Bastiat he's not

As the prattle in France about consumers’ perceived loss of purchasing power reveals, discredited Keynesian and Marxist economic fallacies die hard in old Europe. Das Kapital still wields more influence than The Law, Frederic Bastiat's classic of liberty written about the same time. This being querulous France, consumers and their media proxies have been bitterly complaining for some time about increases in food prices that are reportedly putting staples like meat, milk and bread beyond the reach of too many pocketbooks.

This being statist France, Mr. Sarkozy’s government took the initiative and ceremoniously convened management representatives and labor unions to a grand conference held on the issue in Paris on October 23.

This being “intellectual-struck” France, the disquisitions had augustly been expected to produce groundbreaking, epoch-making alleviations.

This being socialist France, however, the placebo that eventually hogged the limelight in the media has been that old central-planning chestnut, boosting wages by fiat.

Two things about the whole brouhaha stand out. One is the government’s conflicting signals on the issue of higher wages and its mutually exclusive societal aspirations. The other is the stubborn refusal of self-styled French elites to even consider free-market insights in framing the debate, let alone legislation.

Take productivity. As Mr. Sarkozy rightly pointed out in his presidential campaign earlier this year, the only way for people to earn more money and be able to spend more is to increase their productivity and work longer hours. Sound economics. The snag is that Mr. Sarkozy himself has ruled out abolishing the 35-hour work week, the infamous piece of labor-market legislation that has come to symbolize France’s Malthusian instincts and accounted for stagnant wages since its enactment by a socialist government ten years ago.

There is no denying the fact that the French president has delivered on his campaign pledge to encourage people to work more by implementing his plans for tax-free overtime. However the scheme is so convoluted both technically and bureaucratically that it has so far produced only mixed results. Moreover, as the center-right Le Figaro newspaper explained in a recent editorial, although the government is no longer in the business of setting wages across the board, the impression conveyed by its rhetoric is that it still is.

In the wake of Mr. Sarkozy’s earlier tax cuts aimed at boosting investment and job creation, the whole debate has regrettably been conducted against the ideological backdrop of class antagonisms and worker exploitation. Because of the government’s reluctance to further ruffle union feathers at a time of union opposition to pension reform, one relatively safe prediction is that the government will somehow eventually accede to union demands that wages be raised artificially, blithely setting the nation on the primrose path to higher prices as producers pass higher payroll costs on to consumers. The country would then be back to square one.

What then should the government do instead?

Free-market economics suggests that Mr. Sarkozy should try sharper competition among retailers as a way to bring consumer prices down. After all Draconian zoning laws effectively prevent big chains from setting up new stores anywhere. Something along the lines of less regulation is under consideration but anything meaningful in this area will clash with the government’s pledge to protect small city-center retailers who might be driven out of business by larger stores. Indeed French policy has traditionally been to redistribute income from consumers to small storekeepers in order to "preserve the character" of French villages, towns, and cities.

The government might also try building up momentum for greater liberalization in world trade talks to expand consumer choice and cut prices, but again protectionist sentiments among French officials coupled with Mr. Sarkozy’s own dirigiste instincts, as exemplified by his opposition to foreign takeovers of French companies, preclude any realistic chance that free-trade correctives might work.

The lesson to be drawn from these schizophrenic impulses is that empirically-proven, commonsensical prescriptions like higher productivity, less regulation, more competition, more supply-side tax cuts and freer trade are too obvious or too messy or too Anglo-Saxon for French Cartesian minds. The country may have been through many more revolutions than any other in the Western world but, as Alphonse Karr, former editor of Le Figaro once pointed out in a famous epigram, in France plus ca change…

If I were an American voter

When my friend, former US Rep. Bob Schaffer, asked me to lead the Pledge of Allegiance in the name of Franco-American friendship last July on my final visit to his Fort Collins breakfast club before I went back to France, it was one of the most awe-inspiring and proudest moments of my life. In terms of symbolism and unshakeable fealty to the transcendentally humane American experience, voting in an American presidential election as a legal immigrant and naturalized US citizen would undoubtedly rank with that memorable summer morning. As the primary season looms larger and larger in American voters’ minds, and as my own philosophical hopes for mankind rest ever more confidently on America’s uniqueness, allow me to indulge in transatlantic electoral fantasy and to sketch out what my expectations would be if I were an American voter myself.

Well, first, nonvoting wouldn't even be an option. I would expect to experience the same high degree of enthusiasm and determination that characterized my decision to vote against the ultimately socialistic and liberticidal aspirations contained in the European Constitution which French voters ended up disapproving in a 2005 referendum held. Sitting on my hands on Election Day, at a time when so much is at stake in terms of individual freedom and national security in the United States right now, would be irresponsible and cowardly, if not downright seditious.

