January 8, 2006
Liberté Chérie
Liberté Chérie is the name of a French, libertarian think tank. In "An Australian in Paris," Paul Belien interviews its leader and popular member (to the media) Sabine Herold.
The article is a good look at French thought that changed my mind about many things.
For many French, ‘liberal’ remains a pejorative. The French Revolution didn’t just lop off the king’s head, it enshrined the State in his place as the new sovereign. In some ways, perhaps, it was easier to kill the king than it was to kill the notion of kingliness. In France, someone is always in charge. Today, the bureaucracy is bloated and all-powerful. Bureaucrats rule their petty fiefdoms like little Napoleons, and the state regulates everything it can see. Welfare rules the lives of millions, and entrepreneurialism as understood in Australia or America is almost non-existent. People don’t just go out and do things, people wait to be told what to do. The king is dead, long live the king.Okay, that's not surprising. But that only 7% of the French workforce is unionized? That nobody really knows how they are funded?
Very good article. In the lede, he points out that "After all, if one couldn’t believe three contradictory things simultaneously, [liberté, égalité, fraternité] one wouldn’t be French.
Like liberty minded people everywhere, they suffer from a paucity of candidates that really believe.
Hat-tip: Instapundit