Guy Millière on hope Tuesday, May 1 2007

I found this piece in several places, but for reference, the translation is based on the one at the Metula News Agency:

Hope

Despite ever-omnipresent sluggishness and inflexibility, despite the incomplete analyses and the difficulty of thinking of the world as it has become without resorting to notions that have become obsolete, it is clear that a solid portion of the French people is trying to turn a page. And it is also clear that the election, as of now very likely, of Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency of the Republic on May 6 will symbolize a metamorphosis in progress.

During the twelve years that have just gone by, the “Chirac years,” what I in other places called a “syndrome” has become stronger, to the point of coming to resemble a deadly illness. The French economy passed from breathlessness to a lack of energy and strength that could not be concealed by massaging a few numbers. The “French social model,” already wobbly, has become a hindrance for anyone with a spirit of enterprise and a powerful magnet for those who want to live like parasites. The outlaw zones at the periphery of the big cities have increased, as has the ghettoization of immigrant populations that France knew neither how to assimilate nor even how to integrate.

The creeping rot also affected justice, which became always more politicized, more destructive of liberty, and more sullied with errors and attacks, both as to the presumption of innocence and to the right of the common people and intellectuals to be protected from criminals. It affected research and education, expressed by an ever-accelerating brain drain. It affected information and knowledge, and the fact that France is the developed country where the spirit of globalization, the virtues of a market economy, and the underpinnings of international terrorism are least well understood constitutes, in itself, a statement of an appalling failure. It affected foreign policy, of course, where the leaders of the country made the choice to turn their back on the alliance of democracies faced with totalitarian dangers that threaten them, so as to suck up to the leaders of third-world dictatorships.

The basic essentials of these features had already been drafted or drawn during previous years, without saying anything or hardly anything about what was left to anticipate. It resulted in the conjoint rise of anti-Semitism, a hatred of the United States and Israel, a stale and Pétainist extreme right, and a resentful and potentially violent extreme left. Some works, those of Nicolas Baverez (La France qui tombe [France is Falling Over]) or mine (Un goût de cendres [A Taste of Ashes], Pourquoi la France ne fait plus rêver [Why France Doesn’t Dream Any More]), have attempted to explain what was taking shape. Neither the polls, nor the electoral results, nor the majority of the books available in bookstores, nor the commentaries distilled in the big media gave an indication of an emerging profound evolution. It would seem, despite all the makeup, that it is yet the case.

The message to take away from the first round of the French presidential election is not unequivocal or lacking in ambiguity, of course. The unprecedented result of Nicolas Sarkozy went together with a relatively high result of Ségolène Royal, despite the mediocre vacuity of her speeches, and despite an incompetence, which she demonstrated several times, and a deep archaism of a program that no open-minded Social Democrat would have wanted, elsewhere in Europe, twenty years ago. The death, in full view, of the Communist party came with the support of a left broken up among six candidates, but still very present. The erosion of the National Front had, as a corollary, the reemergence of an opportunistic and inconsistent centrism that united all those that would like to have immobility and motion, economic dynamism and the status quo, at the same. This centrism has, for that matter, come to pollute the essentials of the debates between the two rounds to this day, pushing the leader of the UMP toward a softened sugar-coating of his intentions, and the madonna of the PS toward agitation and maneuvering, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the end of the Fourth Republic.

Nevertheless, there are some signs that don’t mislead and which could prove to be encouraging. Among the leftists, it is, visibly, panic and the sour, disillusioned rallying cry of “anyone but Sarkozy.” Among the rightists, it is, often, a bilious bitterness, or even a call to vote for Royal, in the name of rejecting “globalization”, “Americanization,” and the “Zionist plot” that these people believe they have uncovered. According to them, the new Joan of Arc of the one-eyed or the poor is, by default, better.

As for the socialist party, it is engaged in distilling spiteful words, as if hatred of your opponent could take the place of a program, and it is taking classes in classic dance, feverishly and improvising, to practice its balancing act. It is the only figure that would unite those for whom, as the Marshal said, “the land does not lie,” and those for whom the damned of the earth would be transformed into the dictators of the proletariat. In passing by the fans of tractors and the lovers of Béarn who would like, for their part, to help themselves, a little later, to French-style socialism and have it become the PD, the Democratic Party.

Some signs don’t mislead, assuredly. And they could prove to be revealing, incontestably. I haven’t, these past few days, met anyone who doubts the election of Nicolas Sarkozy. I’ve met almost nobody who doubts that this election was going to result in profound changes.

At the least, the election of Sarkozy will mean a rehabilitation of work and of liberty to undertake, a reduction of the weight of the State on French society, a return toward some of the most fertile values among those originating in open societies. Also at the least, the election of Sarkozy will open, on an international level, healthier and more fruitful relations between France, Israel, and the United States.

