French Voted For National Identity

French Voted for National Identity
Diane Alden
Monday, May 7, 2007


Contrary to Mr. Kenneth Timmerman's commentary on the French election, "French Elect Thatcherite as President," Nicolas Sarkozy's core issues were not "free trade" and getting along with the U.S. or cutting taxes and ending welfare.

Those things might be in his agenda somewhere, but they are not what got him elected. Mr. Timmerman barely referred to the real reasons right of center Sarkozy won the presidency of France this weekend.

Luckily Mr. Sarkozy is not mealy mouthed wishy washy on immigration as are the majority of American politicians. Nor is he an open borders, amnesty, guest-worker program activist as is George W. Bush and his administration.

Certainly Sarkozy is more interested in French nationhood than some U.S. neocon open borders big government/big business groupie who sees things almost entirely in global economic terms and what is best for the "private-public" partnership that has evolved between the U.S. government and multinational corporations.

Sarkozy got elected because of his stand on immigration, national identity and patriotism — simple as that.

Number 1 on Sarkozy's agenda does not include having France become part of some economic global collective where national identity means less than your credit rating and contents of your stock portfolio.

In his words: "I'm not afraid to defend the identity of France, of the republic, of the nation," he told about 8,000 members of the Gaullist youth movement in Paris. "If we don't talk about France, how can we be surprised that what separates us ends up being bigger than what unites us?"


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Perhaps he succeeded this year because the time was right.

Luckily he didn't feel the need to pay homage to the French version of the plutocrats at the Wall Street Journal or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Even better, Sarkozy had the guts to face down the French equivalent of the ACLU and whiney victim activists who make a good living screaming racism or xenophobia whenever anyone tries to talk about things like national sovereignty, national identity or migration/immigration fits into the picture. Nor did Sarkozy seem to care that he wasn't serving the agenda of the corporate/government monolith that we, the people, are stuck with in the U.S.

Can it be possible a European, and a Frenchman to boot, cares little for the elites or their agenda? An elite that sneers and makes light of nationhood and national identity?

He does not seem to give a fig about the Davos culture, the financial empire builders, the pc policy, the multicultural crowd who demand a never ending flow of migration from the Third World. Migration that serves warped notions about how the world works that emanate from the combination of the Hegelian cultural left and the corporate right.

On April 2, of this year Sarkozy was very clear on his rationale why he was running for president of France: "There is a certain exasperation in France. And why? Because of the way national identity is disputed, because of the lack of control over immigration, because of fraud, because of waste," he told a news conference.





Furthermore, "Who cannot see that that there is a clear link between a policy of uncontrolled immigration over 30 or 40 years and the social explosion in our poor neighbourhoods. It's blindingly obvious that there is a link," he said.

"If one cannot even say that in the poor neighbourhoods there is a population that recently became French and that the size of this population has created problems of integration which mean that our republican pact threatens to explode — if one cannot even say that, there is no chance of solving the problem."

With no window dressing or couching it in the language of PC, Sarkozy maintained, "Controlling immigration is a prerequisite for safeguarding our social pact. Otherwise it will explode. We need to control immigration, dry up its source, in order to be able to integrate those who are here."

You don't get much more clear than that.

There was not one word in Mr. Timmerman's article about any of this.

Rather, he revealed an agenda comparing Sarkozy to Margaret Thatcher based on economic factors. That tells me his take on Sarkozy is the plutocracies version of events.

Timmerman misses the point completely.

Sarkozy jumped ahead of the pack of candidates because he dealt in no uncertain terms with what is the mind of the average Frenchman. The topic of unrestricted immigration and the impact of nonassimilation by large groups of immigrants. He even mentions the adverse impact of economic migrants who flooded France the last 40 years and are of great concern to the French nation.


It is silly to believe Sarkozy got elected because of his stance on tax cuts, free trade, or even giving longer lunch hours to French shopkeepers. If those were the issues the French were concerned about, Ms. Royale the socialist would have won. Most Frenchman, after all, are socialists.


