C’mon, admit it.
Even though you bear no one any specific harm, the street scenes from Paris this and past weekends give you a little bit of satisfaction. French men and women clad in yellow vests standing up to an autocratic government. Kinda like they were almost Tea Party members, not lazy cheese-eating surrender monkeys, eh?
The part where they dumped a front loader full of manure at the entrance to a government office? Priceless, huh?
One problem with that logic. If the lazy cheese-eaters are indeed lethargic Brie consumers, then the government they are protesting may be doing something that would upset them, correct? And what would upset a lot like that? Perhaps something that we, brave scions of a totally free market system (ha!), would find acceptable.
Enter the French president, Emmanuel Macron. For this time, the Elysee Palace may be on to something. Yes, the initial Paris protests started out over some dumb green tax and the demonstrations were legit. Since then, the protests have turned into something else.
Macron, a pro-business president by French standards, has been trying to bring market competition to that country since he came to office. As such, he’s been regularly going head to head with the usual motley Euro collection of freebie parasites like students and labor unions. If you look at who’s protesting against the government in the streets, they’re not all exactly Ron Paul.
Many of them, especially the violent ones, are the same Antifa scum we deal with here. They may occasionally don the mantle of legitimate populism. However, do some thinking and you’ll find that people who prize their own private economic interests, as do our Tea Party folks, generally do not loot stores and burn down restaurants.
So we on the right, and indeed other Americans, should tamp down on the urge to inwardly chortle at the French protests of this last weekend and even wish they continue. For also, as annoying as they can be, the French are our oldest ally and more times than not, a good ally. That doesn’t change the fact that there are massive faux elitist inequities in the French system that need to be addressed.
But not by vest-clad street thugs who would rather cause a fuss, shoplift, and indulge in pyromania, than make a long-term positive difference in their own country.
For all civilization owes it, we should wish better upon Paris.
