Sunday, May 06, 2007

Allez France

OK ... that's the only time you will ever hear me say that. And actually, it is for picking "Un Hongrois et Juif Grec." (phew!!)

Nicolas Sarkozy will be the next French president and, by the standards of French political culture, he's practically a frothing Yank-lover (even nicknamed by his French opponents "Sarko the American") As the New York Sun noted, opponent Segolene Royal even tried to use this against him.
All this, moreover, was put to the French voters in no uncertain terms by an increasingly frantic Ms. Royal. In an interview with the daily Le Parisien published Friday, Ms. Royal accused Mr. Sarkozy of holding to "the same neo-conservative ideology" as Mr. Bush and even of "mimic[ing] the American president's technique of compassionate conservatism." She had already sought to distinguish herself from Mr. Sarkozy by asserting, "My diplomatic position will not consist of going and kneeling down in front of George Bush," a reference to Mr. Sarkozy's high profile visit, in September, to Washington and New York.
In his acceptance speech, Sarkozy did not back down:
"I'd like to appeal to our American friends to say that they can count on our friendship," he said. "But I would also like to say that friendship means accepting that your friends don't necessarily see eye to eye with you."
And his platform is almost Reaganite -- keeping in mind to calibrate for different standards among political cultures.
the first stage of his reforms ... include the abolition of tax on overtime, swinging cuts in inheritance tax, a law guaranteeing minimum service in transport strikes, and rules to oblige the unemployed to take up offered work.
On the social front he has pledged minimum jail terms for serial offenders and tougher rules to make it harder for immigrants to bring extended families to France. ...
Sarkozy’s campaign was based on the theme of “la rupture” — a clean break from policies of past governments, which he blamed for creating France’s runaway debt, high unemployment and festering discontent in the high-immigration suburbs.
But apart from any of that, you really only needed to know two things about Sarkozy. One, that when he was minister of the interior and trying to put down the 2005 Muslim riots over imagined and fanned grievances, he called the rioters "scum" and was pilloried by the French press and intelligentsia therein (there were reports of a Curé Alfred Sharptonne involved).

Two, that his opponent, the Socialist Segolene Rodham Royal was slipping in the polls and issued this warning Friday.
Ms Royal said she had a “responsibility to issue an alert over the risks … regarding the violence and brutalities that will be triggered across the country. Everyone knows it but no-one says it. It is a kind of taboo.”
This should be reason enough to support Sarkozy all by itself, and the French understood that. You do not have a republic if the party likely to lose can turn the election at the last minute by threats of violence or riot. Even if it is not in the "we'll do it"-sense, i.e., the Socialists themselves doing the rioting, but in the "others we cannot control might do it"-sense, i.e., the Muslims. It is of course remarkable [non!] that a whole Agence France-Presse walkup article can whisper these threats without mentioning any particular characteristics of the threatened or past rioters besides living in certain Paris suburbs. Of course, Sarkozy responded properly and (more importantly) did so personally, already a good indication of the right kind of president he will be:
"This warlike language is the negation of basic democratic rules," said Sarkozy, adding it was an unprecedented attack. "No doubt it's because she's demoralised," he added.
Royal indicated by those words that she put her own victory over democracy itself. To riff off something I got in my e-mail, "No Socialism! No Peace!" or "No ------- ! No Peace!" is sufficient reason to reject socialism or -------. No threat of unrest should ever cow a government or a people. And if the French banlieue (or the Sorbonne faculty) choose to riot over Sarkozy (and the early reports are indicating some troubles, though again this article doesn't mention who these rioters might be), I hope they are put down with as much force as necessary. Even if the French have to import the Germans to do it for them.

The French and all self-respecting nations and groups will do what is necessary to defend their culture simply because it's theirs.¹ And to call the French self-respecting .... understates the matter. I'll say this for French political culture ... it is sufficiently ethnocentric (it's what gives them their insufferable arrogance) that they will do what's needed to defend their culture for Eurabian invasion. And sufficiently hypocritical that they will ignore all the EU-centric human-rights mewling that they stir up against the US and Britain (another thing that makes them so endearing [non!] to Anglo-American conservatives). Again, from Sarkozy's victory speech:
In a victory speech before a jubilant crowd of supporters in Paris, Sarkozy said voters "have chosen to break with the habits and behavior of the past." He pledged "to give greater value to work, to authority, to respect, to merit."
"I want to give French people back the pride of being French — to (do away) with repentance, which is a form of self-hate," he said, renouncing a pervasive national malaise fed by economic decline at home and sinking influence abroad.
The word "malaise" is almost too perfect an American analogy.

And Rod Dreher reminds me of something else. Sunday was also the 5th anniversary of the assassination of Pim Fortuyn a week before Dutch elections, by a leftist who decided that the spectre of a Prime Minister Pim Fortuyn was so awful that he had ... how does one put it ... a responsibility to issue an alert over the risks … regarding the violence and brutalities that will be triggered across the country (maybe it sounds better in Dutch than French).

Sarkozy's victory, both in its intrinsic merits and the rejection of Royal's disgusting threat, is in some sense a major fruit from the wakeup call that Fortuyn paid his life for issuing -- for Europe to regain its self-worth, to recover its realism, and to reject suicidal and paralyzing political-correctness regarding immigration, crime and assimilation. In short, to defend its heritage and the liberal society that is one product of that.
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¹ Contrary to ignorantly (and safely) posturing moral equivalencers who see no difference between Islam and the West and even pray for the destruction of both. Said mutual destruction will of course be so polite and bloodless that JWT and US Army regs will be scrupulously observed.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

So....does the choice by a comfortable majority of French voters for a pro-American, pro-free market, anti-Muslim terrorist President mean a moritorium on cracks by American neocons about the uselessness of all things French? I'm truly curious to know.

Anonymous said...

Well, we'll see what Sarkozy does. The neocons certainly went overboard on the whole "bash the French" business, but French "knee-jerk" anti-Americanism was pretty bad as well. Lets hope we see a return to more adult behavior from all concerned.

Anonymous said...

"Moratorium"? Probably not, Andy, because so much of the hostility between France and the Anglophone world is both mutual and of long cultural standing. The narrow disputes of current politics merely shape it for a time.

But if Sarkozy deports Jean-Luc Godard to Switzerland, I for one will shut up.

Joseph D'Hippolito said...

I would be very interested to know what Sarkozy's opinion of the EU is. If you read the Brussels Journal blog (www.brusselsjournal.com), you will see the sentiment that the EU is becoming a totalitarian state in its own right (Note: this is *not* an evangelical site dedicated to eschatology).

If Sarkozy is dedicated to the things he said he's dedicated to, how will that brush up against the EU's priorities.

Then again, the French *did* vote against the proposed EU constitution, so maybe Sarkozy's election reflects some trends we're not appreciating over here in the States?

Two more points:

Regarding "violence" resulting from Sarkozy's election, I wonder whether les Socialistes miserables and their allies plan to burn the French parliament the way the SA took care of the Reichstag 70-plus years ago?

"Repentence as self-hate" is the perfect description of the attitude of many in the multicultural precincts of academia who value "diversity" as a weapon against American values -- and of many in the Church, especially in the hierarchy, who have lost any sense of who the are (and Whom they ultimately belong to).

Andy Nowicki said...

Victor, I can't tell from that comment whether you are pro- or anti-Godard. I have no opinion on the matter, but I do know that Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS (set in Paris during the riots of 1968) sucked beyond belief.

Anonymous said...

Andy:

I once referred to Jean-Luc Godard as "Le Grande Sphinct-auteur."


Joe:

Here's some of the things Sarkozy said about the EU last year and by an adviser after the election:
(1) Good: Opposes adding Turkey, which I don't oppose because of Islamophobia but because I think the EU's "democracy" requirements will wreck Turkey's secular-military arrangement.
(2) Bad: Wants to eliminate the veto (the veto is good BECAUSE it causes paralysis), and is still committed to some kind of EU Constitution, avoiding just the name and insisting that the French and Dutch electorates' "no" hasn't ended the matter.

"Repentence as self-hate" is the perfect description of the attitude of many in the multicultural precincts of academia who value "diversity" as a weapon against American values

Truer words have never been spoken ...

Anonymous said...

If Sarkozy doesn't make a legal decree confirming the blatantly obvious—that Captain Jean-Luc Picard is British both linguistically and culturally—he is just another socialist poseur.