However pessimistic I am about the ability of Washington to actually reduce the size of government, or at least to reduce the deficit, I note with pride that while the French are tearing up their cities to protest the most modest of trims to the welfare state, Americans are rallying at town halls and Tea Party protests around the country to demand the opposite: modest reduction of the welfare state.

But here’s a sentence that feels odd to write: Let’s hope that if a Republican majority materializes in January, its leaders have as much guts as the French president and his crew. Sarko has some brass:

Demonstrators staged nearly 270 marches across France on Tuesday, coinciding with strikes that forced the cancellation of 30% to 50% of flights at Paris-area airports, cut rail traffic to roughly 50% of normal levels and disrupted commuter and municipal transport in major French cities, from Toulouse to Lille by way of Lyon. As corteges set off in French cities in the early afternoon, union officials estimated that nearly 3 million people had joined nationwide marches on Oct. 12 and 16. Prime Minister François Fillon countered this by saying falling numbers of protesters were proof that the movement was “starting to fade.” He also demonstrated the defiant attitude he and Sarkozy share by refusing to negotiate changes to their reform bill and denying union claims of big turnouts to its protests. “It never achieved significant progress, [and] it never drew more than a million people to the streets,” Fillon told conservative parliamentarians. “However, it is radicalizing.”

What’s the issue? Sarkozy wants to raise the official French retirement age . . . to 62. The country has been shut down by the usual assortment of shiftless students and union goons, but he is not budging.

If our Young Guns prove as defiant as the president and prime minister of France, they’ll be on their way toward achieving an enormously important reform of our public finances. If they cannot cut government at a time when Americans have taken to the streets to demand that they do, then, I predict, they’ll be looking for jobs come 2013.