isn't really politics the point is this is a guy who's doing celebrity right so in other words what you know everybody who's I would say like my age and below has grown up to a greater or lesser extent with The Rock i mean I've been smelling what The Rock's been cooking for a long time i enjoyed the People's Elbow the people's eyebrow he's the people's champion and now he's the biggest star in the world maybe i mean just to give you a sense of the scale he has almost a hundred million more social media followers on all platforms than Donald Trump does unbelievable and Donald Trump's the king of political social media and so that's a sense of the scale of the guy so basically what the piece is is it says look this guy as I said is doing he's doing it right and how is he doing it right number one in a hyper politicized time when everyone is asking u asking celebrities to fight for social justice or fight for this cause or that cause or to use their celebrity for some higher purpose what's really refreshing about the rock is he understands he's here to entertain it's okay to have fun mhm that's a that's one of the things that you know that we all love about Hollywood is we can have fun so sometimes you just got to grab a minigun from the ruins of a drone that you just shot down by driving an ambulance into it as he did in Furious 7 pick up the minigun and go shoot down an attack helicopter i just did that yesterday not for social justice not for individual liberty and constitutional rights but because it's just cool to shoot down an attack helicopter with a minigun that's okay that's fun to watch that's fun to see so he does the entertainment portion right and the second thing though is he's an unabashed patriot he he uh supports troops and the troops and veterans in a way that few celebrities do i mean he really walks the walk on that i mean one of the interesting uh elements of sort of the legend of the rock is that he tweeted out the news of Osama bin Laden's death before anyone else knew before the president announced it before the news had leaked to major news media he knew Osama bin Laden was gone uh because he has these incredible contacts in the military community in part because he's got family there and because of his service to the military over these years and he shows an enormous amount of gratitude to fans he's one of these few guys that you know if he's driving by in his truck and he sees a sign some young girls are showing please stop rock he'll stop he'll take pictures you know he's always he seems to delight in that fans love him which a lot of celebrities kind of keep the fans at arms length it's almost like the fans are a bother even though they make all of their work possible and then the last thing is he has a message that's not political but it's culturally edifying you know if you listen to The Rock says at any point in time and he's talking about like the gear that he sells and all this he uses this phrase blood sweat and respect the first you two you give and the last one you earn and he's always talking about hard work you know one of the things that he he talks about a lot is that he when he his football dream died he had like seven bucks in his pocket and he went from seven bucks to last year he made 65 almost $65 million and so his production company is even called Seven Bucks Productions because of that so essentially what the point is let's not be begging our celebrities to be involved in politics we've got few things that unite us in this country right now uh and and The Rock interestingly enough is one of them he's a guy who you know one of my friends uh a writer at the Federalist uh tweeted out some months ago there's only two kinds of people in this world those on the Dwayne train in 2020 and filthy terrorists so there's a conservative there there's this real conservative love for him but then also BuzzFeed which no one would call conservative did this huge glowing profile of him and we kind of need people that in this country that that are not polarizing and that's one of that's the reason I said in a nutshell that he was a celebrity we need and it was a awful lot of fun to write about it i I kind of have a PhD in rockology so I felt qualified to write and enjoy doing it what he gets is that we go to the movies we turn on TVs to be entertained right as a respit from politics it's okay to have fun it's okay to watch a movie and enjoy the movie and uh you know but the other thing though is he does have a message you know the the Fast and Furious movies so one of the things that a lot of people who don't watch all of them on opening night like I have every one of them opening night um they have an element that's just pure escapist fun and then this other element that's about family bonds and loyalty and friendship that's in incredibly touching that gives this series a heart that if you just watch the TV commercials about it you wouldn't get but you know we could talk about The Rock all day we could and I would love to if you didn't have a flight absolutely so I want to move from PhDs in rockology to PhDs in social justice and UC Berkeley so uh as many people know the speech that Anne Coulter was supposed to give today she canled right essentially after leftwing mobsters were able to successfully make it impossible for her to speak there so I want to get your thoughts is this just uh you know another bad example of a conservative not being allowed to speak at Berkeley or at any college or is this is there a very very serious problem and this kind of this kind of seems like a special case this one well this is a serious problem in part because it's actually not a special case this is the third time there's been a cancellation in Berkeley because of threats of violence there was Milo Yiannopoulos where there was an actual riot and on the night of the riot one person was arrested won i mean unbelievable uh David Horowitz had a speech canceled there and now Anne Coulter has faced this and it's not just UC Berkeley just yesterday at Portland uh parade organizers canled a parade because the anti-fascist people are claiming they're going to rush the parade and drag the fascists that were going to be in the parade off the off their floats right who are the fascists the Multma County Republicans yeah exactly those were the fascists yeah the ones getting dragged off exactly so what what's really distressing about this is is two things number one that you have a mob that is willing to engage in violence to stop speech that they don't like that by itself is is a very serious issue but here's what takes that serious issue and makes it that much worse and that is that the law enforcement officials and university officials in