Sarkozy Buries "The France of the Strikers"

From AFP:

PARIS - Almost normal service resumed on the French railways Friday after a crippling nine-day strike, as opinions divided over whether its end marks a victory for the reform programme of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

For the first time since the start of last week, most Paris commuters enjoyed an untroubled trip to work, and nationwide the state rail company SNCF said the network will be fully operational by the weekend.

After the country's longest train strike since 1995, the government insisted that it had held firm on its central aim of increasing railway workers' retirement age in line with the rest of the population.

"I promised this reform, and I kept my word," Sarkozy said in an address Friday, a day before leaving on a state visit to China.


Raymond Soubie, Sarkozy's councillor on social affairs, said decrees promulgating the pension reform will be drawn up in about a month, after the conclusion of round-table talks between unions, management and government representatives.

These discussions, whose opening on Wednesday triggered the end of the strtike, will focus on pay-rises, top-up pension schemes and other accompanying measures.

For supporters of Sarkozy's six-month old government, the outcome marked an unequivocal triumph for the right-wing president.

Le Figaro newspaper said the president had proved he was not a "paper tiger" and that his determination to remedy the ills of French society had passed a ground-breaking first test.

"Everyone knows that the head of state has in store other earth-shaking changes. If the pension reform -- the mother of all reforms -- has persuaded opinion that things had to change in the country, it will have greatly served the designs of the president," the right-wing paper said.

This is precisely the point, some regional and left-wing protests notwithstanding. Sarkozy was elected over the ususal candy-distributing Socialist by telling his countrymen that things cannot stay as they are, France needs dramatic changes, and (this is the part that astounds me) you French voters know that only I have the guts and the will to push this bad-tasting medicine down your throats.

And so he has.

It was little noted in the United States, but just a few days ago Sarkozy gave a fierce answer to the usual cynical press by loudly proclaiming that he would never bend on this issue, never compromise and that the France that these strikers represent is gone.

These SNCF/RATP workers, who, remember, are willing to bring the country to a standstill to protect their unique right to retire at age 57 rather than age 62, are nothing less than Sarkozy's PATCO air traffic controllers. As with Reagan's action, this signals a new man in charge, a new political culture. Sarkozy said there was a silent majority sick of these strikes and he was right.

UPDATE: Le Figaro also reports today:

Nicolas Sarkozy a remis ce soir a Beate Klarsfeld, la celebre pourchasseuse de criminels de guerre nazis, les insignes d'officier de la Legion d'honneur et a decore son fils Arno, qui a participe a l'oeuvre de ses parents, de l'ordre national du merite.

Lors de son allocution, le chef de l'Etat a longuement evoque le combat mene par Beate, de nationalite allemande, et son mari Serge Klarsfeld pour "empecher la banalisation voire la rehabilitation du nazisme".

"Vous futes parmi les premiwres, si ce n'est la premiwre, a convoquer votre pays au tribunal de son histoire et de sa memoire", a declare Nicolas Sarkozy. "L'Allemagne et la France ont eu la chance de vous avoir ensemble pour fille, chacune vous doit beaucoup et conjointement encore plus", a-t-il ajoute.

Le president de la Republique a ensuite rendu hommage a son fils Arno Klarsfeld pour sa participation decisive "a l'action de memoire et de justice" de ses parents, et pour ses combats "au nom de la tolerance et de l'entente entre les peuples et les cultures".

"Comme ta mere, tu es un militant qui agit, pas un militant qui declame", a poursuivi Nicolas Sarkozy. "Je suis tres fier de t'avoir comme ami", a conclu le chef de l'Etat.

This is not the old French Right on display here. Given his approach so far, Sarkozy is embarking on a project of breath-taking difficulty and complexity: the re-alignment of the Right, resulting in its complete break with Vichy, with Maurras, with Brasillach, and, thus, shed of its baggage. A new Right that can then compete and restore order to the Republic's poltical balance. It's an amazing thing to behold.

That Is Below Me

Congressman Tancredo, in Concord, N.H., last night, as reported by the Concord Monitor:

Describing the United States as "the last best hope" for carrying on the ideals of western civilization, Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo called last night for an end to the nation's "bilingualization" and "Balkanization."

"I think Europe can not be counted on to help us in this endeavor," Tancredo said last night at Magdalen College in Warner. "They've already become, to a large extent, Islamicized. And that is worrisome." Referring to "Western" principles, Tancredo asked, "If we don't talk about them, who will? If we don't advance them, who will?"

Immigration is Tancredo's signature issue. Last night, he attempted to tie immigration to the threat posed by "radical Islam," and described the "grand experiment we call America" as rooted in "Judeo-Christian principles."

In a recent television ad in Iowa, Tancredo, a Colorado congressman, went even further. A voiceover in that ad warns viewers that "there are consequences to open border beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia," according to Tancredo's campaign website.

Tancredo's comments didn't go unchallenged last night. One after another, audience members pressed him on his views on language, assimilation and border security, at times leading to heated exchanges.

"I speak the same language as the people that flew into the towers; I speak the same language as all the Iraqis we are killing; I speak many languages, and I'm proud of it," said Siham Elhamoumi, 22, who recently graduated from St. Michael's College in Vermont and traveled to the event with a group from the college. "Am I the enemy?" Elhamoumi then pulled her shawl over her head, so it covered her hair. "Am I the enemy if I do this?"

"Do you take us for idiots, for people who have no appreciation of our history?" she asked. "Perhaps you don't have an understanding of your country right now, of its composition."

Tancredo repeatedly broke in, asking Elhamoumi to pose a question. He finally asked her a question of his own: "Do you believe that we should replace the Constitution with Sharia law?"

"That is below me," Elhamoumi replied.

Hats off to the lone Congressman raising the national question forthrightly and honestly and also for asking the key question. Note, however, that by doing so he has reduced himself to a "fringe" character. Note the haughty, mocking tone adopted by the college student.

Note as well on what point specifically Tancredo was mocked:

Perhaps you don't have an understanding of your country right now, of its composition.

Therein lies the key, the explanation as to why Islamic groups and the La Raza groups share a common strategy in Congress, on K Street and elsewhere. Because their goal is the same: to hasten the day, not far off, when any complaints will be met with disbelieving statements along the lines of "Perhaps you haven't looked around lately, White boy; you're yesterday's news and, guess what?

You're not America any more."