Reflections on the French

The Brussels Journal has some observations on the recent French election:

A quote from Tom Peters at his blog, 8 May 2007

[Segolene Royal] in fact handily topped Sarkozy among those who are in the 18-59 demographic. That ain’t Gen X, my friends, that’s more or less everybody on active duty in the workforce!

So how, in the end, did Sarkozy become the [President of France]? Simple. He beat the bloody hell out of Royal among the 60-and-up crew. “Beat the bloody hell out of” equates to unheard of margins that were above 2-1.

That is, Team Elder exerted incredible, decisive de facto unity and power in France's demographically old-and-getting-older-and-we're-healthy-and-will-be-around-for-a-long-long-time population. It's not that Sarkozy beat Royal. The actual story is that the 60+ geezers have ordered the wee 60 minus crew to get the hell to work and stay the hell at work ... so the Six Zero Plussers can get their hands on the loot they need to spend their remaining winters in Nice, or some such.

And:

A quote from Helle Dale in The Washington Times, 9 May 2007

Mr. Sarkozy has been unabashedly pro-American in his campaign and his victory speech. “I want [...] to tell [our American friends] that they can count on our friendship, [...]” he said on Sunday. Then he went on to call for American leadership – in a cause that unfortunately has by now just about achieved the status of religion in Europe. “I want to tell them that [...] a great nation such as the United States has a duty not to put obstacles in the way of the fight against global warming, but on the contrary to take the lead in this fight, because what is at stake is the fate of humanity as a whole. France will make this battle its primary battle.”

There are other causes that one might have preferred for Mr. Sarkozy’s clarion call to American leadership – global terrorism, for instance, or political freedom, or even an end to world hunger, which would be easier to achieve than changing the climate of the earth by any measurable degree.

And, finally:

On the eve of the final round, Miss Royal declared on RTL television that Nicolas Sarkozy was a liar, a brutal man and a danger to the nation, and that his election would provoke a massive domestic uprising. If, as alleged in Le Monde on Monday, the Socialist candidate knew by then that she had no hope of winning, the implicit call for rebellion is all the more reprehensible. [...]

Shortly after Mr. Sarkozy’s victory was announced, clashes began at the Bastille in Paris and in countless French cities. [...] There is no guarantee that the banlieue will not explode in turn, but the current center-city uprising is led by extreme leftists, revolutionary Communists, anarchists, nihilists and misguided Segolene groupies. One rioter justified the violence as a protest against the police brutality that Mr. Sarkozy “plans to impose.” [...] France is aflutter with hope. [...] Accountability just might enter the French vocabulary.

Notice how Sarkozy could only be considered a "conservative" in a place like France. Notice also how the working population of France wanted even more destructive socialism.

EUROPE . . . IS . . . LOST.