Berkeley are not willing to use law enforcement to protect liberty what they keep saying is they're going to what they what they're essentially have been doing is standing aside unless they view that someone's life is in immediate danger and they've even bragged that as a after these melees in the streets well only a few people have been hurt but here's what they're saying they don't want to intervene because they don't want to hurt the rioters so think about that that gives the rioters the upper hand that gives the rioters the control of the streets that gives the rioters control over free speech look government exists to protect liberty it doesn't exist just to make sure the rioters are safe and and everybody's safe so long when the censorship happens when they say our main goal is just keeping people safe they're giving these riers a heckler's veto the rule of law has to be imposed and the rule of law means protecting liberty and if you're going to make the police back off you're not protecting liberty it seems a little crazy to me that in 2017 to say government exists to protect liberty makes you a conservative right i mean that it's just so common sense but it makes you a conservative it should be a consensus position right i mean but uh no I mean the very idea to saying government exists to protect liberty some people will be outraged by that because they're saying "Well that means protecting hate speech." It means protecting the First Amendment it means protecting the Bill of Rights and the gun on a police officer's hip yes it exists to protect him and to protect the lives of others but that also exists to protect liberty and for that matter the Second Amendment exists to protect liberty so we're we're in a dangerous situation here the the there are elements of the left who believe that they can shut down discourse through mob violence the problem is once you let that genie out of the bottle you can't control the consequences and I would say that in our hyperpolarized time when law enforcement won't impose the rule of law the end result is not going to be just leftist censorship the end result is going to be civil strife in a very dangerous situation so we have to have the rule of law enforcement berkeley in Portland in in in Claremont Colleges anywhere where Mbury where we have seen attacks on people uh simply because of their speech so I want to end this with a more personal question sure so last decade when you were uh at the the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education I think it was 2005 or 2006 you'll know better than I yeah right two 2005 yeah you joined the US Army and you actually were deployed to Iraq you were in the middle of a great career you have a family and then you're joining the army and going to Iraq it just I think it's an amazing decision an amazing life change can you just you know maybe walk us through your your thoughts during that time yeah you know I was um at FIRE an amazing organization you know doing amazing work in fact in hindsight the best thing I ever did was step down from FIRE so Greg Leanov could become president he's great we've done a few videos with him he's he's tremendous u but so I'm there i'm living in my apartment in Center City Philly and and having a dream career but I remember reading a story and this is in ' 05 when the Iraq war was going very badly and it was talking about how the army was having trouble meeting its recruiting targets and so it was raging raising the the recruiting age to 35 and I just got really mad and I said to my wife this country is too rich and soft to fight a long war and as soon as I said those words I felt this overwhelming sense of conviction I wasn't 35 I was 36 so one year above but I was in I mean physically healthy um you know I had a wife and two kids at the time um now we have three but two at the time and but there were guys who were my age and married and with kids who were over there they didn't love their wife and kids any less than I did in fact you know they were laying their lives on the line to protect their wife and kids so as soon as I said that I I had this real sense of conviction and I looked at my wife and she knew what I was thinking and she said "Don't even think about it." And I said to her "Well you know just pray about it." And the next day she went with my son who at the time was uh almost five years old and they were walking u by Independence Hall and they saw the the pave stones have the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and all around there's the statues in that whole area of different founding fathers my son was asking about all of that and and he said to her you know who are these people and she said well they were uh farmers and pastors and soldiers and lawyers and and he you know wasn't getting it she said you know and but I guess what they all were was patriots so he looked at her and he said the next question which is are we patriots a question that you know hit her really hard and or no he said "What is a patriot what is a patriot?" And she she answered with one of the best definitions I've ever heard she said "A patriot is somebody who loves his country more than they love themselves." And then he asked "Are we patriots?" And that question hit her like a ton of bricks and she choked up and she said "Yeah we're patriots." So I didn't know this conversation happened i come I come back home and she's sitting there and she says "You've got to do it." And I said "Well if I do it I'm going to volunteer i'm going to go to Iraq." And she said "You've got to do it." So I went to the recruiting station in downtown Philly which is you know recruiting guys mainly you know like for the infantry you know young guys out of high school and they said "My name's David French uh I'm too old i need an age waiver and I want to join the JAG corps." And I had no idea what to do with me except to get me an army physical which by a miracle I passed and then uh five months later six months later I was uh face down in the dirt at Fort Lee Virginia in Officer Basic uh at age 37 and let's just say that Michael Bay is not going to do any training montages of my time at Fort Lee uh but I got through it and and it was the you know I would say one of the best decisions of my life and I'm glad I did it wow i I had no idea about the story with your with your wife and son when you're as old as I am when I did this you gota you can't just tell your wife "Hey later joining the army." So this was a joint decision and and uh she was with me every step of the way wow so cool all right well thank you so much David thank you i appreciate it it was a pleasure to have you it's great to be here thanks for having me see you later everyone