Michel Gurfinkiel, president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Paris, has a fascinating article at Commentary Magazine on the decline of the French state.
Books about “national decline” and the “growing national crisis” have been best-sellers in France for at least the past four years.
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_____________To understand where these various authors are coming from, it helps to bear in mind the bedrock fact that France is one of the founding nations of Europe—that is to say, one of its oldest nation-states. Since the Great Revolution of 1789, since Napoleon, it has been a modern, secular society. In the 19th and 20th centuries it grew into a world leader in science, technology, finance, culture, art, and literature. It conquered and then emancipated a large colonial empire. And it took a decisive role in the formation of what is set to become a 21st-century superpower, the European Union.
Very few countries can lay claim to such a glorious destiny, or to a more stable national identity. To be endowed with a special destiny and identity is, in itself, a political blessing. But what if that glory is challenged, and the national identity eroding? What if the actual stuff France is made of—its shared culture, its assurance of a common heritage—is disintegrating?
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Despite warning signs, like the simultaneous rise of Le Pen’s National Front on the far Right and of various Trotskyite and other radical groups on the far Left, this newfound optimism lasted for two more decades. Since the mid-1990’s, however, it has become untenable. Drawing from the works of our four or five whistleblowers and others, we can reliably paint the following portrait of France today.
