A tradition of disguising policy with woolly or euphemistic turns of phrase

From The Economist comes this handy guide:

 “Lost in Translation: a glossary of new French doublespeak” … offers a handy guide to decoding political speech under François Hollande’s Socialist government. Both the left and the right in France have a tradition of disguising policy with woolly or euphemistic turns of phrase. Lionel Jospin, a Socialist prime minister, for instance, privatised more companies than his right-wing predecessors without ever using the word, preferring “opening up the capital”. For those bemused by the linguistic ambiguity of Mr Hollande’s team, here are some helpful extracts from the glossary:

Sécurisation de l’emploi (improving job security): phrase used to launch current labour-market negotiations, designed to introduce more flexibility (see banned words).

Partenaires sociaux (social partners): unions and bosses who do such negotiating, not to be confused with dating, square-dancing, doubles tennis etc.

Flexibilité (flexibility): outlawed word prompting grim visions of unregulated Anglo-Saxon free-for-all (see Libéral).

Laissez-faire: iffy Anglo-Saxon phrase with no place in French (see Libéral).

Redressement des comptes publics (putting right the public finances): budget cuts and tax increases, never combined with austérité or rigueur (see banned words). Not to be confused with…

Redressement du pays dans la justice (putting right the country with justice): soaking the rich with taxes. Not to be confused with…

Redressement productif (productive renewal): name of ministry responsible for stopping industrial closures, or failure thereof (see Florange, Peugeot).

Plan social (redundancy plan resulting from aforementioned factory closures): job losses, not to be confused with organisation of social life, bars, clubs etc.

Modernisation de l’action publique (modernisation of public action): eliminating public-sector inefficiencies, elsewhere known as budget cuts.

Nécessité d’équilibrer financièrement les retraites (Need to balance pension funds): pension reform looms again.

Minable (pathetic): departure of French national who considers taxes too high (see Depardieu, G).

Social-démocrate (social democrat): moderately acceptable form of Scandinavian-style Socialist.

Social-libéral (social liberal): suspicious form of pseudo-Socialist who embraces free-marketry.

Libéral (liberal): rare species with dodgy Anglo-Saxon motives, set on undermining French way of life (don’t see Frédéric Bastiat).

Ultra-libéral (ultra-liberal): beyond the pale, eg, The Economist.

The Other International Brigade of the 1930s/1940s; The One That Your History Teacher Knows a Whole Lot Less About…

The title of this blog is a takeoff of the cry immortalized during the Spanish Civil War when the Republican camp tried to fight against the fascist totalitarians of General Franco — "They shall not pass!" — and when thousands upon thousands of foreign volunteers came to the Spaniards' aid in the 1930s in the form of an International Brigade.

This has been glorified by everyone in the West, from Picasso to Ken Loach, and the David/Goliath fight figures prominently in most history books from one part of the West to the other.

So if you know that, you know your basic history.

Or… do you?

There seems to have been another international brigade that we have heard about far less — far, far less…

Listen to the New York Herald Tribune at the turn of the decade:

WITH THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE IN THE FINNISH ARMY — Another group of Americans and even more Swedes, Norwegians and Danes reached the training center for volunteers late last night [Jan. 15, 1940] and early today to swell the number of fighting men in the International Brigade being formed in Finland. They have been coming in here every day now for four or five weeks, at first in groups of twenty to thirty, and then by hundreds. It is beginning to look as if the greatest International Column of all time will be fighting for Finland by spring. The backbone of this International Brigade will be the Swedish corps under General Eric Linder, a powerful force trained and equipped and paid for by Swedes. It will operate under the supreme command of the Finnish General Staff. Otherwise, it will resemble a private army. They are here to fight for a small country with a population about half that of the City of New York, into which a powerful neighbor has sent its armies and air force. — New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, Jan. 17, 1940 

So there was another international brigade come to the aid of a European people under attack by a totalitarian entity in the 1930s/1940s. And indeed, it seems to have become no less than "the greatest International Column of all time"—i.e., outweighing its Spanish counterpart!

Except this totalitarian entity it fought against was Stalin's communist Soviet Union (who, also, by the way, was instrumental in the fight besides Spain's Republicans (or shall, we call them Spain's "Republicans" with quotation marks?)).

So now we understand the reason why we have heard so little about this Finnish international brigade:

Rightist dictator(ship)s, bad.

Leftist dictator(ship)s, good.
(Or: at least, we have to try to make an effort to understand them…)

When government interventions backfire, harming those people they’re supposed to help, the state responds like a dog chasing its own tail with even more interventionist “solutions” to the problems it created itself

BBC reporter Daniel Pardo … of the Latin America-centric BBC Mundo, spent four hours [in Caracas] waiting in long lines, searching in vain for milk, coffee, cooking oil, shampoo, corn flour, detergent, dishwashing soap, and toilet paper

notes Benny Huang.

Of these items, he located only three on the bare shelves of Venezuela’s capital and largest city.

Venezuela is the laboratory in which the now deceased Hugo Chavez conducted his grand socialist experiment, which his successor, Nicolas Maduro, has seamlessly continued. Supporters of the Chavez brand of petro-socialism characterize it as a popular revolution that has allowed regular folks to reclaim their economy from the hated rich.

In short, they’re stickin’ it to the man.

In the new Venezuela there shall be no more price gouging, no more exploitation, no more…toilet paper? Among the items left unpurchased on Daniel Pardo’s list was toilet paper, a scarce commodity in a country that doesn’t exactly lack trees. Scrounging for TP has become something of a national pastime in Venezuela. President Maduro predictably blamed “unscrupulous traders,” not the policies of his government, for the shortage. In September of 2013, Venezuelan troops actually seized a toilet paper factory in order to better oversee production and distribution. A shortage nonetheless

persists.

Such is life in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. “We’re queuing here to get a number so we can queue again and buy the product,” explained Daniel Pardo.

 … “Critics say that the cause of shortages is price controls, which make reselling too profitable and producing, well, the worst business ever,” said Pardo.

The critics, in this case, are right. Government price controls and other strong arm tactics make people think twice about making or selling anything.

The government claims that it’s only setting prices that are “fair,” though the people who actually produce the stuff disagree. If no one will make the products at the tiny profit margins that the government permits, that’s a pretty good indicator that the price is not really fair at all. In most cases, the government bureaucrats who determine the “fair” price don’t really understand all of the costs—capital, material, and labor—that go into making the product. They simply see the producer as a robber baron who must be brought to heel.

Therein lies the problem. In true demagogic fashion, Maduro rose to power using class warfare rhetoric, most of which he probably even believes. Maduro is no son of landed gentry but a former bus driver who didn’t finish high school. He identifies with the “little guy,” and it is for his sake that Maduro’s government is constantly interceding in every aspect of production and distribution. The Chavez/Maduro message (“soak the rich”) resonates with people who perceive themselves as victims but unfortunately it doesn’t make good economic policy. The more the government tightens the controls, the more people try to circumvent them, or else they decide not to be part of the productive class anymore, in which case they stop producing and wait for the state to redistribute to them someone else’s stuff. The same pattern is apparent anywhere economic policy-makers care more about the fair distribution of wealth than about its creation. When government interventions backfire, harming those people they’re supposed to help, the state responds like a dog chasing its own tail with even more interventionist “solutions” to the problems it created.

