May 11, 2005
No solidarity for les vieux
It's complicated. It's cockeyed. It's French (subscription needed - below is the entire WSJ op-ed).
Marxist Piety
May 11, 2005Hell hath no fury like a French Communist denied a Christian day of leisure. Peace won't reign in the land of cheese and wine, proclaim the prophets from the country's trade unions, until Paris gives back the Whitmonday holiday.
For the religiously inclined, the holy day Whitsunday, or Pentecost, falls as always on the seventh Sunday after Easter. A state fiat won't change that, and the French Catholic Church didn't protest when the authorities recently proposed to cancel the national holiday called "Pentecost" to raise two billion euros -- a cut of that day's work -- for a special fund to care for the elderly created in the wake of the 2003 heat wave, which killed thousands of seniors. But the majority of Frenchmen -- 66% according to a survey in Le Parisien daily -- consider that Monday sacred.
So a self-avowedly secular Republic with diminishing church attendance fights Marxist -- aka the religion-as-opiate creed -- trade unions to drop a Christian holiday from the calendar. The government even implores the public in quasi-religious terms to make this "sacrifice" in the name of "national solidarity." "This is not solidarity, this is a rip-off!" responds the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), a big union. Righteous anger over Pentecost could break out in national strikes next Monday.
When we first tried to reach CGT for comment, no one answered the phone at the union's offices Friday, officially a working day. You see, last Thursday was Ascension, a holy Christian day that remains a state holiday, which emptied France's cities and offices for the long weekend. In France, the real state religion is vacation.
Last summer, a year after the heat wave that killed about 15,000 people in France, the following posters were seen in the streets of Paris.
Maurice, 71. He's funny. But spending the summer alone doesn't put him in a laughing mood.
This summer, beaches will be crammed and Maguy's living room still empty.
He Who Never Obeys Me's boss told his personnel that he wasn't coming to work on Monday, so he didn't see why they should.
My pharmacist seems to think that the idea of minus one holiday was not a a very feasible one. She said something about how the money that was collected would in any case never be the sum that ended up being used to help the aged. I think she's probably right.
BBC One is showing a fake-umentary tonite about an imagined heatwave in the summer of 2006. I'm not watching it. I'm too busy packing for my long long weekend with He Who Never.
Will have to pay our taxes on-line some time this weekend. This year, we're being obliged to pay for state tv even if we don't have a declared tv at our address. Ah, the joys of a nanny state...
Posted by: Valerie at May 11, 2005 09:47 PMI'd tend to agree with your pharmacist and I disagree with the way this all, collective so-called solidarity is being forced on the people, taking responsibility away from individuals, putting the "state" in charge of caring for our elderly.
But the fact is that our marxist/trotskiyst/communist unions/parties/gangs refusing the idea of this solidarity is surreal. In Paris they're giving away leaflets saying stuff like "we won't work for free". I mean, what? Communists now want to get paid for their (supposed) work?? Shouldn't their money be taken away from them to ensure a "fair distribution of wealth" to help the poors and the elderly?
Posted by: Carine at May 12, 2005 10:58 AMI am philosophically sympathetic to the camp who are opposed to a special tax to nurse old people through the summer holiday, but what a bunch of whining snotnoses you have over there.
Give up a day off that commemorates a religion they don't believe in, to save grandpa and grandma? - No way says the Marxists.
What a pathetic, narrow-minded, pack of "me first" humanity.