To go beyond the minimum, to have France fully link up with with global economic dynamism and recover the full-fledged rank of an ally of open and free societies, would be desirable, but would constitute a change so radical in relation to the present state of affairs that it is, for now, hardly foreseeable.

Seeing the shortcomings of Sarkozy, but also his huge merits, I don’t think, this having been said, that this is a man ready to adopt a wait-and-see policy and to let the country slip down the slope along which it has been sliding for some time. I think, on the contrary, that this is a man of audacity, of will, and of courage, and I think that he won’t hesitate before the obstacles.

Maybe he will disappoint me and cause me to be wrong. Maybe he will prove that “sick France” is in such a state of despair that nothing can save it from now on. Maybe Nicolas Sarkozy will bog himself down in a lukewarm and sleazy fix of scheming politics, once he is installed in the Elysée Palace. Maybe he will let his Bonapartist tendencies take over. In this case, the only remaining choice will be to leave. One will return to France to look at the old stones and some museums.

I am not able, in any case, to resign myself to see the country of my birth governed by a scornful, authoritative, opportunist, technophobe, anti-American curlew¹ , able to assimilate itself into Saint Blandine, Léon Blum, or Hassan Nasrallah according to the day of the week and the place where it finds itself.

Maybe Sarkozy will disappoint me and his coach will prove, in use, to be empty and inane like a big pumpkin, but Ségolène, by her political behavior, her program, and her attitude, is already beyond all risk of disappointment. A candidate for the presidency that is delighted with the support of Arlette Laguillier, Olivier Besancenot, José Bové, Marie-Georges Buffet, and Dominique Voynet, and who could applaud and approve the idea of a “deputy” belonging to a terrorist movement at the time of a trip to Lebanon, is already disqualified a hundred times over in my eyes and has proven one thousand times her lack of ability to assume the function to which she aspires.

Note:

1. Curlew: a migratory shorebird with a long downcurved bill.

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Guy Millière on the French election Wednesday, Apr 25 2007

From Les 4 Vérités:

The election of Ségolène Royal would be a disaster

On this evening of April 22 where I write these lines, the French political landscape has become clear, as could be predicted. The center attempt to make a comeback with some combination of eating one’s cake and having it, along with the rolling pin, the flour, and the hot stove was relegated to the storeroom of ephemeral props, along with the narrow schemes – in the style of the Fourth Republic – of alternative “liberals” who are “liberal” only in name.

In spite of the attempts of the National Front to appeal to xenophobia and to Pétain-era nationalism, and to flirt with anti-Semitism, the Le Pen effect has waned, even though it remains at an elevated level, which is very revealing of the “French malaise.”

Villiers didn’t find a space to affirm the values of a France that has withered despite ambient nostalgia. Arlette was no more successful on the extreme left.

The confrontation of the second round of elections will be in keeping, globally, with the classic confrontation between the right, embodied by the UMP, and the left, embodied by the Socialist Party. Later, one will be able to think about what could comfortably be done to avoid the somewhat ludicrous pantomime that was the first round of elections, from the frantic race to gather five hundred signatures to the moronic rule that affords rigorously equal speaking time to both a representative of a large movement and to one of a small fringe group or to a gathering of fishermen: why not have a single election preceded by primaries of the left and right?

For the time being, one must think of the immediate future. We have Ségolène, the incompetent, half-witted, and arrogant representative of a party that, along with the entire French Left, has not known how to shift with modern times and remains stuck in a mode of reasoning that seems a throwback to the time of oil lamps. Opposite, we have Sarkozy, a man whose virtues and shortcomings I have already described in these columns.

Among his virtues is an understanding of the extent of the disaster on the brink of which this country finds itself. Among his shortcomings are the elements of interventionism, of state control, and of Bonapartism, which are, alas, very French.

Ségolène’s election would be a disaster that I do not want to think about, not even for an instant. This would not be a repetition of 1981 twenty-six years later. This would be a lot more serious. The economic suicide that we have been committing already seems irreversible; another five years of destruction will cause it to be not only irreversible, but even more destructive. To entrust a 20th century economy that suffers from lack of vigor and from exhaustion to someone that believes in terms of 19th century solutions would fall under what I would call an absolute, but slow, downfall. There would be a soporific sweetness in the air, of kind intentions, of intentions that are like those of a nurse that hasn’t anything more to offer than end-of-life care, until that moment when the soft, sweet, and ultimate sting of euthanasia must come.