 … Yet the socialist government accepts no responsibility. Again, Maduro suspects that a conspiracy is afoot among shopkeepers and probably Yanquis. As Pardo explains: “But the government says that scarcity is part of an economic war, which hides, smuggles, and hordes products to destabilize the country.”

Oh, I’m sure there’s plenty of hiding, smuggling, and hording taking place in Venezuela, but it isn’t a counterrevolutionary conspiracy. It’s basic economics. Furthermore, the governmental explanation confuses cause and effect. Hording in particular is the result of scarcity. When Venezuelans see an opportunity to buy toilet paper, for example, they buy it in bulk out of fear that it might soon become unavailable. Smuggling and hiding are also effects, not causes, of Venezuela’s economic troubles.

Freedom in a cage is a sham, a transparent attempt to soothe us while our rights are being stripped away

ABC News’s George Stephanopolous seemed to have Indiana Governor Mike Pence up against the ropes 

 writes Benny Huang

as he pounded him with the kind of “tough questions” that journalists never seem to pose to their liberal guests. Actually, it was the same tough question repeated over and over again—doesn’t the Indiana religious freedom bill grant business owners a license to discriminate against the “LGBT” community?

Pence denied it, though he shouldn’t have. He should have said that it does and that there’s nothing wrong with that.

 … The party line these days seems to be that government can’t interfere with churches the same way it can with businesses. Churches have special protections under the Constitution that florists and photographers don’t have.

A quick glance at our founding document reveals that that it doesn’t say a thing about churches. What the Constitution does say is that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, a concept applied to all levels of government via the incorporation doctrine of the fourteenth amendment. It’s entirely irrelevant if that exercise is taking place between the four walls of a church.

Yet lawmakers and law-interpreters continue to imagine an invisible caveat attached to our first amendment. Yes, your free exercise is sacrosanct…when you’re in church. The founders apparently never intended freedom to permeate society as a whole.

Bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein found out the hard way that they don’t have constitutional rights while operating their own business. The Christian couple was hauled into court after refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, supposedly in violation of Oregon’s nondiscrimination statute. They believed that the first amendment would protect them but, unfortunately, Oregon allows exceptions to nondiscrimination laws only for churches and religious schools.

The Left’s latest disingenuous position is that they love freedom of religion and all that jazz but it must never be allowed to seep beyond the confines of a church. It’s disingenuous because there is mounting evidence that the statist Left respects no limits on governmental authority, not even the threshold of your church. Priests have been exposed to legal pressure to make them violate the sanctity to the confessional, the mayor of a major American city has tried to subpoena church sermons, Catholic adoption services have been forced out of existence by demands that they give children to same-sex couples. So the idea that they respect churches is just another despicable lie. Churches are where the “bigots” are and the Left allows “bigots” no sanctuary.

This whole concept of churches as a haven of free exercise is simultaneously extra-constitutional, unconstitutional, and perhaps even anti-constitutional. But it isn’t without precedent. It’s actually part of a terrifying trend I call “freedom in a cage,” meaning the official toleration of basic constitutional rights only in small and ever-contracting niches.

Who on earth would want to cage our freedoms? People who hate those freedoms but won’t admit it, that’s who. The tolerance bullies claim that they fully support your right to be a moral monster worse than Hitler as long as you stay in your church. If freedom were ever allowed out of its cage they might have to see it, hear it, and even be inconvenienced by it, which they won’t stand for.

Free exercise of religion isn’t the only freedom they want to cage.

 … don’t accuse the campus censors of opposing free speech. How wrong can you be? They cherish free speech, with prescribed restrictions on content, and only in its proper setting—out of sight and out of mind. Try the janitor’s closet at two in the morning.

 … Freedom in a cage is a sham, a transparent attempt to soothe us while our rights are being stripped away. Look what the authorities are still “allowing” us to do! We’re still allowed, for the time being, to be unforgivable hate-mongers on Sunday morning at church, and to speak our minds on one percent of the campus. As long as we don’t use “offensive language,” of course. So quit your whining! Everything’s fine.

Everything is not fine. Our freedoms are being slowly asphyxiated in their cages. Who knows what will remain of them in a generation?

The New York Times Rounds Up All the Criticism of Radio and TV Martí Without Ever Mentioning Reliability of Cuba's Own Media

Radio and TV Martí are at a crossroads,

writes Lizette Alvarez in the New York Times,

scrambling to stay relevant as the relationship between Cuba and the United States inches toward a thaw.

Notice the MSM habit of turning nations into "equals", into "people", into "actors", without noting the degree of freedom in each. The Times then proceeds to round up the criticisms of the stations ("propaganda!"), without ever mentioning, even as an aside, the lack of freedom, reliability, and accountability that the Castro brothers' Cuban radio and television stations display.

But the Martís, with a budget of $27 million, have critics that include former American diplomats in Cuba. Opponents have long considered them taxpayer-funded relics controlled by Cuban exiles that too often slide into propaganda, which has damaged their credibility in the past.

 … They have accused the Martís of “a lack of balance, fairness and objectivity,” of cronyism, malfeasance and, most recently, low employee morale.

Isn't this typical for an MSM piece?

The absence of an independent French media may explain why French politicians do not need to tell the truth to voters: it is because no one else will

Years ago, a number of Frenchmen wrote to The Economist to set a few things straight.

This helps to explain why Fox News is hated, and resisted, in mainstream media-dominated America as well as in Europe.

SIR – I agreed with most of the analysis in your survey of France (October 28th, 2006). However, you gave only passing mention to (and overlooked the importance of) the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. The school, which was set up in order to supply France with top quality civil servants, has fostered an elite that jealously protects its privileges and very few people can get ahead today without its precious diploma. Although the énarques are undoubtedly very able people, France has a problem in that so many of its leaders come through the same system. The result is a pensée unique political condition that paralyses the country and shields it from a much-needed entrepreneurial spirit.

Claude Dufour

Nice, France

SIR – Your survey did not consider the impact of an absent independent French media. Most French newspapers and television channels are owned by corporations that count the state as their main, and sometimes only, client. This is an old habit (the first newspaper in France was supported by Cardinal Richelieu, the country's first prime minister) and may explain why French politicians do not need to tell the truth to voters: it is because no one else will.

Julien Méli

Boulogne, France

The Great Confusion

Changing the name of the World War II comedy from "The Great Hike" to "The Great Muddle", a Frenchman has photoshopped a still from a classic scene in La Grande Vadrouille starring Louis de Funès and Bourvil (along with Terry Thomas) and put it online with Barack Obama and François Hollande in the roles of the two French stars (10 seconds of the scene be seen in this excerpt from the film's (1h29m10s) trailer).

Related: In 1971, French Movie Star Criticized the Left for Its Hateful Humor

The intolerant students of the 21st century: Have you met the Stepford students?

