Pave: In Praise Of The Great Big State

Le jour 59 de Sarko

Aux Etats-Unis, c’est la nation qui a fait l’Etat, en France, c’est l’Etat qui a fait la nation.

[In the United States, it is the nation that made the State, in France, it is the State that made the nation.]

Sarko,
president of the Republic, trying to turn an antimetabole
Déplacement à Epinal* sur le thème de la démocratie irréprochable
EPINAL jeudi 12 juillet 2007 (Élysée)

What does this mean exactly. Well, "nation" here is plainly a synecdoche for a nation's people. "State", in the context of Sarko's speech, is the nation's government. So whereas America's government has been given form by its people, the French people have been given form by their government. Sarko has said this -- and much else (see below) -- approvingly. Think about this for a moment. [A pause to thoughtfully reflect.]

Bottom-up government is democratic. [Pause for effect.] Top-down government is tyrannical.

You may argue the exact correspondence with modern France, but what is unmistakable is the ancient European vampyr of strongman rule hiding behind nice little speeches for big strong states.

Balloon text reads: I may have lost my bite, kiddies, but not my VOICE!

The Soviets, the great and the low, all queued up and vied, in turn, to be the biggest boosters, the pettiest of doctrinaire accusers, the cruelest tormentors, the most completely confessed, and finally the most gratefully abased of criminal slough eager to be whisked up into one of history’s bigger omelets.

SARKOZY PRAISES STRONG FRENCH STATE

EPINAL July 13, 2007 (AFP) - France's rightwing President Nicolas Sarkozy came out in praise of big government on Thursday, saying his own free-market credentials sat happily with a strong French state.

Sarkozy, in a policy speech on institutional reform:

You can be as liberal as you like, you can attach a lot of value to personal initiative, to the market, to competition, you can place freedom above everything, but you cannot imagine France without a strong state.

This is France's singularity. You don't govern France like you govern Germany, the United Kingdom or Spain.

... Whether you like it or not, it's a fact that many of the greatest things achieved in France have been done by the state.

These are extraordinary claims.

First, the governance of France is a mixed bag of feudal rule, monarchs, mobs, constitutional committees of petty despots, would-be emperors, constitutional despots, Republican parliamentarians, Republican presidents, more mobs, and the occasional acquisitive drop-by power.

Second, a weak French state does not require any strain on the imagination. The 70-year history of the IIIe Republic serves as one of several imagination-free examples.

Third, freedoms tend to be in short supply in strong states. There is an inverse relationship between the perogatives of the state and the freedoms of the citizen. The more the one has, the less the other has. Strong states tend to claim an abundance of perogatives.

Fourth, underlying Sarko's theme is an antipathy to that darling of late 20th century internationalism, the self-determination of peoples, which requires the American model of bottom-up goverance. Perhaps, Sarko is signaling a revenant colonialism.

All in all a distressing rationalization of the state -- not in your life -- but in your face.

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* Epinal was not chosen arbitrarily for this speech. Epinal is the city where, on September 29, 1946, General de Gaulle gave a speech outlining his vision of a modern Republic and its necessary institutions and arrangements.

PFFT (What is this?): A strong state! Shut up! It's good for you 3 | Straighten out the citizenry tout damn suite 3½ | Straighten out the wuzzies tout damn suite ½ | Rayonnement français 0