The Crumbling of French Culture
The Frenchmen (and women) who hate France: in their understanding, it’s the country of the Crusaders.
Statue symbolizing Universal Suffrage, at the Place de La Republique in Paris, adorned by mourners after the Charlie Hebdo terror attack of January 2015. (image: David Djordjevic Studio, shutterstock.com)Between Euro-Impotence and Jihadism
Dramatic events often focus our minds on the dilemmas we would prefer to ignore. In writing Situation de la France to describe the predicament facing his native country and much of Western Europe, the French conservative philosopher Pierre Manent is unlikely to have anticipated the slaughter of 130 people in Paris by seven ISIS-aligned Muslims in November. But the timing of Manent’s short book on the political challenges associated with the presence of approximately 4.7 million Muslims in France (about 7.5 percent of its population) could not be more providential. In a nation’s life, there are moments that decisively change its…
Taking the Measure of the West
Muhammad was a great man, at least as history traditionally defines greatness. Sure, there are revisionist academics who suggest that he was, more or less, a created figure who arose out of the politics and culture of northern Arabia, but we can, and perforce must as a practical matter, accept the received picture of him as affirmed by Islamic history. As such, he reformed, rechanneled, and revolutionized the ancient and primitive culture of Arabia to set it on course to become one of the world’s great civilizations.
“If 100,000 Jews Leave, France Will No Longer Be France.”
Interior of the Grand Synagogue of ParisWhat is the Future for a Post-Liberal Europe?
Law and Liberty’s podcast with Danish journalist Flemming Rose, publisher of the 2005 Muhammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, took place in November. The occasion of our interview was the publication by the Cato Institute of Rose’s book The Tyranny of Silence, about the consequences he experienced after the cartoons were released. Rose’s voice is obviously powerful given what he endured, but he is also incredibly thoughtful on Europe’s post-liberal order. Europe, he says, now struggles to understand what it is about save for its thin belief in transnational EU governance and a nearly blinding commitment to egalitarianism, itself a contributing factor to the rise of…
