Actually, Sarko was not workng to abolish French social programmes, merely modernise. Although to the still unreformed French Left… His positioning really doesn’t amount to much of a substantive change if one is not looking at him through highly ideological lens.
According to the paper ‘political conservatism as motivated social cognition’ there are certain psychological traits that are similar across cultures and time lines that unite conservatives.
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml
* Fear and aggression
* Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
* Uncertainty avoidance
* Need for cognitive closure
* Terror management
In the US there is a strong statist tendency among the right wing. Not so much with economics, but they want a very strong system of military, police, border guard and espionage.
Do the right wingers in europe prefer socialist economic policy (as opposed to the libertarian economics they prefer here in the US)? It seems that both US and European right wingers have many similar attitudes about minority rights, immigration, diversity, response to domestic/international threats, international organizations, etc.
Well, I’m sure (because I’ve seen depictions in ancient art) that it’s something practiced in ancient Greece and Rome long before Clovis converted the Franks; but oral sex is associated throughout the English-speaking world with the word “French” for some reason.
Indeed, first thing to keep in mind is that he is definitively a right-winger… from the point of view of a Frenchman. Not that all French are unhappy about it. However, and here I disagree with you, Kobal2, that still makes him someone who you may call and American-style libral. French right wing = US left wing.
Well, le Pen is a right-wing populist. And he is barely better than a nazi in lot of French people’s opinion. Let’s point out that Sarkozy was not a candidate in 2002 and that le Pen did benefit from a massive anti-criminality media campain. Sarkozy pretty much ate le Pen’s electorial basis by taking firm postures agains criminality and illegal immigration, and le Pen did only 10% in 2007.
This being said, let’s point out that:
- Sarkozy’s speech sounds very nice (to French people) but will very likely not come to anything. In all case, it is much easier than engaging into significant internal politic action. So it doesn’t really cost him anything, and the right-wing French voters won’t mind, even if they don’t appove this position.
- French politics is a lot about getting the voters from the other side to switch towards yours, rather than the US politics which is (I heard) about getting the people from your side to vote. As a consequence, you can expect the right-wing people to make steps towards the left-wing voters, especially when it doesn’t cost anything. For instance by making this sort of proposals.
- Sarkozy likes a lot making provocative statements or proposals which attract mediatic attention to him -and generally come to nothing. He’s done quite some of those in France since he is president !
I’ll have to investigate this matter when I’ll move to the US, in 5 months 
To an extent, yes. I think you’re drawing a false dichotomy though. There is a lot of gray between free-market-libertarian anarchy, and state-controls-everything socialism. Most conservatives in the non-US developed world sit in that gray: they are pro-market, but accept that there are some things that are fundamental to society that need to be provided by a responsible government (UHC for example).
While there are still many conservatives in the rest of the developed world who would make Limbaugh blush [ETA: Thatcher wanted to dismantle the NHS, and was heavily influenced by libertarianism], the middle of the US conservative bell curve is currently, dramatically, way, way to the right of that of pretty much every other developed deomcratic country.
I suspect a key distinction is empire. Britain was all about the white mans burden and gunboat diplomacy in, say, the mid Victorian era - couldn’t walk down the street without losing an eye to a waving Union Jack.
There something culturally implicit in mass militarisation.
Another interesting aspect is perhaps how the church enables and reinforces imperialism. Very flexible is Christianity.
British French bashing as I understand. If something was considered sinful it was attributed to the French or got the word “French” slapped on it. Like French kissing, “French letters” for condoms, etc.
As for oral sex; some apes indulge in it, so it certainly didn’t start with the French or even ancient Greece.
How is that a distinction? Did not the French have their mission civilatrice, in which schoolchildren in French Indochina read history texts beginning with “our ancestors, the Gauls”? Did not America take up the White Man’s Burden in the Philippines – or, more recently, the updated neocon version of same in Iraq?
To my understanding the French never quite took to the imperial manner in the grand way the Anglo-Saxons did. While the government might huff and puff a little at times, the people don’t live in a glorious past, ime.
Seconded, or rather amended : it’s not a British thing, it’s a nation thing. “Unsavory” stuff is always from somewhere else.
E.g. : In France, condoms are known (among a slew of other nicknames) as “capote anglaise” : the English raincoat. In England, syphilis was “the French disease”, in France it was “the Italian disease”. In France, a titty fuck is “Spanish wanking”. And so on, and so forth.
OTOH, flogging or caning is the “English vice” – everywhere. (Something to do with public-school discipline in males’ formative adolescent years, or something . . .)
And to do with the reputation the English earned for getting off on it as adults. The Pearl, erotic stories published in London in the 1870s was pretty heavy on caning for pleasure for example.