… at one of the highest seats of learning on Earth [Christ Church, Oxford], the democratic principle of free and open debate, of allowing differing opinions to slog it out in full view of discerning citizens, has been violated, and students have been rebranded as fragile creatures, overgrown children who need to be guarded against any idea that might prick their souls or challenge their prejudices.

In the Spectator, Brendan O'Neill tells us he is aghast. He asks:

Have you met the Stepford students? They’re everywhere. On campuses across the land. Sitting stony-eyed in lecture halls or surreptitiously policing beer-fuelled banter in the uni bar. They look like students, dress like students, smell like students. But their student brains have been replaced by brains bereft of critical faculties and programmed to conform. To the untrained eye, they seem like your average book-devouring, ideas-discussing, H&M-adorned youth, but anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in their company will know that these students are far more interested in shutting debate down than opening it up.

 … In each case, it wasn’t the fact the students disagreed with me that I found alarming — disagreement is great! — it was that they were so plainly shocked that I could have uttered such things, that I had failed to conform to what they assume to be right, that I had sought to contaminate their campuses and their fragile grey matter with offensive ideas.

 … Barely a week goes by without reports of something ‘offensive’ being banned by students. Robin Thicke’s rude pop ditty ‘Blurred Lines’ has been banned in more than 20 universities. Student officials at Balliol College, Oxford, justified their ban as a means of ‘prioritising the wellbeing of our students’. Apparently a three-minute pop song can harm students’ health. More than 30 student unions have banned the Sun, on the basis that Page Three could turn all those pre-rapists into actual rapists. Radical feminist students once burned their bras — now they insist that models put bras on. The union at UCL banned the Nietzsche Society on the grounds that its existence threatened ‘the safety of the UCL student body’.

Stepford concerns are over-amplified on social media. No sooner is a contentious subject raised than a university ‘campaign’ group appears on Facebook, or a hashtag on Twitter, demanding that the debate is shut down. Technology means that it has never been easier to whip up a false sense of mass outrage — and target that synthetic anger at those in charge. The authorities on the receiving end feel so besieged that they succumb to the demands and threats.

Heaven help any student who doesn’t bow before the Stepford mentality. … They’re being made to take part in equality and diversity training. At British unis in 2014, you don’t just get education — you also get re-education, Soviet style.

 … The censoriousness has reached its nadir in the rise of the ‘safe space’ policy. Loads of student unions have colonised vast swaths of their campuses and declared them ‘safe spaces’ — that is, places where no student should ever be made to feel threatened, unwelcome or belittled, whether by banter, bad thinking or ‘Blurred Lines’. Safety from physical assault is one thing — but safety from words, ideas, Zionists, lads, pop music, Nietzsche? We seem to have nurtured a new generation that believes its self-esteem is more important than everyone else’s liberty.

This is what those censorious Cambridgers meant when they kept saying they have the ‘right to be comfortable’. They weren’t talking about the freedom to lay down on a chaise longue — they meant the right never to be challenged by disturbing ideas or mind-battered by offensiveness. At precisely the time they should be leaping brain-first into the rough and tumble of grown-up, testy discussion, students are cushioning themselves from anything that has the whiff of controversy. We’re witnessing the victory of political correctness by stealth. As the annoying ‘PC gone mad!’ brigade banged on and on about extreme instances of PC — schools banning ‘Baa Baa, Black Sheep’, etc. — nobody seems to have noticed that the key tenets of PC, from the desire to destroy offensive lingo to the urge to re-educate apparently corrupted minds, have been swallowed whole by a new generation. This is a disaster, for it means our universities are becoming breeding grounds of dogmatism. As John Stuart Mill said, if we don’t allow our opinion to be ‘fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed’, then that opinion will be ‘held as a dead dogma, not a living truth’.

One day, these Stepford students, with their lust to ban, their war on offensive lingo, and their terrifying talk of pre-crime, will be running the country. And then it won’t only be those of us who occasionally have cause to visit a campus who have to suffer their dead dogmas.

The French have finally lost their patience for, and love of, socialism

Over the past few years the gripe of many expats living in France has been the nation’s dogged attachment to socialism, and all the misery that comes with it.

Thus spaketh Mark Johnson.

We tend to blame everything on this national obsession with socialist values – the appalling poor levels of customer service, the huge taxes that double the cost of everything and the anti-business culture that means pretty much everyone has to work for the government instead.

Well, the entire nation’s been voting in the local and regional elections and Francois Hollande’s ruling Parti Socialiste has been well and truly trumped by the opposition conservative UMP party, led by a certain Msr Sarkozy.

 … Nicolas Sarkozy may have a long way to go before the presidential vote in 2017, but the current local elections have shown that the French have finally lost their patience for, and love of, socialism. Bravo.

Under Hollande’s socialist rule, the economy has not recovered despite promises to the contrary. Instead it has sputtered and lunged its way towards being the sick man of Europe.

In fact, it’s now one of the worst performing economies of the developed world. Change has to come and it must be now if this fantastic country is not to lose its way in the world forever. The time for Gallic stubbornness is over.

A Concert Poster Is Censored When Paris Metro Hears It Is for the Benefit of "Christians of the Middle East"

A poster for the famous Singing Priests trio was censored by the Paris métro authorities,
writes Mehdi Pfeiffer in Le Parisien, because the concert's earnings was to go the the benefit of the Christians in Middle East.

The concert's organizers do not seem to have been aware of the censorship until they saw their "Prêtres Chanteurs" poster in a métro station under the streets of Paris with that phrase deleted. Since then, webuseres have pointed out the RATP's double standards, since posters linked to Islam, such as best ramadam wishes, have appeared in the metro as intended…

Le spectacle en question, organisé au bénéfice des chrétiens d'Orient, est prévu le 14 juin à l'Olympia. Mais au grand étonnement de Jean-Michel di Falco, la fameuse mention concernant les chrétiens d'Orient a tout bonnement disparu. « J'avais demandé à ce que ce message figure sur l'affiche. Mais au nom, soi-disant, de la laïcité, il a été supprimé. Le président de la RATP m'a appelé pour m'expliquer ce choix, mais je ne le comprends pas. Il ne faut pas confondre la laïcité avec l'intégrisme laïc », estime l'évêque. C'est en effet en partie au nom de la neutralité religieuse que la RATP justifie cette censure. « La convention en vertu de laquelle Metrobus assure l'exploitation publicitaire des réseaux de la RATP prohibe toute publicité présentant un caractère politique ou confessionnel », explique la Régie. Un argument imparable si la règle valait en toutes circonstances.

Sauf que, depuis le début de la semaine, les internautes prennent un malin plaisir à ressortir des publicités affichées dans le métro et faisant référence à l'islam. Message culinaire souhaitant « Bon ramadan », offre de téléphonie mobile avec une femme portant le voile, ou encore affiche du film d'Abd al Malik intitulé « Qu'Allah bénisse la France »... Sur ces publicités, la régie publicitaire de la RATP, contactée hier soir, n'était pas en mesure de fournir de véritable explication.

