This is absolutely worth your time. I read this early this morning when I couldn’t sleep.
French elites have convinced themselves that their social supremacy rests not on their economic might but on their common decency. Doing so allows them to “present the losers of globalization as embittered people who have problems with diversity,†says Guilluy. It’s not our privilege that the French deplorables resent, the elites claim; it’s the color of some of our employees’ skin. French elites have a thesaurus full of colorful vocabulary for those who resist the open society: repli (“reactionâ€), crispation identitaire (“ethnic tensionâ€), and populisme (an accusation equivalent to fascism, which somehow does not require an equivalent level of proof). One need not say anything racist or hateful to be denounced as a member of “white, xenophobic France,†or even as a “fascist.†To express mere discontent with the political system is dangerous enough. It is to faire le jeu de (“play the game ofâ€) the National Front.
The only ideas I see coming out of tech elites are “Universal Income” for the deplorables, which presumes the real issue is economic rather than one of dignity and meaning. The solution is not welfare for those left behind. That will end very badly if that’s all they’ve got. But what is the solution? I don’t have one. I wish I did. But I don’t see any of this headed good places.
As the article points out, the fundamental question of our day is over globalization. In the end, we’re all going to end up living in a smaller world. We won’t stop that. It’s just a question of what globalism looks like and who it benefits. The current system being set up by transnational elites is untenable. They won’t admit it, but it is. They will probably put the world through hell figuring that out, and I think this is just the beginning.
I’ve had to do a lot of hard thinking as political coalitions have shifted around. It’s enough to really make you question your values. Do I feel any kind of solidarity with France’s Yellow Jackets? What if I do? What does that make me? I’m sure a lot of you are struggling with the same things. I keep coming back to this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I think I still believe that. I think I’ve always believed it. We’re a country that had a bourgeois rebellion. The French took the same ideas and had la Terreur. The article I pointed out noted that in many ways the French Yellow Jackets have it worse than we do. What are we going to do when it’s our turn?
I have not commented in a long time…..mostly because I am farther to the left than most of the readers here….
But I get your point I think. I am completely against gun control in almost any form. If you want a machine gun and can afford it, please go get it. F-16? M1A1? Please feel free to buy one, you should be allowed to. Owning one does not mean you will be nefarious with it. I even think some felons should get their rights back, both voting and firearm ownership.
At the same time, I am totally pro-choice (I know its a bad word here, I expect to get yelled at). I have many other left leaning tendencies as well. But….
Both sides are doing things that makes me nervous for the future of the republic. Speech restrictions from the left, the veiled, and not so veiled racism on the right (and yes, there are plenty of lefty racists as well). Taxes on text messages in CA, trying to stop stem cell research on the right….We cannot seem to refer to each other without nicknames and insults. Both sides are guilty of the last one there.
Oy, its enough to make you just move to the woods and not bother with people anymore…..
Sorry not sure where this was going….probably missed the point anyway.
Scott
I’m personally pro-life, but I think the consensus on pro-choice is we’re all over the map here. I could identify at least a couple of certainly pro-life regular commenters, and a couple who are certainly pro-choice (including Bitter and Sebastian).
I don’t like “left” and “right” as labels, because we should take each issue one at a time, and libertarians (like myself and several others here) don’t fit all that well on the “left/right” axis….
And yes, these times are making me nervous….
I think you will find this group more tolerant of diverse opinion than is perhaps typical of places where you normally hang out. For example, I am willing to bet that the majority here is pro-choice. See the thread about NRA internals where a number of commentators had issues with the NRA making common cause with rightist social issue activists. (Full disclosure:I dissented from that criticism, albeit on purely tactical grounds).
You are right to be concerned about the future of the republic. We are two countries living withing a common physical space. There is no reasonable possibility of putting it back together again. That is the road to civil war. We could have a long argument about who started it but that would be pointless since it is the place we are at. Our time would be better spent trying to figure out a way to peacefully separate.
I’m not pro-life.
Or, I should say, I don’t believe abortion should be a criminal matter. At least until a certain point.
Alpheus said you were pro-choice.
I hate “Value Meal Politics”.
Same here.