The election of Sarkozy will open a new era. There will, perhaps, be some riots or, at the very least, tensions in suburbs. There will be hate and electricity in the air, and intellectual “anti-Sarko” terrorism will leave some traces. Sarkozy must choose very quickly between two options. Appeasement or confrontation. And I doubt that appeasement is truly an option. If Sarkozy intends to put France right, if he intends to truly reconcile the population of this old country, exhausted with the new century, it will come to pass after a very difficult initial period.

On the evening of May 6, if Sarkozy’s face is displayed on the television, I expect to see torched cars in Courneuve or in Nanterre, at the very least, or even more intense acts of violence. In previous writing, I said that France had an urgent need for a Reaganite or Thatcherite revolution. I think it’s true now more than ever. I also think that this revolution will be difficult: Thatcher had to deal with long strikes. Sarkozy should expect, at a minimum, the same kind of treatment.

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Guy Millière on the VT tragedy Thursday, Apr 19 2007

Another Millière article, from Sur Le Ring, dated April 18:

Reflections on the Bloodbath in Blacksburg

The terrible slaughter that recently occurred at a university in Virginia caused a predictable reaction in France. On all TV channels, there are inquiries into the “violence” created by American society, into the ease with which one can obtain weapons in the United States, and into the “all-powerful gun lobby.” It’s the same thing in the print media. With a delicate, often self-characterizing hypocrisy, Le Monde, in an unsigned editorial, stresses that it would be “unjust and false” to dwell on an image of America given by “outbursts of murderous insanity to which isolated individuals yield,” but immediately adds that the “acts of this nature are elsewhere rare, whereas they come to frequently disturb the American dream.” A little earlier in the text, youth “Made in USA” finds itself described as “subject to the double tyranny of abundance and competition”; not everyone is lucky enough to live in poverty or a planned society, of course. Who could say the opposite, in a country where the majority thinks that poverty is a virtue and wealth is a vice, and where one continues to be certain that the State must take care of everything? Only people like me, I know, one of those horrible adherents of individual liberty who should have left French soil by now.

Not having yet departed, I will say, for all those who no longer support ambient conformity with its odors of chloroform, I will tell you how I see it, in light of the circumstances.

1. For many years, American society has been inclined to be less violent than European societies. There are more deaths by firearm in the United States than in Europe, but many of these dead fall to police bullets after having behaved in a reprehensible manner. The number of burglaries, violent robberies, and rapes is statistically less than in a number of European countries. There are many reasons for this: first, a “zero-tolerance” policy inaugurated in New York when Rudy Giuliani was mayor of that city. This policy bore fruit and has spread, like a drop of oil on water. Then there is the use of deterrent sentences that puts criminals in jail and leaves few opportunities for recidivism. Today, the United States is a society where there is more liberty than in a number of European countries for those who have committed no crimes or misdemeanors, but also less liberty than in a number of European countries for those who have committed such acts. As I belong to the former category and not the latter, it’s a balanced state that I find agreeable. I don’t doubt that it doesn’t sit well at all with those that consider it to be sheer chance and an absolute misfortune if a serial rapist commits another offense once, according to European-style rules of generosity, he is given the opportunity to do so.

2. The right to carry firearms in the United States essentially doesn’t create any more crime, but permits, on the contrary, potential victims to defend themselves and play a deterrent role. The predominant reasoning in the United States is that it is not the weapon that kills, but the person using it. Individual responsibility is the basis of everything. Acts such as the one that has just occurred in Virginia have failed to occur a number of times, as in nearly each such instance, the deadly trap could not be sprung because someone stopped the murderer. The cases where there is nobody to stop the murderer are those where gun control politics place the murderer in a position to be the only person holding a gun. Such was the situation at Columbine eight years ago. Such is the situation again today, in Blacksburg. The president of the university where the slaughter took place was pleased last September that he had strictly banned the possession of firearms on campus. I don’t think that he is pleased today that the one person that killed 33 others before committing suicide had a monopoly on firearms during those long minutes, on that sad day in April. Le Monde, in the above stated editorial, notes with alarm that “voices have been raised to deplore the fact that that professors and students are not allowed to be armed, because one among them could have neutralized the killer.” Me, I deplore it also. “Politically correct” discourse and its consequences have once again served as accomplices to murder. The right to bear arms is not part of the American Constitution, as I’ve heard it said here and there. It is part of the American Bill of Rights, which is a statement of rights. To strike at the Bill of Rights in the United States is the symbolic equivalent of striking at the French Tablets of the Law. It won’t succeed, because the United States is still a country of liberty, where it is believed that the monopoly on weapons must not be left to the State and to the criminals. The lobbies of the left that oppose the carrying of arms won’t meet with any greater success this time than they did at the time of Columbine. One will essentially reason, in the United States, in terms of individual responsibility and security. And it will be very well that way. The security on the campus of the Virginia university where this bloodbath took place should be reconsidered deeply. One should also understand, more broadly, that the “politically correct” can kill and will kill again if speeches opposed to individual responsibility and forgetful of the fact that security is a fundamental guarantee of liberty continue to be made.