L'incroyable triomphe des Prêtres chanteurs se... par lefigaro

Plus Ça Change… 2,000 Years Ago, Rome's Christians Were Accused of "Hatred"

The Annals of Tacitus were mentioned again in the National Geographic, this time in a special issue chronicling The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire.

First those were arrested who confessed they were Christians; next on their information, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of "hating the human race"

Much more (along with a slightly different translation) at this link: Plus Ça Change: Christians Accused of Being Hateful by… Nero (!) …Two Thousand Years Ago (!)

A Conversation with the Man Who Was Outraged at All the Racism Present in America

I was discussing taxes with an elderly man in France who, needless to say, was complaining that they were too high.

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

Then I decided to bring up a Republican, who had novel ideas on the subject:
Well, have you heard about Ted Cruz, who wants to do away with the IRS?

I was expecting some sort of (reluctant) sympathy for the GOP candidate from this invariable Barack Obama fan, but what I got instead froze the blood in my veins, as the reaction amounted to a primal scream, like the one in the painting by Norway's Edvard Munch.

• Oh, that man, that Republican, he will do away with the taxes, and then it will destroy the blacks and all the minorities!!

Huh?

• The Republicans are racists, who want to destroy the minorities!!

Not again, I thought, and said as much. (The idea that Cruz is a member of a minority himself never seemed to cross the man's mind (then, again, that's part of the new narrative).) Don't you think that this racism thing is exaggerated?

• Oh yeah?! he said, getting emotional and starting to shake of anger. I have some clippings from newspapers!
…See here! See here!! Southern kids chanting racist chants!! Making death threats!!

(Does Oklahoma fit the description of a Southern state? No matter; let it pass; Because…)
Sure they chanted those songs, but isn't is true that there is a particular black man in the Senate, and that he was voted in by an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the Southern state?

Then I added, and Tim Scott's skin is darker than Barack Obama's!

• Hah! cut in my interlocutor, racism! you are a racist too!!

Wha—?!

• You brought up skin color!!

I did not bring up skin color, for the love of Christ! You [you liberals] brought it up! Indeed, you bring it up all the time! We're not the ones who obsess about skin color! You are the ones who do so — incessantly!

You called Americans — or at least, Southerners — racists, so of course I point out that Tim Scott won with the backing of 760,000 South Carolinians, i.e., 61% of the state vote. In the context of the subject of the conversation (which you brought up), surely I am allowed to add that the color of his skin is even darker than Barack Obama's! And then there is South Carolina's governor, who is a woman of Indian extrac—

• I know it, I know it! he kept repeating, quickly and defensively, of Scott's status (I had previously pointed out Scott's status to him) — with an air of "So What?!"

So, basically, we have two "Yes, buts" here, dear reader:

The first "Yes, but" is mine; it goes like this:
T'is true that two dozen or so drunken frat boys were recently heard to sing racist songs in a bus…
But (!) on the other hand, don't forget:
A black man from the South is in the U.S. Senate, because hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Southerners followed the campaign and voted for the black candidate

(Related: Tea Party-Backed Black Republican Wins Senate Landslide in Southern State)

The second "Yes, but" is the European's.
T'is true that hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Southerners voted for a black candidate…
But (!) on the other hand, don't forget (losing temper, at this point, almost tearing hair out):
two dozen or so drunken frat boys were recently heard to sing racist songs in a bus!!!

(Sigh!)

Tell me, dear reader, between the two "Yes buts" above, which one seems to be the most illustrative of, I don't know, say the Southern mentality?

Related: Witness the Unbelievable Amount of Racism That Exists Among Conservatives and in the Tea Party

Note 1: this Obama fan is also a Palestinian supporter, meaning he finds little to criticize among Arabs or Muslims. That the singing fraternity brothers, and that their song, didn't actually harm anybody doesn't faze him; contrariwise, the only people he criticizes after terrorists attacks in the West are the "provokers" like the Danish artists and the Charlie Hebdo satirists (and, of course, Bush indirectly created the terrorists); likewise, he isn't bothered much (like Barack Obama and John Kerry) when, no not Iranian fraternity brothers (or university students) but Tehran's leaders shout "Death to America!"

Note 2: But I hear it again and again — complaints in France, in Denmark, all over, about high local taxes and money spent on indolent people and on corruption and on graft and on wasting money or throwing it out the window.

Often, I respond with what is only half a joke, saying teasingly, with a wink, you know that you sound like a Tea Partier.

Much of the time, I then get a scream of protest; I am then told (in all seriousness) that no no no, in (that nightmarish hellhole of) America they do need more taxes and they do need more rules and they do need more government support!

The Cold War a Position Against Communist Slavery and to Prevent Another World War?! It Can't Be!

On December 16, 1952 (reported the International Herald Tribune), Harry Truman declared that

his Administration's leadership in the struggle against Communism has saved hundreds of people from slavery. [The President] warned the incoming Republican Administration by implication against any reduction in the defense program he initiated. Saying any suggestion of a cutback "is very dangerous talk," Mr. Truman asserted Americans are wise enough to know "we can afford to pay the cost of whatever is necessary to prevent a new world war." 

Now, I hate to say this, but this is incredible!

Could it really be that the Cold War was to prevent people from falling into communist slavery and to prevent (a new world) war?

(Not to mention, can it really be, that there is, there was, a Democrat in the White House who realizes the enemy consists of foreign dictators, not fellow Americans in the opposition party?)

No, it can't be.

Surely it was all due to clueless, reactionary Americans' racism and paranoia!

Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

Notes taken from everyday life in France and "old" Europe

• The American Expatriate who said that the only thing that helped concentration camp inmates survive during World War II was "hope"
• The Frenchman who inquired of a war supporter if he could ask him a question
• More news of stellar treatment from France's health care system
• A dispassionate discussion with the members of the band
• The Spanish artist who would not go to America
• The Danish girl who knew what kind of nation the United States is
• The Latin American lady who refuses to drink Coca-Cola
• The friend who asked me if I was happy
• The flight attendant who doesn't like violence
• Some initial French reactions to 9-11
• Immortal proclamations of Franco-American friendship on 9-11
• The firefighter gives a lesson in truck mechanics
• The BUT argument: Patterns in conversations in France
• The 50-year-old man who lectured me about America's race problems
• Taking World War II as an example, a Frenchman gives a lesson on the meaning of injustice
• I give my cat's veterinarian a scare
• The train conductor explains why the SNCF website should not be user-friendly

Greeted with Whoops'n'Cheers, "Singin’ in the Rain" to Return to a Paris Stage in English

“Singin’ in the Rain,” that much-beloved 1952 Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen movie, is in some ways a perfect offering for a stage musical

writes Roslyn Suclas in the New York Times.

It has catchy songs, a hilarious book, extended dance sequences and the branded-on-Western-consciousness image of Gene Kelly twirling his umbrella as he splashes and tap dances with delirious happiness through puddles, in the song that gives the film its title.

