The French! With a Sigh!

By Rich Kozlovich

 

In the movie The Patriot the lead character Benjamin Martin sighs, "the French".  Well, every time I read about what goes on in France, I see Mel Gibson saying this, and I roll my eyes and say:  "The French."

 

Pat Buchanan discusses this in his piece, The French Center Holds -- In a World Coming Apart saying:

In France on Sunday, the center held, as President Emmanuel Macron rolled up a crushing 59% to 41% victory in the runoff election against ethno-nationalist Marine Le Pen.........So terrified of Le Pen was the European establishment that before Sunday's election, the leaders of Spain, Portugal and Germany intervened in France's politics by imploring the French people to vote against her.......

 

According to the media and talking heads:

 

"France faces a "choice between a democratic candidate ... and a far-right candidate, who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and our democracy." 

 

Really? Far right?  Well, let's take a look about where they really stand.  Here's a site that outlines they're positions, and one thing you should be able to see is they're both socialist foundationally, and even if they're socialist of different sects of socialism, they're still socialists. 

• Culture: The French have always been arrogant cultural snobs and so are they still.  What's interesting is they seem to think they matter to the rest of the world.  They remind me of former celebrities who think they're still celebrities. 
• Economics: Not one proposal that reduces spending, or making society less dependent on government from either of them
• Education: Le Pen has some worthwhile points, Macron want's to throw more money down that black hole.
• Environment: Both are insane.They're buying into all this insane view on energy that destroying their economy they will save the world.   All this will come back to haunt them. 
• Foreign Policy: Le Pen is lost.
• Health: Spend, spend, spend, spend....take your pick.
• Immigration: Macron is a lunatic and at least Le Pen sees the danger
• Institutions: Tacit acknowledgement they have a serious ethical problem with their institutions in France, but that's universal, so at least they recognize it and have solutions. None of which will pass.  
• Security:  Both clearly recognize France in in trouble, and have solid plans, but Le Pen is far more on top of what needs to be done than Macron, especially involving Muslims and terrorists of any stripe.
• Society: If anyone has any doubt France is lost....read this. 
  

Again, the problem with socialists of different sects is they're still socialists, and dystopia follows socialism like the plague follows rats.  The fact is they have the same problem all European nations have.  Their foundational social paradigm is socialistic in nature because they all had kings.  We call them Prime Ministers, Presidents, etc. now, but they've always been top down societies, and it was far worse after the French Revolution.  There's a reason France has had "Five Republics" since their revolution, and American has had only one. 

 

In my view there have only been two great leaders in French history.  The Hammer of France, Charles Martel who saved Europe by defeating a much larger Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732, and Napoleon Bonaparte.  And Napoleon was far more than a brilliant military strategist.  French law is still largely based on his Napoleonic Code. And he was a Corsican Italian.

 

In the mid 1800's the Iron Chancellor of Germany, Otto Von Bismarck, once noted unlike America, which he considered a real country because of shared language, values and culture, Europe is just a geographical designation.  It's still true today, even within all the European "countries".   France isn't a real country in the way America is, although leftists are working diligently to make it like Europe, a patchwork of diversity, inclusion, and an immense effort destroy our economy with insane demands for equity. 

 

Reading French history is a nightmare.  One year in my younger years I spent a couple of months reading the entire history of England, and I loved it.  Sooooo, the next obvious step was reading French history.  Forget it.  The names were impossible to track because the very same names were held by different people making the time lines too difficult for me to follow, at least I found it so at that time in my life. 

 

But one thing I did glean from all that is France for centuries was filled with autonomous regions.  To some extent that mentality still exists, and that's throughout Europe.  Spain and Italy are facing issues with that right now. 

 

At one time the King of France only controlled the area around Paris and one of the Dukes of Burgundy had more land, more troops, more money and more control over France than the king at that time, and even tried to overthrow the King. If you're capable of following France's history you can begin to understand why their politics is so complicated and...screwed up.  And now America is working to compete with them to be number one in that category. 

 

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the socialists, who tried to disguise themselves by claiming to be "progressives", wanted to totally infest education at all levels in America in order to make sure the apple fell as far away from the tree as possible.  The goal was to end any idea parents or the churches would define morality for their children.  The state would be the ultimate moral arbitrator.  Both of which Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson subscribed.  Both believed the Constitution was an impediment to human progress and both subscribed to the concept, L'etat c'est moi.  I am the state!

It still comes down to this.  Forget the rhetoric, forget the mind numbing clabber from the media.  It's all about definition, and every politician in France is a socialist of one stripe or other, and socialists will always be socialists.  They all believe they have a right to steal you money, your freedom, your land, your children, and turn everyone into slaves to the state with a handful of elites telling everyone how to live and what to do.   The details are immaterial.