Boudoir confessions

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Sometimes one finds oneself with strange bedfellows. And if, as the rays of morning sun break through the curtains, I were to turn my sleepy head and fix my eyes on this less-than-comely figure, I fear that I would at once lose all faith in my convictions.

That said, I must confess to the resemblance of my intuitions about the French vote on the European constitution to those of Mr. William F. Buckley Jr.:

What haunted the vision, in recent years, were two demographic ice floes. The first, the diminution of the birthrate in native populations; the second, the perception that genuine freedom had to include the freedom to migrate. If simultaneously (to take only a single example), Swedes diminish in numbers by their negative birthrate, and Turks are free to immigrate to Sweden, the cultural contours of existing society will be gradually reshaped.

Such developments the elite can, with a measure of calm, live with, but they generate apprehension in others, men and women who have looked to their governments to protect their special interests. We know that 70 percent of French farmers voted no on the new constitution. Now, French farmers are the most coddled economic tribe in the entire world, so why should they invite any change in the laws they live under? Public and blue collar workers, and of course the unemployed, voted no on the constitution. Their leverage on the immediate future of France, which is the future they are concerned with, depends on exertions within a political framework they are familiar with. If the eggheads in Paris want a great visionary constitution in the place of what they have got now, let them go for it, but don't let them hallucinate that this has the backing of the French working man.

I do believe (and this, I hope, will rescue me from a rude awakening) that the European states have some responsibility to ease the transition of their citizenry from a more to a less regulated economy. That these farmers and working men will likely have their life prospects increased in the long run by a more efficient economy and a greater access to domestic, regional, and foreign markets does not erase the suffering that an unbuffered transition.