On Marine Le Pen and her kind; the pandemic in democracies and dictatorships; the U.S. and Confederate flags; and more
Once more, Marine Le Pen has qualified for the final round of the French presidential election. In the first round, she got 23 percent of the vote. Let’s call it a quarter. France is the country of De Gaulle, yes. It is also the country of Vichy. This should not be forgotten. Both strains run through France. Both sides have their constituencies. This is a pill that must be swallowed.
A few months ago, I had a conversation with Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher and political activist. “There are two Frances,” he said: “a dark France and a luminous France.” Even during the dark hours — the Dreyfus affair; World War II, of course — the flame of the better France never goes out, he said.
I have learned many things in my study of dictatorships — “nonconsensual societies,” Robert Conquest would sometimes call them — over the years. Dictatorships always have a degree of popularity. Always. Not majority support, usually, but significant support. The same is true of terror movements. They always have their support. Always.
In a democracy, the people rule, for better or worse. But in a democracy, there must be minority protections. Otherwise, you have, not democracy, but mob rule: 51 percent lording it over everyone else.
I doubt that, in France, Putin has been a liability — a liability for Marine Le Pen. They are longtime allies, and Putin has funded her. True, she pulped 1.2 million campaign pamphlets, because they had boasted a photo of her with Putin. But everyone knows about her affinity for Putin, and her relationship with him. Did she pay any price for it at the polls? Not that I can see. A quarter of the vote (nearly), in a field that large, is impressive.
You may have seen a photo of Le Pen grinning next to three portraits — three paintings, showing three political leaders in heroic poses: Putin, Trump, and Le Pen herself. “Quite a trinity,” as I remarked.
My man Reagan frequently said, “Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction.” I thought that was a little . . . hyperbolic? Extreme? I’m not sure anymore.
And wouldn’t it be something if Putin won at the ballot boxes of democracies what he can’t win on the battlefield? Will European electorates choose leaders who are anti-NATO? Will Americans? Free peoples have many enemies in the world: Putin and Xi Jinping, for two. But the greatest enemies, almost certainly, are us.
People in free countries are barely aware of what they have, and why they have it. And how they can keep it.
• Shanghai is being absolutely pummeled by the coronavirus. The Chinese authorities, it seems, have made a hash of it. You might think that, if a police state were good for anything, it would be for confronting a pandemic. Such a state can be ruthless. Trampling over all rights. But it turns out that messy ol’ liberal democracies are not so bad, by comparison, at confronting a pandemic.
How about warmaking? You remember when some of our guys were marveling at Putin’s military: so butch, so tough, so manly. Flattening those Syrians. Not like our wusses, reading Heather Has Two Mommies.
I turn to Daniel J. Hannan:
Democracies, supposedly soft, decadent, and convulsed in culture wars, often turn out to be better at fighting than brutal dictatorships. This is not because their people are braver or more virtuous — it’s because they have systems in place that allow for greater transparency and speedier error correction.
Huh.
Let’s flip that around. The thing that Putin’s Western admirers tended to drool over was how “strong” he was. Far-right European politicians such as Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, as well as a few Trumpsters in the U.S., thrilled to the way he knocked opponents aside and sneered at gay rights.
Trump praised Putin for his “strength” over and over. And I remember Diane James, the UKIP leader in Britain. “I admire him from the point of view that he’s standing up for his country,” she said of Putin. “He is very nationalist. He is a very strong leader. He is putting Russia first.”
Uh-huh. “But ask yourself this,” writes Hannan:
How strong does he look now? It turns out that, although his goons were plenty strong when murdering female journalists or breaking up peaceful demonstrations, they fell to pieces against regular soldiers.
Hannan concludes, “Don’t write off open societies — they’re tougher than they look.” Good. I was feeling pretty gloomy in my first item, up there. Dan has cheered me up a bit (for now).
• “Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky Dies at 75; Ultranationalist Russian Politician.” (Obit here.) He was both a clown and a menace. You’ve seen this type: entertaining, but also threatening and serious. You know what his party was called? The “Liberal Democratic Party.” I believe this is what people mean, in today’s argot, by “trolling.” Zhirinovsky was a liberal democrat like bald people called “Curly” are curly-headed.
• Here is a photo from a Trump rally, in Selma, N.C. (I never knew about the North Carolina Selma. Only the Alabama one.) It shows the typical paraphernalia. There is a flag that says, “Only GOD and Trump Can Save Our Country.” There is another flag that shows a hand lifting up an American flag to reveal a Confederate flag. I had never seen this before.
To some of us, any blending of the American flag and the Confederate flag borders on desecration. The USA and the CSA are very different things. Different nations. Blessedly different ideas. (I’ll take the USA.)
On Twitter, someone made a good point, I thought: A lot of people are outraged at kneeling by athletes during the national anthem. Fair enough. But can’t some outrage be reserved for the commingling of the U.S. and Confederate flags? No?
• A news item, from Day 1 of the Masters: “When golfer Gary Player teed off, he was wearing a branded sweatshirt representing the Saudis’ Super Golf League . . .” (Article here.) That’s pretty lousy, as I see it.
Another news item: “Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince . . .” (Article here.) That’s pretty lousy too, in my opinion.
There are many ways to make money — big money. Especially if you’re a star athlete or a presidential son-in-law. Why do they have to get into bed with this murderous dictatorship?
• George Ayittey was a marvelous thinker and spirit: an African classical liberal. “Africa is poor because she is not free,” he would say. Professor Ayittey was an economist from Ghana. I met him through the Human Rights Foundation. HRF mourns him, and pays tribute to him, here. I’m so glad I knew him. A freedom champion. An individual.
• Did you see this? “Once a retail giant, Kmart nears extinction after closure.” A store is about to close in New Jersey. This “will leave only three remaining U.S. locations for the former retail powerhouse. It’s a far cry from the chain’s heyday in the 1980s and ’90s when it had more than 2,000 stores . . .” (article here).
My thoughts turn poetic:
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
• What a life — Jack Higgins. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. When his parents got divorced,
the mother took her toddler son to her native Belfast, Northern Ireland, and became a waitress. The child, who had been baptized a Presbyterian but had Roman Catholic relatives, was sometimes beaten up in the streets by hoodlums on both sides of the religious divide. On one occasion, a streetcar he was riding in came under rifle fire from Catholic militants.
The mother remarried, and the boy “endured the disdain of his stepfather,” says the obit I have been quoting. Here is what Jack Higgins said in a 2000 interview, about the stepfather: “He always resented me, that I was part of the deal. I remember him saying to me, ‘You’ll never amount to much, you’re useless.’”
More from the obit:
The boy was a poor student and was once given nine strokes on the backside for throwing snowballs at the school clock. At 15, he fled the boredom of the classroom. After a series of menial jobs, he joined the British Army . . .
This fellow went on to write The Eagle Has Landed and many other books. He sold over 250 million copies worldwide. What a life, what a talent. What a rise. If someone tells you you’re useless — believe him at your peril.
• I wish to throw some music at you. For a review of Elektra, Strauss’s opera, at the Met, go here. And for a review of Elza van den Heever, the South African soprano, in recital, go here.
• My gosh, what a beautiful athlete. Here is Kim Ye-lim, a South Korean figure skater, throwing the first pitch at a baseball game. I mean, holy moly.
• Hey! Spring!
A welcome yellowing:
Yes, why not?
Where the wild things are — New York City:
(Okay, that last one was more domesticated, it appears.)
Kind of a nice scene — Central Park (again):
A final shot, a parting shot, so to speak?
Bless you all.
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