Day By Day

Monday, May 30, 2005

Red State/Blue State in France!


Le Monde -- The political map of France is beginning to resemble that of the US in certain ways. Maybe it's just that nobody outside the metrosexual centers and Kerry's hometowns [remember his ties to Brittany] can stomach Chirac any more.

I wonder if we are going to be subjected to endless and incredibly obtuse think pieces in the NYT about the supposed quaint peculiarities of Red State Frenchmen? Probably not.

Actually, there is a a deeper theme here. On both the left and the right and throughout the Western world, there is a populist revolt emerging, directed against the credentialed cosmopolitan elites who have dominated Western political culture since WWII. Those elites always sold themselves as being disinterested, technocratic, experts who knew best what was good for the rest of us. But now they are seen as just one more self-serving interest group whose expertise, so often applied to disastrous effect, is suspect. In the end it is the people themselves who know what is best for them.


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