I wonder what sexual fetishes America has a reputation for?
I’ll grant you, modern American “movement conservatism” is different – not from-another-planet different, but pretty different. From The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by conservative British journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge:
Of course, it is arguable that even Burke’s conservatism is profoundly different from that of a country where “conservative” is understood to have roots in medieval feudalism, Bourbon legitimist absolutism, and Roman Catholic clericalism – none of which is in any way “anti-statist.”
That rather looks like a loaded, ideological set of spin in terminology from American leftists. I’ll take a pass.
As far as I can tell, relative to the proper sense of the term Statist, the US Right is not very statist at all. They seem to favour extreme decentralisation, localist control for domestic security issues ex-Foreign. The matters foreign are not particularly “Statist” as that typically is applied to issues domestic.
False comparison. State interference in the market is not per se socialist. The more Statist wing of the right of European political is fully in favour of private enterprise, but controlled / regulated for State interest. Cartels and monopolies or more often oligopolies. That is not the same as socialism, with its classic hostility to private enterprise and magnates, even if state firms in effect end up looking like less-well-run versions of private monopolies.
I would disagree. Generalising across all Europe is difficult, but if we leave aside the subjective minority rights, immigration etc, and take international organisations, the Statist tendency in the European Right tends to be quite favourably disposed to international treaty and organisation. It is, generally, rather more Realpolitik and less paranoid than the American Right. That, of course is a gross generalisation, and I am excluding the populist mob Right, a la Le Pen.
Returning to Sarko, I don’t believe French Right Wing - US Left Wing at all. That is sloppy. The French Right is quite statist it is true, but that means while it may have some resemblance to the US Left, it lacks the political liberalism of the US Left, and is in any case rather more favourable disposed to industrial combination and oligarchy. That is, unlike the US Left, the Gaullists are not particularly paranoid about Firm and State working hand in hand, just so long as the Enarques have the proper upper hand in the affair. That is really very different from the US Left as far as I can tell.
I rather think that all politics is about getting the swing votes to swing your way. In any given country with say 2-3 dominant political parties (UK, France nowadays, Germany generally), you always have the hard core base of the party, but need to get another 20% of the voting populace on side. In any case, the pure base vote strategy failed the American right badly last round.
Good bloody Lord. The French state promoted the mission to no end, not “huff and puff a little at times” - bloody took it more seriously than the UK where one openly could say during Empire that it was “acquired in a fit of absence of mind.” National glory and competition with UK to the point of irrationality (e.g. conquest of the Sahara… why the bloody hell the French wanted to bother with Niger, Chad, etc. escapes rational analysis. All about puffed up lieutenants). Worse, the French deluded themselves that the colonials liked them. See Algeria - bloody hell even talking about Algeria today with a bloody Frenchman runs you a chance of an entirely deluded conversation.
That article is a good one, and at the very least shows up the difference between even UK / Commonwealth conservatism and American Right Populism. UK conservatism is fairly Burkean. The US, I think not.
French and Continental Conservatism is not Burkean at all, insofar as it generally lacks the suspicion of the State and really much political or economic liberalism at all. It is, contrary to the Left, however, favourable to private enterprise (submissive as it should be to State interest, domestic or foreign) and generally market economics, although not out and out free markets per se.
I think Americans have a tough time understanding the rest of the world political universe because contrary to their beliefs, their particular political constellation is not universal, but actually rather highly idiosyncratic (not from Mars, mind you, but it is idiosyncratic). That is not intended as an insult, merely an observation, neither good nor bad, any more than a long haired dog is better than a curly haired dog.
And I think the Burkean elements of “a belief in established institutions and hierarchies; skepticism about the idea of progress; and elitism” do apply to French/Continental conservatism – to the point where they can even trump patriotism; just ask Marshal Petain.
Thank you! Thank you!
Why are you thanking me? I heartily disapprove of state interference in the market, as it is generally disastrous and reducing in public welfare. That the Statist Right on the Continent support oligarchy and monopoly out of elite interest is hardly a positive argument.
The modern Right in France is rather Gaullist, and that is virtually the antithesis of Petain. Overall, not very Burkean at all - Burkean is a package in the end, if you want to rip out elitism, hierarchies and established institutions as stand alone commonalities … well, I think you voided the term of its meaning.
I’ve always understood that Petain, like Franco, was actually more of a traditionalist-authoritarian than a fascist as such (fascism being plenty populist and social-revolutionary and future-looking in its own way, as discussed here) – am I mistaken?
In any case, what are the defining elements of Gaullism (and, presumably, of Sarkozy’s politics)?