Following hot on the heels of “An American in Paris” (which enjoyed a sold-out run at the Châtelet before moving to Broadway this month), it's

the most recent in a string of American musicals presented at this theater by its director, Jean-Luc Choplin, who seems to have converted the Parisian public to the cause: “Singin’ in the Rain” was greeted with whoops and cheers by its fervently appreciative audience on Thursday, and its initial run (through March 26) is sold out. (It returns from Nov. 27 to Jan 15.)

Ginned up outrage and navel-gazing: the truth is, I don’t care if there is someone who would refuse me service based on my skin color or my religion or my heterosexuality

If one more person asks me how I would like it if an Indiana business refused to serve me because I’m black, I’m going to lose what’s left of my mind

warns Kira Davis on Louder with Crowder (the film producer was also interviewed by Steven Crowder).

I just need everyone to stop.

It’s not just the question that is driving me nuts. It’s the fact that no one is willing to accept that my answer is what it is – which is “I wouldn’t care!”

You see, that’s not the right answer. The answer is supposed to be, “Oh my gosh! I never thought about it like that. You’ve made such an amazing, salient point and I’ve just been so hung up on my gay-hating Bible rules that I didn’t take the time to think maybe I wouldn’t like it if someone chose not to serve me because of who I am!”

It’s important to note that this Indiana RFRA says absolutely nothing about discrimination and has nothing to do with homosexuals at all. This whole debate is ginned up outrage and navel-gazing. I hate to even participate because it means conceding to discuss a controversy that is non-existent in the first place. That being said, it is what it is and people keep bringing up this dumb question, so I feel I must stoop to address said question.

So, acknowledging of the fact that this discussion is completely unrelated to the text of RFRA, the truth is, I don’t care if there is someone in America who would refuse me service based on my skin color or my religion or my heterosexuality. The truth is I have the luxury of not caring because this isn’t 1915; this is 2015 and my ancestors have fought and died to secure my rights to vote, earn, serve and travel freely within the boundaries of this fine nation.

Being a black woman who grew up on a tiny island in northeastern Canada in the 70s and 80s, I have been called a “nigger” more times than I can count. It was hurtful. It took many years to escape the pain of that time in my life and learn to forgive. Also…so what? My feelings were hurt, but what in tarnation did what those people think about me have to do with how I eventually went on to make a lovely, rich life for myself in another country?

Nothing! So people didn’t like me because I was black. Big frikking deal! I still worked. I still voted. I still went to school. I still found friends and family to love. I still dressed myself, paid my bills, drove a car, etc. I’ve worked many different types of jobs over the years. I became a wife, a mother, an actress and eventually a writer. I’ve been able to work hard and enjoy the fruits of my labor. There have been plenty of people in my life who’ve been disgusted with me simply because of my skin color. None of them are here today and not one of them had the power to stand in my way and keep me from claiming what was rightfully mine.

“But Kira, wait! You say it’s not 1915 but if enough businesses refused to serve you because of your sexuality or race aren’t we looking at a repeat of that era?”

No, silly. What you’re talking about is a “slippery slope” and we’ve been reminded over and over again that there is no such thing as a slippery slope. So put that out of your paranoid little heads.

If we somehow wake up in 2 years to find out we’ve magically slipped back into Jim Crow I’ll be the first one to take up arms and march in the streets like my ancestors have.

P.S. – you anti-second amendment folks might want to rethink the whole “right to bear arms” thing just in case those right-wing nutjobs really do get their way and set back civil rights 150 years like you’re always claiming they will. Having the means to oppose an unjust government might come in handy when the government isn’t run by the Golfer-in-Chief anymore. Just a thought for you.

I don’t want to force anyone to serve me or play or work with me if they fundamentally object to me or my lifestyle for whatever bizarre reasons. I certainly don’t want to give those people my money. I’m happy to take my earnings elsewhere, thank you very much. Good luck with that whole racism thing!

Let’s not waste anymore time with these silly hypotheticals. I’m far too reasonable, far too old, and have far too much experience with actual discrimination to spend my time arguing about a situation that has absolutely no appreciable consequences for the success or failure of any educated, hard-working American.

Gay friends, just don’t buy pizza from a pizzeria that doesn’t want to cater your event. Black friends, just don’t buy wedding cakes from a bakery that doesn’t think you should be marrying that white person you fell in love with. Put away your wallet, write a nasty review on Yelp and holler “Bye, Felicia!” as you walk out the door to patronize a more accepting (and probably more successful) enterprise.

If worse comes to worse and you get too annoyed you can always hash out your issues with your Starbucks barista.

If Reagan Showed Signs of Alzheimer's Already in White House, then All I Can Say Is, I Wish All US Presidents Suffered From the Same Ailment

Scientists looked at transcripts from news conferences that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush held during their terms in office. They discovered that Reagan exhibited subtle changes in speaking patterns during his presidency that are linked to the development of dementia.

If it is true that Ronald Wilson Reagan showed early signs of Alzheimer's already during his White House years, as AOL reports, all I have to say then is that I wish all of Oval Office occupants would suffer from the same ailment.

Related: Some choice Ronald Reagan quotes

• I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the founding fathers

• “Reagan should have a monument in every city” says Walesa as another Gipper statue unveiled in Eastern Europe

Chinese Film Studios Are the Planet's Largest, Mass-Producing Films Designed to Build a Positive Image of the Country

Geo Magazine's Thomas Saintourens article features a Giulio Di Sturco photo portfolio of "Chinawood", showing how the country harbors the world's largest film studio (Hengdian is twice the side of Universal Studios) and how an even larger one will be opening at the Oriental Movie Metropolis in Qingdao. Needless to say,

China uses the Seventh Art Form to build a positive image of China

and

creativity will be limited by censorship.

Related: In cahoots with Beijing — Hollywood's Offerings Promise Only to Get More Anti-American Update: Further Inroads into Hollywood for China's Communist Party and Its Censors

Kalashnikov Generation: Europe's Gun-Free ZonesOught to Raise a Few Eyebrows

Just as we've gotten used to Frenchmen and Europeans castigating America for its gun culture and violence — to be contrasted with their own gun-free zones, their own intelligence, and their own peaceful ways — we learn, in Doreen Carvajal's New York Times story about a jewelry heist, that not only are firearms used fairly often on the old continent (albeit mostly by criminals), these weapons are often submachine guns — often enough that the weapon has given a book on a new generation of gangsters its title:

Frédéric Ploquin, the author of a new book about the evolution of organized crime in France, said that the robberies reflected a new wave of gangsters who have emerged since 2005 — a “Kalashnikov generation” with a zest for arms, no fear of death, and a taste for quick and easy profits, usually through drug trafficking.

Génération Kalachnikov (Les nouveaux gangsters):

Le milieu traditionnel n’est pas mort, mais les jeunes se bousculent au portillon pour prendre la relève. Ce livre, quatrième tome de la série « Parrains et caïds », est une immersion dans le banditisme français muri à l’ombre des cités. D’Aubervilliers à Nanterre, de Roubaix à Montpellier en passant par Lyon, Grenoble, Marseille et Nice, ceux qui ont repris la « boutique » sont plus nombreux que leurs prédécesseurs, mais surtout plus anonymes : à la différence de leurs aînés dont les noms s’affichaient dans les journaux, on les connaît peu. Un atout considérable, même si certains rêvent de reconnaissance médiatique. Que disent-ils d’eux-mêmes ? Qu’en pensent les policiers qui les traquent et les magistrats qui les poursuivent ? Comment les voyous d’hier les considèrent-ils ? Qui sont les têtes d’affiche ? Que font-ils de leurs millions ? Réponses dans ce livre étayé de très nombreux témoignages inédits. Le roman vrai d’une génération qui ne fait pas toujours la différence entre réalité et cinéma, surtout à l’heure de vider un chargeur.