Speaking of Europe, I would also expect my candidate to solemnly pledge to strengthen America’s foundations and enhance the country’s role as a beacon to the rest of the world by unambiguously repudiating Europe’s Faustian social-welfare solicitude... its socialistic, high-taxing, growth-killing, unemployment-friendly economic policies... its relativistic attempts to separate responsible individual freedom from the prescriptions for self-discipline and self-restraint derived from our Judeo-Christian heritage... and its squeamishness in foreign affairs.

In other words, I would look for a candidate who would resist the temptation to infantilize the American people, instead invoking the Reaganesque spirit (in advance of Reagan's own presidency) of that 1976 Republican Party platform where conservatives fearlessly declared their belief that “liberty can be measured by how much freedom you have to make your own decisions – even your own mistakes.”

As my description of the ideal candidate makes clear, Democratic hopefuls would be unsuitable as they seek to be too liberally European. The question boils down to this then: Does any one of the current top-tier candidates in the Republican field meet my criteria?

Well, although I welcome Mitt Romney’s conversion to many conservative ideas and applaud his energy and articulateness, I question his authenticity and philosophical resilience in a general election campaign.

I also salute Fred Thompson’s entry into the race as a prod to the other candidates to keep to the conservative straight and narrow -- but I resent his nonchalance.

As for Rudy Giuliani, I believe he is very much mistaken if he regards the abortion issue as having been democratically settled once and for all when the U.S. Supreme Court made its Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

And yet, I would vote for Rudy Giuliani. I would have every confidence in his resoluteness and his dispassionate ruthlessness in the war on terror. I find evidence of that in an article he wrote for the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs in which he concludes that “we have learned that evil must be confronted – not appeased – because only principled strength can lead to a realistic peace.”

I would find comfort and inspiration in Giuliani's free-market credentials. I would trust his commitment to appoint “strict constructionist” judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, to oppose partial-birth abortion and to stand up for traditional marriage.

Dr. James Dobson and other religious leaders have upped the ante lately by threatening to support a third-party candidate of their own if Mayor Giuliani were to win the Republican nomination. They are right to flex their muscles as endorsements are starting to be made -- but in fairness, Mr. Giuliani’s pledges suggest he would be doing nothing less than President Bush himself, who has consistently been described as amenable to religious concerns.

After all, even Mr. Bush did not push the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment very hard and Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land. Is it fair to hold Mr. Giuliani up to standards which others, who have been hyped as more conservative than he is, have apparently failed to live up to?

Finally, unless conservatives are willing to hand over the White House to the Democrats in the hope that four or eight years of relentless liberalism will energize conservatives even more and engineer the emergence of a vibrantly conservative candidate with a consistently conservative record next time around, they have to admit that only Rudy Giuliani stands a realistic chance of defeating Hillary Clinton in November 2008.

What is at stake here is America’s willingness to remain America. When Mr. Giuliani says in Foreign Affairs that “the era of cost-free anti-Americanism must end”, and that “preserving and extending American ideals must remain the goal of all U.S. policy, foreign and domestic”, I believe him -- and I believe he can deliver.

P.S: Bob, good luck with your US Senate campaign in Colorado.

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, or should we say nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado, and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

Look who got buried

"We will bury you," Nikita Khrushchev famously threatened the United States in the late 1950s. His cockiness, and the concern of many liberals that he might be right, stemmed in part from the Soviet Union's supposed lead in science and technology as epitomized by their launch of Sputnik, 50 years ago last week. But news stories about the anniversary took insufficient note of who ended up getting buried -- first Khrushchev himself, then the Evil Empire, then its Marxist-Leninist totalitarian ideology. The cause of death for the latter two included not only democratic capitalism's inherent superiority in political governance, economic productivity, and moral vitality, but also the decisive advantage of a free society over a slave society in education, research, and innovation.

A Denver Post wire story on Oct. 5 reported: "Goose-stepping guards and medal-bedecked space veterans laid flowers at the tomb of the father of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolyov, at the foot of the Kremlin wall." Wrong tomb; the wreath should have been laid on the grave of world communism and its vaunted historical inevitability -- except that the grave is unmarked and the death unmourned.

A local piece in the Rocky was headed, "Coloradans recount Sputnik's impact on science, classrooms." Quotes from three scientists and science educators who were in school back in 1957 made it sound as though gravity and the heliocentric theory had barely been discovered before the Russian launch embarrassed big government into turning things around, leading to the great things our schools and their graduates have begun accomplishing in latter years.

Nice try by the revisionists, but the sad fact is that the union-dominated, money-corrupted US education system at all levels today is turning out poorer-prepared young people -- in engineering, math, science, and technology particularly -- and far fewer entrants to such careers, than either the America of Ike's day or our leading competitor nations of today. It would appear that the US military and space innovation which loomed so large in Reagan's winning of the Cold War twenty years ago, and the info-tech revolution which has kept our economy booming ever since, occurred in spite of, not because of, all those ballyhooed science-education programs after Sputnik.

