Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Comment to Lorenzo's article just below

For some reason I can't write comments any more and maybe others can't either. This is the only explanation I can find for the absence of comments on some af the posts below. Lorenzo has a point, and so does Srdjan (Euan on the subject is posing important questions), although I think that they are exagerating a lot and have a certain sense of drama which brings them to take the news of the rejection of the constitution by the French tragically (they should know however that the newspapers are saying the same to sell more copies, drama is good for buisness, is it good for our blog ? Probably...). I think that they say important things. Some things however are just too big an exageration: I state my roomate and extraordinary friend Lorenzo : "France is terrorized: Polish workers, africans, muslims, turkish.. They are all perceived as threats. The threats Mr LePen has talked about for so very long; the threats that have seduced all those who voted for the no to the European constitution." This is just wrong and please do take it as the result of Lorenzo's disappointment. It's okay to think that many people voted for the No because they were scared of how things are turning, that they were scared of being stuck with a liberal Europe, that many were scared of foreign workers taking their jobs for lower salaries, that many were scared of them just as racist people are scared of foreigners but please, PLEASE, do not reduce the left-wing No to that !!!!! You have to be fair, it is not reduceable to that, one can have political conceptions about how a constitution for Europe should be without being seduced by Le Pen. Srdjan was talking about the populist aspects of the left-wing no in France and I know that Lorenzo and him raise questions but they are not ones that can be answered in the fashion that they did. I voted Yes on referendum day but I don't see the negative result as a catastrophy... Lorenzo is right, Europe starts today, at last people were able to disagree with a European text, isn't that a great thing? Isn't that a new thing ? (It has happened before of course but since we're all exagerating...) And don't go think that it's a French thing because reducing this whole thing to some kind of frenchism would be like reducing the frenche left-wing vote to a Le Pen victory. It's got not much to do with the country ; no one knows how Germany and Italy for example would have voted. It's not reduceable to the French economical system as if England was going to vote yes as if Spain's vote had been massive, it has to do with things that people are entirely legitimate to disagree upon like economical and political choices. Is that really hard to believe, that people voted in regard to the constitution ? Of cpourse Le Monde will tell you that people voted in that way because they do't like Raffarin and because they fear that unemployment is bad. But doesn't Le Monde have an interest in saying that ? They argued for the Yes during the whole campaign and failed to convince people that they are right; now they will explain it by saying that people are just plain stupid. Don't do the same boys, keep your cool and accept that in a democracy, people can disagree with you for good reasons.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Raphael.
I could not agree more with every point you made in your comment of the bitter article and incorrect arguments developed by Lorenzo in his post-29 french NO "reaction". I would also like to suggest to Srdjan that I doubt the existence of any "Law of History". And if there is one, some modesty could be welcome, before proclaiming one's own interpretation of such a "law" as the only valid one.
In any case, the last article of Lorenzo sounds much more positive and constructive. Solidarity is a nice concept, much nicer in my eyes than free and undistroted competition. Maybe all europeans could unite on such a value with more enthusiasm?
Let's look ahead now and work for a brighter European future. Small polemics on how stubborn the French or the Dutch are, is both a lack of respect for democracy and not particularly constructive.
Sebastien Llorca