London Mayor and Possible Future UK PM Hounded Into Renouncing His Dual American Citizenship

Thanks to the IRS, one of Britain's most famous politicians — indeed, London's mayor is a possible future prime minister — has been hounded into renouncing his American citizenship, reports The Economist.

BORIS JOHNSON, the mayor of London, is British-American by birth—and by temperament. He mixes the can-do frontier spirit with self-deprecating wit. After being sacked as a shadow cabinet minister, he said: “There are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.” He is relentlessly optimistic. “Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3,” he once promised.

Yet Mr Johnson (pictured) is so fed up with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that he is renouncing his US citizenship. He says he wants to affirm his commitment to Britain—a wise move for a man who hopes to be prime minister some day. But he has also talked of “getting a divorce from America” because of its “incredible doctrine of global taxation”. He became American by “an accident of birth”: his father was studying in New York. Half a century later this made Johnson junior liable for American capital-gains tax on the sale of his primary home, in north London; Britain levies no such tax. He harrumphed last year that this was “absolutely outrageous” and said he wouldn’t pay. (He later settled for an undisclosed sum.)

The number of Americans giving up their passports has shot up, from less than 1,000 a year in the late 2000s to a record 3,415 in 2014. A new spur is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of 2010, which makes it a lot harder for Americans overseas to get (or keep) bank accounts, pensions and mortgages, because foreign financial firms don’t want the administrative hassles that FATCA throws up. The law also increases filing requirements for citizens—and thus stokes fears that honest mistakes will be punished.

A neighbour of this correspondent, who was born in America but moved to Britain as a child, recently received a huge bill from the IRS, out of the blue, for many years of unfiled taxes. He had not realised that he owed anything; he had always paid taxes promptly in Britain. The IRS was so aggressive that he feared he might lose his technology business; he even discussed divorce with his wife as a way to shield their assets. In the end, he settled for a six-figure sum. He, too, has since renounced his citizenship.

Related: • Keeping the IRS happy grew ever more time-consuming and costly, until it became intolerable• A massive breach of the Fourth Amendment: The vast majority of those renouncing citizenship are middle-class Americans, living overseas, fully compliant with their U.S. tax obligations

Moreover: Check out 46 photographs of Boris Johnson
to see whether he appears more British or more American

For Liberals, you can be a murderer, a thief, a liar, but dont you dare be a conservative

In the wake of the prolonged clapping and applause at the Big Apple's Lincoln Center following a composer's gratuitous insult of Rush Limbaugh (John Adams compared the radio host to the Taliban and/or to the Muslim Brotherhood), Ed Driscoll (thanks to Instapundit) quotes a caller to the Rush Limbaugh show describing those two minutes of hate of  “the official bogey man of the left”:

CALLER: Rush ... You can be anything in New York City. You can be a murderer, a thief, a liar, but dont you dare be a conservative.

As I wrote five years ago, this is nothing new:

How could anybody better illustrate my contention (a mere observation, really) — discernible in my upcoming graphic novel with Dan Greenberg, The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln — that not much has changed from a century and a half ago, specifically when Honest Abe spoke at the Cooper Union in February 1860, addressing the Republicans' castigators:

…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

Appeasement of Communism is “the most dangerous course we could pursue”: The Eisenhower Quotes You Never Hear About

Today is the anniversary of the death of Dwight David Eisenhower, the general and Republican president whom leftists love to quote when it concerns warnings against the military industrial complex (i.e., America's military industrial complex alone and no other country's).

It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that, in Ike's viewpoint, appeasement of Communism is not only a dishonorable course but is

the most dangerous one we could pursue.

From an International Herald Tribune "50 Years Ago" item:

Appeasement of Communism is not only a dishonorable course but is “the most dangerous one we could pursue,” President Eisenhower said [on April 5, 1959]. Speaking in academic robes before 4,000 persons at a special convocation of Gettysburg College, the President said: “The world paid a high price for the lesson of Munich — but it learned it well.” The President made an emphatic plea for his foreign aid program as vital for the security of the non-Communist world despite the view of “uninformed” Americans who want to end, cut or terminate it. 

I remember an internet page from many, many years ago that tried to thoroughly debunk the idea that Ike's statement about the military-industrial complex were the alpha and omega of his thoughts — ignoring, fr'instance, the far more numerous quotes on the dangers represented by the communist block — but I have never been able to find it again.

(Might any readers be able to help here?)

In any case: compare 1959's “the most dangerous [course] we could pursue” to 1961's "we must guard against" ("we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex"). Which is the strongest language here? I.e., which threat, in Ike's mind, is the greatest of the two here? Is it really America's military–industrial complex? Is it not correct that in no way is there any talk of disarmament or pacifism in the 1961 speech?

Related: Ike on War and the World's True Pacifists

How many Democrats (including the one in the White House) truly believe the following? It hardly seems to be an Eisenhower quote widely distributed in leftist histories…

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure. 

How about this one — which tends to discredit somehow Democrats' lesson-giving to everyone on war and peace, especially members of the military for whom they harbor contempt?

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. 

Notice that that quote also goes far towards shredding the left's chickenhawk "argument". (…"more importantly: notice how this position can be turned against the so-called peace camp. If only a soldier can speak for the war, then how can somebody who is not a soldier speak against the war?")

How about this Ike quote on the governance of his Democratic successor in the White House? (Ike does not seem to have been a George W Bush, refusing to criticize a "fellow" president.) The quote doesn't seem to be preeminent in many leftist history books either…

Gen. Eisenhower took out after the President himself in his harshest criticism yet of Mr. Kennedy’s handling of foreign policy. He said it was the product of aimless drift. While he did not mention Cuba by name, he said tartly at a televised political rally tonight that “no threatening foreign bases were established” and no Berlin walls were built during his own Administration. 

In our society, “Diversity” is a goal pursued above all others, including competency; it is the magic word that makes the lowering of standards okay

… the value of a two year degree was not in question until the [Sarasota (Florida) police] department determined that it was a stumbling block to minority applicants who always seem to need some hand-holding to get over the finish line

writes Benny Huang.

Don’t blame me for saying it, blame Chief [Bernadette DiPino] for implying that minority applicants can’t meet the same standards as everyone else.

Chief DiPino, of course, doesn’t fret over the adverse effects of lower standards. According to Sarasota’s local CBS affiliate, “DiPino says there are other important requirements she looks for such as character, integrity and life experience.”