3. The “acts of this nature” occur elsewhere besides the United States. In many broadcast reports that summarized the slaughters that have taken place in recent years, I could see two precedents recalled, and two only: Columbine and an incident in Texas in 1966. To flesh out the evidence, a massacre that occurred in Canada a few years ago was grafted onto these American events (Canada, you know: the country where hardly anyone has a weapon and where it is the custom to be completely at peace, as Michael Moore noted in Bowling for Columbine), along with another that took place not long ago in Germany and, finally, the bloodbath in Nanterre. Nanterre is not, to my knowledge, a city in the United States, nor is Germany one of the United States. An abominable crime must be viewed as an abominable crime. A fault in the security of a school establishment must be viewed as a fault in the security of the scholastic institution. The ravages of “political correctness” must be viewed for what they are. My thoughts and my sorrow are with the innocent victims; I hold nothing back and have no ulterior motives. My anger is directed toward all those that are going to try to exploit this horrible tragedy in an attempt to advance their hatred of liberty and responsibility.

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Guy Millière on Europe’s moral collapse Thursday, Apr 19 2007

An article in in Les 4 Vérités, dated April 12:

Europe is in complete moral collapse

By dint of practicing a relativism that no longer distinguishes between the executioner and the victim, democracy and dictatorship, or liberty and slavery, today’s Europe presents a pathetic spectacle.

We are heading toward an unprecedented demographic collapse. But what’s on everyone’s lips? The greenhouse effect and the prospects of a slowdown in or cessation of already wheezy economic growth. We are engaged in a world war. But what do people say about it? Given that this war doesn’t resemble previous wars, in that it is carried on in networks, relying on terrorism and intimidation, one denies its existence, one engages in preventive defeatism, one adopts the enemy’s language, one repeats his propaganda and tries to get chummy with him, while hoping for a little leniency.

The attacks in Madrid showed the manner in which Europe reacts when faced with Moslem violence: one lies down and one begs to the end to be saved while mumbling “peace, peace.” When some French journalists were taken hostage in Iraq, it took months, entering into a process of negotiation accompanied by gestures of appeasement to the kidnappers, and of the payment of a large ransom. Seeing that this was a lucrative activity, other kidnappers in the Near East, in Afghanistan, and in the Sahara have taken some Italians, Germans, and others and have obtained the expected sums.

The Prodi government even put pressure on Hamid Karzaï to free some Taliban murderers, because that was, in addition to money, what was required by those who had seized a man that Prodi wanted to liberate. The abduction of fifteen British sailors in the south of Iraq by a group of Iranian Khomeinites was the logical continuation of this. One doesn’t see why the régime of the mullahs would feel embarrassed.

It’s easy to capture Europeans, even if they’re members of the miliary (service personnel from a continent on the way to being euthanized are rarely dangerous), as it pays very well, it constitutes a means of exchange if one wants to get something or someone, and it can also pay for the luxury of humiliating those seized and using them as puppets for propaganda purposes. What am I saying? One can, pressing onward, go as far as to get European TV channels to submissively distribute the propaganda images.

I don’t know what concessions and base actions were necessary for the liberation of the fifteen sailors. What seems obvious is that there was a price to pay, and that this price went along with concessions whose full extent will be measured in the next few days. What seems again more obvious is that all European media acted as accomplices in broadcasting propaganda videos originating from Iranian television, and placed the declarations of Tony Blair, a political leader of a democratic country, on the same plane as those of the totalitarian thugs in Tehran.

What was vividly apparent was that the captured English sailors exhibited no shred of any dignity, since they agreed to tell lies they were asked to tell and to play the comedy they were asked to play. What was also more vividly apparent was that all of this will leave some traces that will result in devastating consequences to those who do not respect force and despise weakness.

European leaders protest that Europe is “civilized.” After having been the womb of 20th century totalitarianism, Europe now expresses its repentance by encumbering itself with masochism and self-destruction. Europe is today slowly becoming a doormat on which the barbarians of the 21st century are wiping their feet. The demographic collapse we find ourselves in is presumably irreversible because it is accompanied with a moral downfall. This is revolting. This is lamentable. I feel only pain for all those that watch what is happening with lucidity, and that wait, impotently, for the ruin of that which Europe could have supported as the noblest and that, soon, very likely won’t exist any more on this continent. The idea of liberty and human dignity was born in Europe. It died there once, between Nazism and Leninism. It is dying a second time and this time, it will probably be the last.

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