Meanwhile, as we also read in last week's papers, Democrats running the state legislature continue stiff-arming sensible proposals (inconveniently offered by Republicans) to toughen Colorado's math and science requirements for high-school graduation. And you gotta love their rationale for keeping ours among the five(!) states with few or no such requirements:

Committee chairman Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, said he is still opposed to "making students into widgets."

"Where is the opportunity for students to experiment and grow their multiple talents with a day that is going to be so regimented?" he asked.

Colorado should focus on making students well-rounded, creative and able to use the right sides of their brains to solve problems, said Merrifield, a former music teacher.

But don't worry, be happy -- with Maestro Mike leading the band, at least we can sing, dance, and fiddle our way down the slope of international mediocrity.

'New Deal' pitch at UN by Sarkozy

Friends of America and individual freedom in France can't be heartened by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s first-ever address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 25. To this reader, his message was ambiguous if not downright devious. Ever since his election last May, Mr. Sarkozy has generally been described, particularly in the United States but also somewhat disparagingly in France, as a “conservative” and as “pro-American." Given the low ebb that relations between France and the United States reached in the wake of the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq, Mr. Sarkozy’s personal admiration for America boded well not only for forthcoming efforts to reform French society and the French economy along necessarily free-market lines, but also for the future of the friendship between our two nations -- and by extension, for the security and stability of a world resolutely standing up to terrorist nihilism.

Alas! Heard or read through the typically French prism of aeons of Marxist brainwashing, decades of comprehensively anti-American indoctrination, and years of warnings against globalization (read: Anglo-Saxon capitalistic attempts to rule the world, ruthlessly crushing foreign cultures in the process), Mr. Sarkozy’s speech in New York clearly and objectively dashed many of the hopes his election had tantalizingly raised. Will France at long last go through some sort of redeeming cultural, political, economic, diplomatic, military and psychological revolution. It seems less likely now.

Take Marxism. It was Sarkozy at the UN, not Karl Marx in Das Kapital, who complained that “never before have there been so many instances of rents, channeling profits to big corporations”. He also focused attention on the plight of “the poor and those who are exploited who might one day rise up against the injustice they have been suffering.” When did you ever hear a true conservative use words like “rents”, “exploitation”, and “social justice” to promote and protect individual freedom?

Take globalization. Sarkozy insisted “in France’s behalf that there will be no peace in the world without respect for diversity, without respect for national identities, without respect – I dare use the word – for religions and religious beliefs, without respect for cultures.” Innocuous clichés? Not quite. Bear in mind that not so long ago France tried to ban English words from the French language and that legally-binding quotas still require French TV stations to show a set number of French-made programs per week.

Finally, take anti-Americanism. True, Sarkozy did not rant against American arrogance or imperialism. However he reaffirmed decades of French mistrust of American might when he invoked the seamless unity of the UN as a counterweight to “those who would project power and strength.” Wasn’t former Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin back in 2003 actually ominously invoking just such unity as a counterweight to “those trying to project power and strength” in defense of the 17 UN resolutions that had been defiantly flouted by Saddam Hussein?

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Mr. Sarkozy should once again have added this caveat to French détente with the United States: “France is faithful to her friends and to the values she shares with them. But France also says that such faithfulness does not mean submission. France will not be cooped up in faithfulness of that sort.” And much more unnervingly he went on to warn that “if the clash of civilizations is to be avoided, then peoples throughout the world should not be made to think the same way.” What was the guy actually implying there? That America is to blame for terrorism as well?

The truly conservative mind finally boggles at Mr. Sarkozy’s crassly ignorant and downright dangerous “appeal to the UN to take charge of a fairer distribution of profits (…) and to see to the moralization of financial capitalism.” What was he advocating there? A return to Soviet-style central planning?

The conservative mind also reels at his deliberate use of the phrase New Deal in his calls for a new world order. He counterintuitively stated that “the world needs a new state of mind” and that “a New Deal, an environmental and economic New Deal, is necessary worldwide.”

That is the appalling message France sent to the world from the UN last month. On the basis of President Sarkozy’s speech there, I implore my American conservative friends to abstain from selectively focusing on parts of Mr. Sarkozy’s speeches that purportedly vindicate American foreign policy or the American way of life.

America is its own vindication. Mr. Sarkozy’s potentially totalitarian relativism is un-American.

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, or should we say nom de plume, of our French correspondent, a close student of European politics and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

Radio links from 9/30 show

Click to RejectLost.org to help Frank Gaffney stop Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. For a briefing by Amity Schlaes on "The Forgotten Man," her book about the Great Depression, see the latest Imprimis from Hillsdale College. While there, sign up to receive Imprimis in print, free each month. Click here for reservations at the Colorado Union of Taxpayers award event with Bob Schaffer on Oct. 6. Click here to learn about the Principles of Liberty course led by Penn Pfiffner of the Independence Institute.