Summing my views up as pro-choice is something that can only come from a very serious (intended in a respect for being serious) pro-life voter. The pro-choicers hate things I would like to see to address this issue because while I realize that women are the only ones who have to carry a baby to term, I also am a firm believer that it takes two to tango and I don’t believe men should be left out of the conversation. We expect men to pay for them when they are born, then they get a say in the pre-birth conversations, too.
As a strong pro-lifer (the only exception I make is for life of the mother) – I’m happy to align with you on gun rights. I don’t care about the rest of your politics.
And I would bet a lot of gun owners agree with a lot the left on other issues too – like police brutality.
That was indeed a fantastic article.
A long chain of abuses and usurpations…today’s legislative, executive AND judicial?
Islam is going to solve the French people’s problems for them. 5, 10 years, tops.
Scott W: where are Ferdinand and Isabella when you need them?
Instead of French cities, think Texas, gun control, and the most recent Congressional elections. If it wasn’t for rural Texans, Ted Cruz would be on his way out of office. Likewise, while we think of Texas as being a pro-gun paradise, this is more a rural Texas thing than in cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, or Austin. If the politicians in those cities had their way, Texas would have gun control to rival the West Coast.
I think the Red v Blue question is more complicated than a simple rural vs urban divide.
Look at a listing of American States according to their population urbanization. The average urbanization in the nation is about 80%. Yes, Blue dominated California is at the top with 95% urbanization. But Red Texas is 84% urban. Blue dominated Oregon is only 81% urban. You find plenty of Blue states with below average urbanization and Red States with above average urbanization.
Certainly urban vs rural is part of the explanation for partisan division, but there is more to it than that. I suspect the real division is wealth. The rich and the poor vote mainly Democratic.
Thanks Sebastian for making this article available to us.
Current activity around the world scares me and should be of concern to any free thinking person. I wish I had an idea to heal the great divide the politicians and media are creating for their benefit.
I believe all nations would benefit from strict term limits as a start. Eliminating politics as a career and restoring it to a _service_ role would be a good start and maybe dilute the big money influences.
I DO believe we can come together but it will take a stronger voice or unfortunately a traumatic event.
I believe a major part of today’s immigration issues can be summed up in one word, assimilation. Or more accurately, a lack of assimilation. It used to be common that when you immigrated to a new country you adopted the language, customs, dress and manners of your new home. It often took two or three generations before the process of assimilation was complete but even the first generation of immigrants made an attempt to fit into their new society. These days assimilation is considered a dirty word and instead of immigrants adapting to their new home society in general is expected to adapt to them. Greatly increased immigration, as is happening in much of Europe, aggravates this problem as these hoards of immigrants tend to form their own neighborhoods where their culture is dominant and newcomers have no need to assimilate into the existing society. This gets combined with liberals pushing the idea that it is wrong, not only to force immigrants to adopt the culture of their new home, but that even willing converts are considered evil. The end result is a country divided.
At my nieces graduation one of the professors gave a talk on the benefits of multiculturalism using the old melting pot analogy. Unfortunately she missed the entire point of the analogy. In the melting pot analogy you start with a bunch of different materials, iron, tin, carbon, etc. that represent the different cultures coming into the country. But she totally missed the next step where these different materials are heated, melted, mixed, with the waste or unwanted parts are either burned or skimmed off. This is the process of assimilation. The result, what comes out of the melting pot is not a bunch of different materials or cultures but a homologous substance that is the same throughout. Be is steel, as in the case of an actual melting pot, or culture, as in the case of different cultures joining in a new society. In her view no heat was ever added to the melting pot, no melting was ever done, and the contents of the pot remained a jumbled mix of different items with no synergy or interaction. This view that you don’t need the heat, the assimilation, is the cause of most of the issues that surround immigration.
It’s worse than that. These French deplorables are being taxed into poverty – so the government can pay non-working immigrants welfare benefits. They don’t want to pay a jiyza.
Like most Americans, they don’t want an uncontrolled flood of immigration, and they don’t want immigrants collecting welfare.
(And the word you are looking for is ALLOY – stronger and more flexible than iron. Not messy pile of rubble which is what we are getting now)
If any group could use the protection guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, it’s the unborn.