Richardcyoung.com

  • Home
  • Debbie Young
  • Jimmy Buffett
  • Key West
  • Your Survival Guy
  • How We Are Different
  • Paris
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • The Swiss Way
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • Dick Young
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool
  • Anti-Gun Control
  • Anti-Digital Currency
  • Joel Salatin & Alfie Oakes
  • World Gold Mine Production
  • Fidelity & Wellington Since 1971
  • Hillsdale College
  • Babson College
  • Contact Us

Lack of Liberty—France’s Big Problem?

May 11, 2017 By Debbie Young

Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected president of France and the youngest leader since Napoleon, assured voters in his victory speech that it is “a new page in our history.” Not so fast, M. Macron, advises William McGurn in the WSJ.

The more prosaic explanation is that, given the choice before them, French voters reasonably opted for the certainty of a status quo with some tinkering around the edges over the uncertainty of radical disruptions promised by Marine Le Pen and her National Front party.

In France, there are the two orthodoxies, writes Mr. McGurn, both pertaining to state. Each is a problem. Problem #1 is the state’s role in France’s economy. Problem #2 is the state as enforcer of France’s official nonreligion–better known as laïcité. (Laïcité, secularism in state affairs, goes back to the French Revolution. Its original purpose was to keep the Catholic Church in check.)

Stating the obvious, France’s lack of economic freedom is no secret. Writes McGurn:

Whether it is the exalted role the French government plays in private enterprises or the state itch to intervene in any economic arrangement between consenting French adults, the assumption is that government knows best. One price of this arrangement is unemployment that hovers at around 10% overall, and at more than 20% for people under 25.

As for problem #2, France’s bigger problem is Laïcité, explains Elizabeth Winkler in the New Republic.

(Laïcité) goes further than the separation of church and state in other nations, however, by prohibiting religious expression in the public sphere. In early 20th-century France—a fairly homogenous, Christian nation—this was a straightforward attempt to protect government from the sway of the Catholic Church. But in modern France—a decidedly more heterogeneous and multi-religious society—this insistence on secularism is thorny. As a critic argued in Le Figaro, laïcité is unintelligible and even shocking to many Muslims, who view it as “an injunction to abandon their religion.” Instead of enhancing social harmony, it may actually be exacerbating religious and racial tensions.

“Apparently,” Mr. McGurn continues, “it occurs to no one in France that a fair part of their two chief crises—a stagnant economy and a Muslim minority that has not assimilated—are fueled by the same source: a lack of liberty.”

In talking with French business owners and workers–rather than the ruling elite in France’s over-departmentalized government –Dick and I have heard time and again distress over France’s lack of liberty on the economic front. Oftentimes accompanied by a Gallic shrug of the shoulders.

But unlike the economy, French citizens are not shrugging off the more serious problem of Muslim emigrants. Not all emigrants are seeking asylum in France just to escape their war-torn countries, we hear. Clearly, many emigrants are not looking to assimilate into modern society, European or American. The French we’ve talked with believe this is a clear and present danger to France’s future. There is a sinking feeling that time is growing late–almost too late for volte-face.

What Mr. McGurn and Ms. Winkler are not addressing in their articles is the threat of Islamic supremacism, an ideology that allows no other doctrine. Basically it is “them against us” (the West). As Andrew McCarthy writes in NRO, “Influential sharia supremacists encourage Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa to integrate into Western societies without assimilating Western culture.”

Mr. McCarthy regards Islam as less a religion than “a political radicalization with a religious veneer” and cites the Muslim Brotherhood jurist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi as someone to fear. The Sheikh vows, “Islam will conquer Europe, conquer America” and urges Muslim migrants to demand the right to live in accordance with sharia.

The paramount challenge to France, as it is to Europe and America? How does a country embrace Islamic friends yet protect itself from sharia-supremacist enemies?

From Andrew McCarthy:

The migrant waves have been spurred by European Union leaders, particularly Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel (who insists) the West has a duty to embrace those fleeing Islamic war zones. It apparently makes no difference to the ruling class that there is no way to vet these “refugees,” that they include a prodigious number of fighting-age Muslim men, and that the migrant swarms have undeniably been infiltrated by the Islamic State and other jihadist groups, anxious to move their war onto Western enemy territory.

Read more here.

 

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • Republicans Lack Prudence and Restraint in Foreign Policy
  • MAP: Islam in Europe
  • Europe “Facing Its Destiny”
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie Young
Debbie, our chief political writer of Richardcyoung.com, is also our chief domestic affairs writer, a contributing writer on Eastern Europe and Paris and Burgundy, France. She has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over five decades. Debbie lives in Key West, Florida, and Newport, Rhode Island, and travels extensively in Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga. Debbie has completed the 200-hour Krama Yoga teacher training program taught by Master Instructor Ruslan Kleytman. Debbie is a strong supporting member of the NRA.
Debbie Young
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • Allowing Free People to Make a Democratic Choice - June 20, 2025
  • Political Theater on Display: Padilla’s Wild Day - June 20, 2025
  • A Great Victory for Liberty - June 19, 2025

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • Your Best State on Guns, Plus the 8th Wonder of the World
  • Who Is Alex Jones?
  • SVB – There’s Panic in the Air
  • Your Odds with Statins: 500 to 1?
  • The Armed American Family: Part I
  • Two Americas: The Assassination Attempt on Trump
  • Can Curcumin Help in Fighting Cancer?
  • Marry Compound Interest, Divorce Market Timing
  • CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY: Alabama Becomes 22nd Permitless Carry State
  • Why Some Kids Won’t Go Back to School, Ever

Our Most Popular Posts

  • The Night of the Living Dead
  • TRUMP: "Everyone Should Immediately Evacuate Tehran!"
  • Are You Familiar with the EF and Arithmetic?
  • A Classic Issue from Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report
  • A Nationwide Day of Defiance
  • Political Theater on Display: Padilla's Wild Day
  • Best Bang for Your Buck: Top 5 AR-15s of 2025
  • Epic Man Cave with Car Elevator in Utah
  • Israelis Speculate on American Involvement in War with Iran
  • GBU-57/B: Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report from Feb. 1987
  • America’s Energy Boom: Record Net Exports and Rising Renewables
  • Senate Passes First U.S. Stablecoin Regulation Bill
  • Game-Changing Vision: Meta and Oakley Unveil AI Performance Eyewear
  • A Great Victory for Liberty
  • Letchworth: Are You Living Your Best Retirement Life?
  • Job Openings Rise in Four States, National Rate Steady
  • Ethane Shipments Stall as U.S.-China Trade Tensions Rise
  • Historic Tax Cuts Across All States
  • Are You Familiar with the EF and Arithmetic?

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report from Feb. 1987
  • Private Equity Is the Next Big Thing Coming for YOU
  • The Wildlife in Kansas
  • PRECIOUS: Silver and Gold
  • June Rage Gauge: Best Déjeuners in Paris
  • Letchworth: Are You Living Your Best Retirement Life?
  • Will SALT Kill the “One Big Beautiful Bill?”
  • You’ve Read the Last Issue of Intelligence Report: Back to Investor’s Yield
  • The Sound of Silence?
  • Are You Familiar with the EF and Arithmetic?

US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

My Key West Garden Office

Your Retirement Life: Traveling the Efficient Frontier

Live a Long Life

Your Survival Guy’s Mt. Rushmore of Investing Legends

“Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”

Copyright © 2025 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives