Less than Thatcher.

> How much revolution
> will the French be willing
> to tolerate?

Less than in the UK.

We already have seen the violence (true temper tantrums). Just wait until reforms are attempted, and met with strikes and more demonstrations and more violence. Reforms, which are inevitable, will only be worse later, but when you look to government as a parent, you become as a child, and you don’t want to defer gratification and you want to postpone the unpleasant as long as possible.

“In any country but France, it would look like a mandate for sweeping change. … But labor unions are already threatening strikes over some of his proposals, such as his plan to encourage people to work more than the current maximum 35-hour work week, by exempting them from taxes on overtime hours. … To give the economy a real boost, Sarkozy would have to take aim at some of France’s most sacred social protections. It’s doubtful that most French people really want that. In fact it’s not even clear that Sarkozy himself does.”

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,481657,00.html

“The public finances were a mess, and France was mortgaging its future to pay for train drivers and others to retire on generous pensions at the age of 50. The 35-hour week was predicated on the idiotic idea that one man’s labour could simply replace another’s, so that when a worker went home early another could step into his shoes and continue or complete the task – and thus France’s intractable unemployment would decline, as the unemployed supposedly took up the slack.

In short, both François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac turned Madame de Pompadour’s witticism, après nous, le déluge, into state policy.”

“It remains to be seen whether he has the stomach for the fight that reform always occasions in France. The chronic problems of the status quo are largely kept out of sight, whereas the opposition to change will manifest itself very soon and very conspicuously on the Boulevard St Germain.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/05/08/do0804.xml

Meanwhile,

“French Socialism, forged amid the riots and ideological fervour of 1968, is to be radically recast in the wake of yesterday’s defeat.”

“Not even the hardline champions of the intellectual Left, writing in Le Monde and Liberation, think the Socialists can save themselves by forming an alliance with their one-time Communist allies. Both papers have instead called for a shift to the centre. So far Miss Royal has given only glimpses of what that might involve, with calls for tough tactics to deal with young offenders.”

“But her campaign has ensured that Socialists recognise that a reformer is needed to restore a popularity that after 1968 seemed theirs by right.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/07/wfra507.xml

> However I would not
> want to see things like
> public healthcare, practically
> free higher education and
> things of that nature be
> rolled back and privatized,
> a la US.

Actually, the trend here in the USA is for health care to become more and more publically provided (see below), whereas it’s commonly understood by most rational Americans that many things that are publically provided should be privatized. It’s not “rolling back” any more than was the case with the widely-socialized UK in the 1970s, which was a disaster. Only the resentful reactionary New Deal dinosaurs and young radicals here in the USA would dispute that and other facts (as we see here, even, on this thread). Does anyone want the airlines, for example, to become the equivalent of Amtrak or the Post Office? Or the oil companies?

As to the moral issues addressed by Michael, these aren’t all attributable to socialism, but rather to the radicalism of leftism since the 1960s.

As to health care in the USA, we know where it’s headed:

http://news.google.com/?ncl=1115934308&hl=en&scoring=n

In this socialism-capitalism tug of war, it is obscene to equate morality or its lack with either position. Capitalists are doing business with the Sudan. Capitalists see Iran as just another market. Capitalists are blind to the human rights violations in and by China. Capitalists also turn a blind eye to the unraveling of the social fabric of the US.

Money and power are equal opportunity debasers of the human soul.

I wonder if he realizes that his ideological brothers and sisters believe that poverty is the problem not to be named or dealt with except by telling the lazy bums they ought to get a job?

Right, Jim, you’re on to us. Have you been eavesdropping on our secret meetings?

it has brought moral relativism

Please Michael, stop using this tired phrase. Morality is relative by nature, because no one can agree 100% of the time on what is moral or immoral.

Sometimes I think I’m the only true conservative (as to a mode of thinking) left on earth. I say: stop, think and evaluate. Don’t throw out the baby, bathwater and bathtub all at once. Maybe there is something quite valuable among these castoffs we can preserve and build on. Maybe we can use a little of the old and add something new to improve matters instead of trying to invent the wheel all over again.

To sweep questions of personal and state morality, patriotism, national pride and all the aspects of an economic system into a garbage bag and label the bag ‘socialism’ is, IMO, simplistic and more than that, just plain reckless.

Seeing what evils can be unleashed by social upheavals, I’m not at all attracted to being reckless.

The Socialists now face the question of whether they can ever regain power without ditching their anti-capitalist rhetoric

They could hire Chavez as a consultant.

Lynx – The US doesn’t realize the difference. Canada has implemented some of the EU socialism since the 1970′s.

Everyone should embrace Neoconservativism.

Its a combination of social and personal freedom along with government programs for the needy while encouraging dependency.

Nationalism is paramount yet small government makes Nationalistic tendencies impossible. Love they country as thy self. Be proud of who you are. Embrace immigrants as long as they want to embrace America or whatever country they call home.

Just remember Neoconservatives were actually Liberal Democrats who saw the errors of their ways.

Royal’s economic program, such as it was, would have been an utter disaster.

But Blair’s Britain presents a cautionary example of how socialism can combine a pro-capitalist economic program with a socialist social program.
Will Sarkozy goes this way?

The extent of state surveillance in the UK is something of which Stalin could only dream. CC cameras on almost everything street corner…which may be able to talk to people individually (shades of the omnipresent screens of “1984″).

At the same time, crime rates are skyrocketing…while the principle of self-defense has been removed from British common law. There are several million illegal firearms in the UK…and almost no legal ones. The UK is where American gun control advocates would wish to be, and it is disastrous (Anyone here interested in gun control should read Joyce Malcolm’s “Guns and Violence: The English Experience” Harvard U Press, 2002).

Michael is correct, I believe, in arguing that conservatism must be applied both economically and socially. The latter is the sticky wicket, though. How does one foster conservative social responsibility but avoid the “social conservatism” that defines parts of the US right?

What will Sarkozy do? How much revolution will the French be willing to tolerate?

As you know I’m all for the hardline law and order stance. Laws are meant to be obeyed, criminals must be punished, borders are NOT imaginary lines and I am allowed to love my country, it’s flag and ideals without being called a fascist. However I would not want to see things like public healthcare, practically free higher education and things of that nature be rolled back and privatized, a la US. I’m still for a bigger government than conservatives (never mind libertarians) find ideal, this is a good thing the EU has and it should keep it. It’s a sick patient to be sure, but I believe it needs to be cured, not killed.

Curious fact for the Americans: The socialist party is not a one-country party. They in fact span many countries in the EU. The socialist party is the same one in Spain, France and Italy, and more than 10 others (though they don’t constitute one of the main two parties in every country, of course). Curious irony, that they would participate in globalization.