Like a good charlatan, DiPino deftly constructs a false choice—either Sarasota PD will have cops who embody those universally admired traits or it will have cops with college degrees. As if it can’t have both. But, as she already admitted, the goal is not to increase the police department’s quotient of “character, integrity, and life experience,” but rather to boost its melatonin.

“We’re not lowering our standards,” says Chief DiPino. Apparently ditching a two year degree requirement in favor of a GED does not constitute a lowering of standards. “We’re looking for people with good character, integrity, it doesn’t matter [the] color of skin…”

Except it does matter. If skin color were not an issue, Sarasota would have a colorblind hiring process, which it clearly does not. The chief has decided that there are just too many white guys on the force and she’s determined to remedy the situation. When she says that she just wants to hire the best people, without regard to race, she’s telling a big, fat, honking lie. If the chief wants more integrity on the force she should start by working on her own.

Sarasota’s hiring policy is just the latest in a nationwide pattern involving the lowering of standards in order to increase “diversity,” a commodity so valuable that it apparently supersedes pretty much all other considerations.

In Columbus, Ohio, the police and fire departments have become more lenient in hiring cops and firefighters who have taken prescriptions drugs not actually prescribed to them, who have had their driver’s licenses suspended for reasons such as failure to pay their car insurance, and who have had “minor physical or emotional domestic violence in the past 10 years” that didn’t result in criminal charges. Again, “diversity” is the magic word that makes it all okay. The Columbus police and fire departments are just too white, so now they will accept deadbeats. The implication here is that minorities are disproportionately delinquent in their financial responsibilities, which is actually not that far off the mark, but unmentionable unless you happen to be advocating “diversity.”

Amy DeLong, chief of Columbus’s Civil Service Division, echoed Chief DiPino almost word for word: “We are not lowering standards.” You’re not?

DeLong continued: “This is a tweaking and obviously we don’t want someone who is physically abusive or has a bad driving record, but we don’t want to eliminate people that could be good police officers.” What a relief! I thought standards were being lowered, when in fact they’re just being “tweaked.”

In North Miami, Florida, the police department abandoned its swimming test in 2004 because black applicants couldn’t pass it. Swimming is raaaaacist! Like all standards destined to be abandoned, the swimming test was uncontroversial until a push for diversity made people question its necessity. Suddenly it became a silly requirement with no practical application to police work, something like knowing how to juggle or ride a unicycle. There’s just one problem—a police officer, in the course of his duties, might someday have the swim. He might have to, oh I don’t know, rescue someone from drowning.

Once we’ve accepted that cops don’t really need to know how to swim, it’s only a short mental hop to the idea that lifeguards don’t either. Yes, lifeguards. In 2013, the city of Phoenix decided that it needed more minority lifeguards at its city pools. “The kids in the pool are all either Hispanic or black or whatever, and every lifeguard is white and we don’t like that,” said a Phoenix official. Geez, no racism there. She added that “the kids don’t relate; there’s language issues.”

Hmmm…maybe the kids should learn English? Sorry, asking people to learn English is racist. I take it back.

 … In our society, diversity is a goal pursued above all others, including competency.

To put it in terms that gays might understand, economic transactions should take place between “consenting adults”

Militant homosexuals get a little overheated whenever it’s suggested that other people have rights too

sighs Benny Huang.

The current debate we’re having over wedding cakes, wedding flowers, B&B’s, and a variety of other services is not about discrimination; it’s about sovereign individuals being able to engage in economic transactions on a voluntary basis.

Which is why homosexuals, if they really want a cake for their mockery of a wedding, should find someone who actually wants to make it for them. My advice is this: do business with people who want to do business with you. To put it in terms that homosexuals might understand, economic transactions should take place between “consenting adults.” If one party doesn’t consent, the deal is a non-starter.

The concept of voluntary economic transactions is essentially what Silk was trying to articulate before the New York Times trimmed his quote, seeming to suggest that homosexuals have no right to be served but everyone else does. What he was really trying to say is that no one has a right to be served. That’s no small distinction.

 … I believe that any private business should be able to decline my patronage for any reason and they don’t owe me or the government an explanation. That’s their right, just as it’s my right to shop with their competitor. Anything else would be involuntary servitude by definition, which is prohibited by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution.

Advocates of coerced economic transactions find this line of reasoning hard to refute so they resort to accusations of hypocrisy as a means of avoiding it entirely. As angry lesbian columnist Sally Kohn sneered in a recent Daily Beast column, “Those championing the right to discriminate generally want the right to discriminate against others, but for others to not be able to discriminate against them.” She cites zero examples.

Newsflash for Sally: I have been denied service on account of my nationality and I didn’t run crying to the government. It happened a few years ago in Tokyo when I walked into a small neighborhood diner and was brusquely “greeted” by a grouchy old Japanese woman, probably the owner, who informed me that she only served Japanese customers. Shaking my head in disbelief, I left and spent my money at a restaurant that actually wanted it. Yes, I was shocked and perturbed, mostly because my American upbringing bequeathed me a sense of entitlement to this woman’s labor. I grappled with the concept that she had the same right to choose her customers as I had to choose a restaurant. We had the opportunity to make a deal on terms agreeable to both of us but alas, we reached an impasse and the deal fell through. I had no legal recourse because there’s no law against refusing service to gaijin (foreigners) in Japan. Nor should there be. The Japanese have the right idea.

It’s called freedom. I kind of like it. …/…

France through expat eyes

The Telegraph presents a portfolio of photos showing France seen through the eyes of expats '

The Ham Sandwich: Proof of France’s inherent conservatism

What’s in a French sandwich? asks Stephen Clarke.

 … on my way to London on the train, I was reading a fascinating French article about a study that purports to measure the cost of living in various towns and cities in France by comparing the price of a staple food: le jambon-beurre, or ham sandwich [a length of baguette filled with butter and a slice or two of ham].

 … The most surprising thing about the study, though, was the revelation that of the 2.19 billion sandwiches sold in France in 2014 (by my calculation that’s about 43 sandwiches per French person in possession of teeth), a whopping 58 per cent of them were “au jambon“. That’s not just a popular sandwich – it’s a totalitarian régime. Of the other 42 per cent I’d be willing to bet that another 30 per cent are “mixte” which usually means jambon-fromage. And then at least 10 will be fromage (usually gruyère) or saucisson (salami).

 … The sandwich statistic is, I think, yet more proof of France’s inherent conservatism. Give your average Parisian the chance to open up a sandwich shop and they’ll opt to go the way of the 58 per cent. (I say average because there are of course some people who go crazy and open bagel shops, pitta parlours, smoked fish stores and even gluten-free havens). Give your average Londoner the same opportunity and watch out for flying halloumi.

There is nothing wrong with this, by the look of things. The French truly love their jambon-beurre, and we all love France for its eternal Frenchness.  I’m the same when it comes to beer. I want beer that tastes of beer. Start wafting fruit juice or honey or chocolate anywhere near a beer barrel, as many people are doing these days, and I will howl with outrage. To each their own conservatism.

