In 2016, Clint Eastwood explained that he didn’t like everything about Donald Trump’s ideas, but that he was so fed up with Democrats telling him what to say, what to do and what to think that he would vote for him . 2024, Trump is clearly re-elected on the same basis. But the French left – including its green and more or less centrist extensions – does not carry out any visible examination of conscience at the moment of wondering whether it would not have committed the same kind of errors as its American cousin, with the prospect of a comparable result.
She should, though. Because in the end, for a long time now she has only been concerned with giving us lessons, or even lecturing us. Its roots plunge into a kind of educational soil, a tad complacent, which has never stopped rising towards the surface. Therefore, it judges us from evening to morning: for not being attentive enough to the climate, to biodiversity, to identity problems, to the (indistinct) “suffering” of each other, to the contemptible poverty of our appetites… Only the form changes. Here the visceral mode: we denounce, we declare ourselves shocked, we “fight”, we cover the adversary with tar and feathers. There, the scholarly mode: we profess while licking our lips that the fiscal spoliation of the “rich” obviously responds to the greatest economic rationality; we explain, without laughing, to the youth of the country that they should only take the plane twice in their life. Add to this the language police, who are allowed to be massacred without remorse as long as it does not offend any “sensitivities”. And then we reduce almost all of political life to sad passions: hatred, Manichaeism – do not shake hands with the RN deputy –, the denunciation of turpitude… In short, a self-proclaimed army of inquisitors, directors of conscience and fathers whippersnakes sweep over our lives with the assurance of victors: she “knows” that her greed to make the empire of good reign with great injunctions Moral principles will only produce good results.
Freedom of the mind is the issue of the century
We would be wrong to believe that we are different from the Americans. Here too, “people” are fed up with this kind of thing. It is even to the point that they are ready to let go of everything, right down to and including the heart of their basic convictions, regarding the environment, faith in science, allergy to stupidity… Their intolerance to elites has reached stratospheric levels. They rush with all the more avidity on the most reproached media as the intellectual class demands them to stop doing it because it is not good for them… I’m going on and on. It’s not just that the French no longer have confidence. Above all, they can no longer stand being chastised. It drives them crazy. And madness is never a good advisor in the destiny of nations.
We have the right to question the undesirable effects of this general posture that the left has adopted, for a long time, to teach us to live as it sees fit. Given the political and civilizational torments that are coming, we even have the duty to ask ourselves if it would not be more protective and more responsible, from the strict point of view of the best interests of the country, to leave people alone. and to renounce exercising over them this kind of perpetual moral guidance which they demand less and less.
Freedom of the mind is the issue of the century. Everything corrupts it: images, algorithms, social networks, advertising strategies, the collapse of schools, the return of ideologies… Obviously, we do not know how to resist. The question therefore becomes vital. Should we continue to want to hold the people’s hand to teach them to exercise their freedom of thought “well”, even though they can no longer stand it? Or should we finally allow him to use it, hope that he will be soothed by it and wait for him to develop his own defenses? The second option isn’t necessarily the craziest, especially if we want to avoid becoming perfect Americans.
Denys de Béchillon is a constitutional expert and professor of law at the University of Pau.
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