France

Ask not for whom the Klain clangs

Featured image Chief Biden White House daycare minder Ron Klain tactfully observes — “just FYI” — that President Macron’s win over Marine LePen in France’s presidential election yesterday came with Macron’s bargain basement approval rating. He leaves us to make of it what we will. Just fyi, President Biden’s bargain basement approval rating — 40 percent in the Morning Consult poll (of adults) to which Klain links, 33 percent in the Quinnipiac »

All Eyes on France (Updated—It’s Macron)

Featured image When the sun comes up in France a few hours from now, the polls will open for the runoff election between President Emanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. All of the pre-election surveys show Macron with a comfortable 10-point lead over Le Pen, but if the election comes out this way it will be a major narrowing from the last election in 2017, which Macron won over Le Pen by »

The Democrats’ Dysarthria

Featured image I’ve finally figured out why Democrats are so monomaniacal about imposing ever stricter federal price controls on prescription drugs. It’s because they are freebasing Xanax these days in large quantities to treat their high anxiety over their steadily eroding political prospects. (Also, it helps explain President Biden. One of the side effects of Xanax is “dysarthria”—slurred or slow speech. And now you know.) Following the victory of the wrong person »

Europe in character

Featured image As a Russian invasion of Ukraine becomes more and more likely, major European nations behave more and more in character. Britain, in its finest Churchill-Thatcher tradition, is stepping up to the plate. It just delivered anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Germany, reverting to its traditional approach of accommodating Russian aggression to further its interests, reportedly refused Britain permission to transport the anti-tank weapons through German airspace. Germany denies doing so, but »

Eric Zemmour found guilty of hate speech

Featured image Eric Zemmour, the right-wing pundit, author, and candidate for president of France, has been found guilty of inciting racial hatred. He was fined $11,400 for the offense and faces imprisonment if doesn’t pay. According to the Washington Post, during a 2020 debate Zemmour described unaccompanied child migrants to France as “thieves,” “killers,” and “rapists.” Apparently, he forgot, or saw no need, to drop the Donald Trump footnote that “some, I »

Happy New Year from Eric Zemmour

Featured image To say “opinion is divided about Eric Zemmour,” the right-wing candidate for president of France, is an understatement, and we have heard from a number of sensible observers of French politics that Zemmour might not be the best idea. Certainly the mainstream media is as panicked about him as they are about Trump. Some conservative critics say he a lightweight, a poser, the equivalent of Bill O’Reilly, and running chiefly to »

The Times Is Worried

Featured image We have written here and here about Eric Zemmour’s candidacy for the presidency of France. Zemmour is a French patriot who is concerned about mass immigration from the third world. This makes him a virtual Satan in the eyes of the New York Times; the second linked post discusses a Times attack on Zemmour. Yesterday the Times printed another assault on Zemmour. The headline delivers, in the eyes of Times »

Zemmour In the Crosshairs

Featured image Steve wrote here about the speech that French nationalist Eric Zemmour delivered to announce his candidacy for the French presidency. The post includes a translation of Zemmour’s speech, which has electrified Frenchmen. Some of them, anyway. So of course Zemmour must be denounced by right (i.e., left) thinkers. Yesterday the New York Times warned its readers against Zemmour. Mr. Zemmour, the far-right polemicist who this week announced his run for »

Will France Save the West?

Featured image Yesterday in our “Picks” section we linked to Christopher Caldwell’s terrific CRB essay “France on the Verge of Civil War,” which was a deep dive into the rise of Eric Zemmour on the French political scene. The controversial Zemmour has rocked to the top of the early polls ahead of the presidential election scheduled for next spring, leaping ahead of Marine Le Pen, the previous outsider candidate from the right. »

A classic Kinsley gaffe

Featured image I think John Kerry committed a classic Kinsley gaffe in an interview with French broadcaster BFMTV. Seeking to reassure the French audience about President Biden’s intentions in light of the new AUKUS submarine deal, Kerry explained that Biden “literally had not been aware of what had transpired.” That is an explanation that might be more broadly applied to much of what Biden himself says and does. John Kerry admits in »

France hates it, but the U.S.-Australia submarine deal is praiseworthy

Featured image Every nation’s diplomacy is closely tied to its business interests. But for the French, as anyone who follows the Middle East knows, this approach is a fetish. If France’s claim to be the world’s foremost diplomats has any foundation, this is it. Any nation would be upset that the U.S. swooped in to sell submarines to Australia, overriding a deal France had in the works for years with the Aussies. »

Everyone Hates Wind Turbines

Featured image Wind energy constitutes a farcical scheme that produces electricity in the least efficient way possible–well, to be fair, in many areas solar power is even worse–and impoverishes almost all of us while a tiny minority reap enormous profits. Wind energy is nevertheless beloved by politicians, because politicians prize industries that can’t survive without subsidies and mandates. Why? Because those industries kick back a portion of their profits to the politicians »

The upheaval in France, is it coming here?

Featured image N.S. Lyons writes about political upheaval in France and reflects on its possible implications for the U.S. In France, two despairing letters — one by retired military officers, the other by active-duty personnel — have triggered controversy. In essence, the letters complain that France is disintegrating and in danger of civil war. The retired officers argue that Islamists in the immigrant-heavy suburbs are “detaching large parts of the nation and »

Will *France* Save Western Civilization?

Featured image Back in February we took prominent notice of how French President Macron and a number of other leading French officials decried the poisonous ideas emanating from American universities, which has led me to wonder why there aren’t at least ten Republican governors taking the same line. (So far the only one who has, and only to a limited extent, is Florida’s De Santis.) Well the next shoe has dropped over »

Will *France* Save America?

Featured image Yes, that is a ridiculous headline. And yet, as we noted here last week, what does it tell us about the present condition of America that the president of France, Emanuel Macron, has a better grasp of perversity and danger of our “woke” culture than the President of the United States? The New York Times has followed up on its first startling account with a report this week on steps »

Macron—Defender of the West?

Featured image Who would have thought that French President Emmanuel Macron would emerge as a Defender of the West against the multicultural nihilism eating away at our foundations. In the aftermath of the beheading of a French schoolteacher for the sin of displaying some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, Macron has not been mincing words. In fact he’s been sounding like the polar opposite of an American-style “inclusionary” »

The Green Grift, or Gangrene Energy?

Featured image The renewable energy fanatics like to point out that the cost of solar power has been falling dramatically over the past decade, the result of technological and manufacturing improvements. This is true, but raises the question: why does the solar industry continue to demand subsidies then? The Financial Times ran an unintentionally hilarious and illuminating story on this point yesterday: French solar investors up in arms over threat to renege on »