The agenda Mr. Timmerman claims for the new French president, is a neocon, AEI, open borders, bring "democracy and KFC franchises" to the world kind of agenda. Sarkozy is not going to be a French Margaret Thatcher, unless the great lady totally reformed immigration policy while the Brits were asleep in the 80s.

In that era, migration and immigration exploded in the U.K. and much of Europe. She was a wonderful woman and helped bring down the Soviet Union, but she wasn't perfect.

There is nothing wrong with Margaret Thatcher. These days she works tirelessly in an attempt to undo the British entrance into the EU. She has said on occasions she was flim flammed — this wasn't about a giant trade deal this was about how much sovereignty and independence as a nation the individual European countries would be allowed to keep.

According to many critics, the EU is a trade deal that morphed into bureaucratic global governance on steroids. In her book, "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World," Thatcher is more concerned about loss of sovereignty than joining hands to sing kumbaya in a EU polyglot corporate state where we are all selling each other widgets and gizmos.

She states, belonging to the EU "damages the country's interests and restricts England's freedom of action." Thatcher says the EU is a structure that "is not subject to reforming" and the joint market deprives countries of their sovereignty. She also says, "it is the EU that needs us most of all, not we ourselves."

This all goes against much of what passes for the sacred, it can't be stopped, concept of "globalization." Thatcher also stated she wished Britain would carry out independent control over trade and create a state security system of its own.

This certainly doesnt jib with Bush policy as outlined in 2005 at Waco, Texas, the so called, Security and Prosperity Partnership cobbled by the powers that be in an attempt to "harmonize" and "integrate" the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. This is the same kind of policy guys like Timmerman want with all their little neocon hearts — a world with no borders and stability so goods and services can go any which way.

National identity? A racist xenophobic concept don't ya know. The identity we will have is as taxpayers and consumers who no longer wave an American flag lest it offend someone.

Having been in contact with members of the European parliament from the U.K., the grumbling about economic globaloney is reaching fever pitch. You won't hear it from our economic pundits or the denizens of the American Enterprise Institute because this bunch is trying to send us down the same road France and Britain are now having second thoughts about.

Let us hope Sarkozy has enough smarts to understand immigration, trade and bad policy concocted by whacky elites are going to do us all in. Thatcher understands it now, let's hope Sarkozy will be one more voice screaming enough with the corporate globalism.

If the French are lucky, the new president might resemble Teddy Roosevelt: a man who understood his country, understood in his bones that this nation, its identity and cohesion were more important than the business deals that went on in its boardrooms and financial institutions.

It is better for France if Sarkozy does not ape Bush policies on open borders. immigration or guest worker programs. Hopefully, he will not get into bad trade deals that offer up cheap garbage at Wal-Mart and a 700 billion and climbing trade deficit, as well as 3 million manufacturing jobs that went missing in the last 5 years.

Hopefully he will expand the legacy of national heroes, Joan of Arc and King Louis XI. Two Frenchmen who were able to take splintered city states, provinces, and warring Frenchmen and turn them towards nationhood, unity, giving them a sense of who they are as a people. If these patriots and others like them had not fought for their identity and sovereignty, France might have become one more outpost in the English or Ottoman Empires.

Nationhood, national identity, old fashioned patriotism and love of country were Sarkozy's core issues. It is disingenuous for Mr. Timmerman to suggest otherwise by making Sarkozy's election about the elitist version of economic policy.

IF we could convince U.S. candidates and politicians that they might win future elections if they go back to first principles: love of country, national identity, history, language, culture, "E pluribus Unum" — one out of many — perhaps we might end our continued deconstruction at the hands of a blind economic, political and cultural elite.

At that point, faith in national leadership might be restored. Until then, we can hope the French under Sarkozy will fight for nationhood, sovereignty, national identity and resist wrong headed policies that think nothing of destroying nations r the allegiance of people in them in service to some destructive dream of utopia.

The great Sioux Chief Red Cloud made a wonderful observation on the subject of nations and people. He said, "A nation which does not know or understand it's history is like the wind in the buffalo grass."




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