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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (282220)	3/29/2006 4:21:38 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572335

In the grip of declinology Despite the action on the streets, the French left has yet to confront the ideas of the self-hating elite Agnès Poirier Wednesday March 29, 2006 The Guardian 'Bankrupt France", "France in tatters", "France in free fall", "Scared France", "France is rotting from within","Doomed France". That is just a small selection of essays and pamphlets published in the past three years in France, some interesting, some mediocre, but all bestsellers. There is a word for their authors, one especially made for them: they are the "déclinologues", in other words "declinologists" - or "declinists" for those who argue that "declinologist" implies a certain disdain. Words are very important in France. An eclectic lot - economists, journalists, editorialists and bankers - the declinologists share an ideology, ultra-liberalism, and sing one tune: off with the state, off with Chirac, off with the trade unions, off with the elite (to which they belong, but this is just a detail) and, if only they could, off with France. Declinology is the new dandyism. They have brought in a new attitude, which until now had spared the French: self-hatred. The declinologists don't speak about "la crise" - that is much too lame. What they are talking about, and secretly dreaming of, is a national cataclysm. It would serve the French right. The declinologists are the kind of people who, after such national tragedy, would surely erect a new cathedral in Paris, just as others built the Sacré-Coeur after the Commune, in order to expunge France's sins. No doubt they would organise compulsory pilgrimages for their fellow countrymen, who would have to repeat 100 times: "Forgive me, Lord, for I have had revolutionary impulses." Indeed, what the declinologists are advocating is an anti-France, a France cleansed from its revolutionary heritage, from the spirit of the Enlightenment. Yesterday they were confronted with France as it is: two million on the streets and the country convulsed by a strike against labour deregulation. The declinologists, however, haven't sprung from nowhere; they have thrived on a real and deep malaise that France has experienced for the past 20 years. Their talent has been to catch the people's imagination and occupy the ideological ground left empty by a deafeningly silent socialist party. The declinologists have a ready-to-use, all-including theory, which has proved extremely handy and has spread like wildfire. According to them, France now stands where Britain was in the late 70s. When you have said that, you have said it all: anybody with the benefit of hindsight concludes that there is only one possible way out - a French Thatcher. And the closest we get to Thatcher in France is Nicolas Sarkozy. By the way, most of the declinologists are Sarkozy's personal consultants or friends. QED. But, of course, President Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, only want to see that side of the equation: declinologists are Sarkozists, so must be overtaken politically, a very short-sighted position with the presidential election in 13 months. However dangerous the declinologists and Sarkozy are for the country, the problem is certainly not only tactical: it is political, economic, social and philosophical. Chirac is playing Russian roulette with Sarkozy but it is France that may get the bullet. There is simply nobody to counteract the declinologists' theories. So far, the French left has refused to engage in a conversation, which would require them to question everything they have done for the country since 1981, and certainly to kick François Mitterrand's commanding statue from its pedestal. They prefer to bicker over Ségolène Royal's presidential potential. Only a few philosophers, such as Alain Finkielkraut, have acknowledged and discussed the reasons for the profound malaise felt by the French and the questions raised by declinology. This is not enough. · Agnès Catherine Poirier is a journalist on the French daily newspaper Libération agnescatherinepoirier@hotmail.com guardian.co.uk

To: tejek who wrote (282220)	3/29/2006 4:58:21 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572335

Re: I love it when the French screw with each other......its all that nastiness welling up......it has to go somewhere. <g> Actually, the French crisis is much less nasty than your own immigration mess... Somehow, James Gilchrist and his Minutemen remind me of Nazi Germany's Ernst Röhm and his SA brownshirts.() Mexican illegals vs. American voters By Tony Blankley* March 29, 2006 It is lucky America has more than two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary Committeemen — and probably a majority of the Senate — are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them. National polling data could not be more emphatic — and has been so for decades. Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses). Time Magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls. An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress. Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation. I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of." The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus. But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town). It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. ( I guess ignorance loves company.) Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and The Washington Post — Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively — laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note. Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest-worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes: "Gosh, they're all bad ideas ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking, many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate, many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished ... [It] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ? Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits ... [Moreover], t's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants. "The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force." (For all Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, from which this is taken.) Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote : "Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive ? As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came.' " Mr. Krugman also observed — citing a leading Harvard study — "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays — and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants." Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals. Under such circumstances, advocates of guest-worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic. When the slandered ones include not only The Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics. The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph. So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators — and hasten your political demise. washtimes.com () spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk Monday, 28 March, 2005, 00:14 GMT 01:14 UK 'Vigilantes' set for Mexico border patrol By Laura Smith-Spark* BBC News news.bbc.co.uk