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Le Figaro, France

Americas Right Makes the French Right Seem Left

As a journalist, what interests me most is the need to impress upon my readers that they must abandon their instinctive desire to use the United States as a benchmark for France. Ron Paul is nothing like Le Pen. Barack Obama is more right-wing than Nicolas Sarkozy. We must stop treating the Americans like fools just because they arent like the French. I say the same to Americans: 'stop believing that the world wants to be like you.'

By Pierre-Yves Dugua

Translated By Jill Naeem

March 15, 2012

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)

Jean-Marie Le Pen: The standard bearer of France's most extreme right-wing party looks downright socialist compared to America's Republican Party. FRANCE 24 VIDEO: Coverage of the French presidential election, Mar. 20, 00:08:05

The gap between the American right and French right has never been wider. Even in normal times, the French have difficulty understanding the Republicans. Defending the right to acquire and own (this is not the same as to carry ) weapons, refusing to accept the principle of universal state-funded health care, opposing the principle of a national identity card are all issues that leave voters of Nicolas Sarkozy dumbfounded - And even those of Le Pen.

[Editors Note: President Nicolas Sarkozy is leader of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement. Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has picked up her father's mantle, lead the Front National [In English we would say the 'National Front'], which is regarded as the most extreme right-wing party in France].

The turn taken over recent days by presidential campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic expands the canyon between the beliefs and values of American Republicans and those of the French right.

I just now heard a French minister defend the right to access free, anonymous and confidential contraception for minors. Such a position would be unimaginable for a U.S. Republican and even for many Democrats.

As a journalist, what interests me most is the need to impress upon my readers that they must abandon their instinctive desire to use the United States as a benchmark for France. Ron Paul is nothing like Le Pen. Barack Obama is more right-wing than Nicolas Sarkozy. We must stop treating the Americans like fools just because they arent like the French. We must accept that other countries and cultures with different histories produce profoundly different candidates. I am shocked by the superiority complex that many French have in regard to the Americans, referring to them time and time again as big kids or barbarians. Accept the difference. Neither France, nor Europe, nor America is the center of the civilized world. The world is diverse.

All political systems do not converge on a French model that every other nation dreams of duplicating. I say the same to Americans: stop believing that the world wants to be like you.

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The most striking example of the distance between the two countries is how populism is expressed. American populism is first libertarian, pro free-enterprise and individualism, anti-tax and anti-state. It sometimes drifts into anti-immigrant xenophobia - but not always. It claims to be guided by Americas Founding Fathers. This is the Tea Party.

This type of right-wing populism doesnt exist in France. Tea Party voters in France would be taken for aliens. Its a shame, because if we took the trouble to listen to their reasoning, we might better understand their view of the world, however arbitrary or false it may seem.

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

But in the United States, there is also a left-wing populist movement angrily denouncing inequalities in income and conditions. In recent months, the Democrats have been trying to bring this group back into the fold. It is less powerful, but the press, which largely favors Democrats, has given it quite a voice. This is populism partly inspired by Europe and is at the heart of campaigns of several French candidates - both on the right and left.

The idea that a right-wing candidate in the U.S. might focus his campaign on raising taxes and inventing, on a daily basis, a new, smarter tax, is unthinkable. That is especially true in the context of the already heavy taxation that prevails in France.

The absence of a wide-ranging debate among the French right on how to reduce government spending is just as incomprehensible to the Republican. The American right has the impression that the French right has, from the start, conceded the moral superiority of the lefts arguments: that the state should redistribute wealth, private initiatives create inequality, and if the rich are rich, it is because they stole the money from somewhere.

The use of taxation, not just to raise revenue but to impoverish the rich, is what we French call social engineering. This is a highly pejorative term in the mouth of the average American, because it is a theory that admits that the American model is fundamentally flawed. Could individual freedom and civic responsibility lead to a class-based society? The Republican doesnt want to believe so. But most of all, he wants to believe that allowing the state to correct these inequalities is worse than the disease!

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