Following the Charlie Hebdo Massacre, the Le Pens' Front National Is Back in the News

Marine Le Pen … who campaigns on an anti-immigration and anti-European platform, is increasingly seen as a serious presidential candidate in the 2017 elections

writes Susan Dominus in a lengthy New York Times Magazine piece…

 … a recent poll found that if Le Pen ran for president now, she would finish ahead of all presumed contenders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative former president of France, and François Hollande, the current Socialist president. Much of her party’s support comes from regions far from Paris, in areas gutted by deindustrialization or in tiny towns struggling with budget cuts and trying to keep traditional village life going

There are many who find good things to say about France's Front National — notably the party's attempt to get rid, or to diminish the number, of the repressive and extortionate radars ubiquitous on all the country's highways — but just because the party is said to be a part of the right should not let people forget such things as the fact that Marine Le Pen is a critic of the free market and an interventionist in favor of a strong state (like all the other politicians) — having indeed said that "Obama is way to the right of us” (!) — and that France ought to "turn its back" on the American "hyper-power" and "turn towards Russia" and its leader, Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, the New York Times' Susan Dominus writes that

Both anti-establishment and populist, the National Front has cast itself as a party for the little people, with a mix of proposals that confound current American notions of right and left. Its platform calls for the preservation of local services, protectionist trade policies and higher taxes on the rich…

Vincent Pons, a French academic [and] a campaign expert — a company he founded provides technological support to candidates — reminded me how difficult it is to map basic American assumptions onto the French political landscape. “In France, officially, we don’t have race,” he said; it is illegal, for example, to ask about race or religion on any government form. “We just pretend that race does not matter, but it’s this crazy thing — of course it matters,” he said. “There are no statistics, so you can make no policy around it. But even if you tried, you’d be accused of making too much of race.”

Dans l'émission Toutes Les France sur la chaîne France Ô, Erwan Lecoeur et François Durpaire débattent Alexandre Del Valle et Jean Robin sur le sujet "FN et Pouvoir (Si Loin, Si Proche)". Ce dernier, éditeur d'Enquête & Débat, essaie de dénoncer la censure généralisée.

Toutes les France 1ère (dernière?) télé Jean Robin par enquete-debat

Supporting School Choice is Being “Pro-Children”

As strange as it may sound, Carine Martinez-Gouhier informs us — over at the Bell Towers — that Texas, in spite of its libertarian credentials, is singularly lacking in school choice.

In 2015, the State of Texas is the envy of the rest of the United States. Thanks to its low taxes, a relatively small regulatory system, a limited government, Texas created more than 450,000 in 2014, the highest net nonfarm job growth in the nation. The Texas Model is thriving. The freer the markets, the more options people have for jobs, for products and services, and for opportunities.

Yet, there is something that the Lone Star State surprisingly falls short on: school choice.

And why should one be in favor (anywhere — in Texas, in another State, or abroad) of amplifying choice? asks Carine in another post. Because Supporting School Choice is Being “Pro-Children”.  At

Archbishop Carroll High School, a catholic private high school [in Washington, DC, we] saw students that were eager to participate, with teachers walking around the classroom. Clearly teachers are, as we would often hear, “in front of their students” and not behind their desk. The average class size is 20-24 with an 11 to 1 student/teacher ratio. Students [76% of whom describe themselves as African-American] were amazingly focused. No computer, or tablet are used: the Principal explained that they chose not to use new technologies systematically, but are open to let student use their computer or tablet if they wish.

Read the whole thing to learn about Carine's visit to Achievement Prep (also in Washington, DC) and Founders Classical Academy (in Texas).

If such stories, featured for everyone to see in documentaries such as Waiting for Superman, or The Ticket, are not enough to make the case for school choice, it is hard to know what is.

But what exactly was it that made this French immigrant better understand the whole debate? Carine lists Five Themes (click the link)…

“Fake but accurate” seems to be the liberals' guiding philosophy—usually cultivated at the expense of actual people, their lives, and their reputations

“Hands up, don’t shoot!”—the rallying cry of the Ferguson protestors (or rioters, in some cases)—was always a fiction, the Department of Justice admitted last week.

Thus does Benny Huang begin his acid trip (sic) Inside the Leftist Mind: The Primacy of Narrative Over Facts.

Michael Brown’s hands were not up and he was not attempting to surrender when Officer Darren Wilson killed him in self-defense.

That Eric Holder is finally admitting this, five months after autopsy results indicated that Brown’s hands must have been at his side, is progress, I suppose. But don’t expect too much from the attorney general too quickly. Baby steps. Despite admitting that there’s no evidence that Officer Wilson did anything wrong, Holder still wants us to contemplate why so many people believed the lie. “It remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly, and be accepted so readily,” he said.

Holder’s clear implication is that the lie could only have gotten legs if it had the ring of authenticity in the ears of Ferguson’s black citizens. So even though it’s not technically true, let’s all pretend that it speaks to the larger truth that white cops routinely gun down defenseless black males for sport.

Which they don’t. In this great big country we live in, liberals have tried and failed to evidence even one example of cops wantonly murdering unarmed blacks out of racist motives.

 … What Holder is trying to say is that even though the “alternative version of events” has been thoroughly debunked, the narrative lives on. It always does. 

The primacy of narrative over facts is perhaps the greatest enigma of the leftist mind. “Fake but accurate” seems to be their guiding philosophy, as evidenced by the 2004 Rathergate scandal. Seemingly intelligent people really believe that it doesn’t matter that Matthew Shepard wasn’t the victim of a “homophobic” hate crime because surely someone else was. The same people also find it immaterial that Crystal Mangum wasn’t actually raped by three Duke lacrosse players because white men have been raping black women since slave times.

In place of facts they prefer compelling narrative, usually cultivated at the expense of actual people, their lives and reputations. The now utterly debunked UVA rape story that Rolling Stone ran in November is an excellent example. Reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely failed to conduct even the most basic fact checking; in fact, she promised not to contact the accused rapists as a condition of getting her exclusive interview with “Jackie,” the alleged victim, who turned out to be a fraud.

 … This tendency to elevate the narrative over the facts is not a new feature of the Left. Consider Ray Mungo, the radical 1960s journalist and co-founder of the Liberation New Service, a wire service for the underground press. Mungo admitted in his 1970 memoir, Famous Long Ago, “Facts are less important than truth and the two are far from equivalent, you see; for cold facts are nearly always boring and may even distort the truth, but Truth is the highest achievement of human expression.”

 … What liberals fail to realize is that their narrative, if it is to be worth anything, must be supported by facts. Like a house standing on a crumbling foundation, their larger, capital-T Truth cannot remain upright while its foundation of smaller truths—what used to be called “facts”—dissipates. But alas, for liberals, it can. A myriad of concrete examples can turn out to be bogus and their narrative will still hold, because they “know” they are correct in the abstract. In their own minds, they are still right even when they’re wrong, and truthful even when they’re lying.

Global Warming? 30 Years Ago, It Was the Ice Age We Were Supposed to Fear

Remember When the Media Was Terrified of the Coming Ice Age? asks Onan Coca regarding the global warming scare.

I know; it's almost as if one might be allowed to think that our self-described élites are not the purveyors of wisdom but little more than simple drama queens. !