Comments on: Shaming and Naming

By: ceci n’est pas une apologie « post-europe

ceci n’est pas une apologie « post-europe — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:41:22 +0000

[...] posts ago – “Shaming and Naming” – I discussed the threat of cuts to the distinguished philosophy department at Kings [...]

By: Edo

Edo — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:50:56 +0000

On the dangerous trends taken by the European education policies, have a look at the new Europe 2020 strategy proposal (http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/pdf/COMPLET%20EN%20BARROSO%20%20%20007%20-%20Europe%202020%20-%20EN%20version.pdf, page 15):
“At national level, Member States will need to ensure a sufficient supply of science, maths and engineering graduates and to focus school curricula on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship”.

By: Edo

Edo — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:11:43 +0000

The priest of my village used to say that if you are goodhearted and you help people, you are almost a Christian de facto, it takes “only” the Sunday mass to confirm it. Problem is that for a Catholic, Sunday mass is mandatory. That “only” could similarly apply to the “almost” liberal Frenchies. I agree with you that the point is all about the concept of liberalism, but for how broad the definitions of liberalism could be, we can not refer to it in the demagogic and simplistic way Mr. Delanoë did, just in honour of the philosophical sources and despite the historical practice. Because, if I only need to love liberty to be a liberal, then I am a conservative because I love to conserve and a socialist because I love to socialise. I follow you when counting French liberalism in the family of genuine liberal doctrines when gemmated from the Enlightenment. But, without necessarily sharing all ungenerous Burke’s considerations, there is already a significant difference between the 1789 Declaration (article 10 and 11) and the Bill of Rights (1st and 9th amendment).
Sure, we could grant the actual French Republic the liberal-TM label. Then it would be a little hard to explain French policy toward language (both local, like Breton and foreign like English). Policy towards religious beliefs. French application of the EU takeover directive. Long-lasted tradition of welcoming Basque or Red Brigades terrorists. The infamous campaign against the Polish plumber and the strong opposition to the Bolkenstein directive. The quota of French music on the radio (Radio Nova was shut down for one day). The outrageous invention of the “French exception”. And we could go on with many other examples not exactly in line with neither 1947 nor 1997 Oxford Manifesto.
Therefore, I strongly support the idea of expanding the scope of the term liberal from the caricatured laissez-faire free-marketism, which only exists on some books, no-global flyers and French writings on the walls. And considering the French reluctance on that (Alain Madelin, where are you?), let’s call into the game the Scandinavian systems, that proved to be able to contribute to the debate on governance and reforms much better than France, and whose solutions (like the Danish “flexicurity”) are of inspiration for many countries (unlike recent French reforms).

By: admin

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:54:52 +0000

There has been a bit of discussion re: French attitudes towards liberalism stemming from my previous post. I essentially argued that while from a Anglo-American perspective (taken up by the NY Times) a ban on certain types of clothing (eg. Burqa, Niqab, Hijab)was fundamentally illiberal, this was not necessarily the case from a French-liberal-republican perspective in which the role of the state and social institutions in defining and protecting the freedom of citizens was thought rather differently. It was objected that French-liberalism did not exist (today), and moreover that “liberal” was a scorned word in contemporary French political discourse. I think that at the root of this difference of opinion is the understanding of the word liberal. As the Economist magazine (self-appointed standard bearer of liberalism in the Anglo-American world) points out: “The French use it ["liberal"] almost exclusively to caricature classical economic liberalism: blind faith in free markets and competition”. This is of course a rather drastic and unfortunate limitation of the word and the set of ideas it conveys. A wish to get beyond this caricature is undoubtedly what led Paris mayor and socialist Bertrand Delanoë to proclaim that he is “liberal and Socialist” and proud of it. “‘I am liberal,’ he writes, ‘because I love liberty’, anchoring his conception of liberalism in the political and social thinking of French philosophers reaching back to the Enlightenment.” (http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2008/05/disputing_the_meaning_of_liber). Expanding the scope of the term “liberal” beyond the narrow and caricatured confines of laissez-faire free-marketism allows for a proper debate an confrontation between Anglo and French ideas of what actually constitutes a free society and how best to achieve that goal. It also opens up the discussion to properly examining the relation between economically and socially “liberal” ideas.