Being immigrated in France what can happen to me if Marine Le Pen wins the elections - by Cardia
Renzatic on 25/4/2017 at 07:50
I'm playing Ducktales. I need to relive those happier times, when our vice president misspelling potato was the greatest political scandal of the day.
nickie on 25/4/2017 at 08:29
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I should probably do my duty . . . But I'm gonna get drunk.
Typical of the younger generation! Fun first, duty second. Disgraceful.
demagogue on 25/4/2017 at 09:11
Macron is really mainstream though. Still pro-EU, cosmopolitan, broadly liberal, already highly experienced. He's not really a departure. I don't see the doom & gloom. But then I'm wary of extremists and populists so he was in my target zone to begin with.
(And I'd vote LibDem in the UK if I could, well, if their equivalents were running for US office. The US would be lucky to have candidates in that spectrum.)
skacky on 25/4/2017 at 11:22
The doom & gloom is because Macron is a direct continuation of the current failure of a government ruling the country for the past 5 years, which is by far the most unpopular government since De Gaulle's term. Except this time it's gonna be even more pro-EU, even more liberal and even harsher on labour if he wins. His government will also most probably include many people from the current government who have 'unofficially' left the Socialist Party to join him. I'm almost sure of that.
I also highly disagree with the experienced part, all of his reforms during his term as Minister have failed and he (and others) has made the already insanely rich corporations even wealthier. I don't like careers in politics since these people don't work a day of their lives, usually, but Macron comes from wealthy banks and most probably intends to rule the country like a CEO.
Harvester on 25/4/2017 at 11:52
I don't know much about these candidates. But I do wonder about the "harsher on labour" aspect you mentioned. Feel free to tell my uninformed ass if I'm spouting nonsense. But in the state France's economy is in, is Mélenchon's plan of a 32 hour workweek smart or not? And I often wonder about the unions' vast power in France. Often I hear about yet another strike, and the call for an even lower pension age and a shorter workweek, and my first thought (admittedly based on little knowledge) is "you're grinding your own country to a halt and your economy will never improve in this way". On the other hand, if everyone works fewer hours in a week with the same amount of work needing to be done, more people can be employed. As I said, I can't claim to have studied this in depth and am happy to be corrected and informed.
EDIT: maybe there are also a lot of strikes going on for valid reasons in France. But one strike I remember is the Air France one, where the pilots were on strike because they wanted to move more KLM/Air France (partner companies) flights from Schiphol to Charles de Gaulle airport. Is that really a valid reason to strike? Those are the kind of strikes where my first thought is the aforementioned one.
SD on 25/4/2017 at 12:32
Quote Posted by skacky
People who say they're Leftists and vote for Macron are lying to themselves, especially with this ultra-liberal Right wing economic program of his.
The only thing worse than liberals is those ULTRA LIBERALS, am I rite? :mad:
Freedom is bad enough, but ultra freedom?!
<serious>Some people deserve to be ruled by Nazis</serious>
Harvester on 25/4/2017 at 12:46
Warning: there are two definitions of the word liberal. One concerns ethics, where a liberal is usually pro-choice, pro women's rights, pro gay marriage, etc. The other one concerns economics, where liberal usually means leaving as much as possible to the free market, with few government regulations. In America everyone saying liberal means the ethical definition, while in the Netherlands and maybe France as well, the word liberal is usually spoken in economic context. Maybe skacky means the latter as well. Dutch liberalism is more complex than just pushing for a free market (basically liberals push for maximum freedom for an individual to deploy themselves in all manners of life*), but that aspect is the first thing that comes to mind for many people when they hear the word liberal.
* but if you can't manage to support yourself, fuck you, according to some liberals
Final edit: the largest party in the Netherlands is the VVD. They're being called liberal. The closest UK equivalent are the Tories, which are being called conservative. Confusing, right?
Thirith on 25/4/2017 at 12:52
I'd very much assume this to be the case. In Germany and Switzerland, the Liberal parties are very much free-market fundamentalists. Equating liberalism in a European context with "ooh, freedom" is uninformed at best.
demagogue on 25/4/2017 at 13:29
Liberals in the Continental sense are (edit: classically, it could be they've been transformed) free market, cosmopolitan, emphasis on intitutions and mulitlateralism. In France, the intellectual roots are Raymond Aron and John Monnet. In the US it'd be the architects of the UN, Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods, etc.
They're not like anarcho-capitalists, or not even US Libertarians who are anti-institutions and more anarchic, and they're not cultural conservatives like Catholic or Religious Right parties. In the UK (and classically in the US) the liberal equivalents are like the Continental version but you'd add emphasis on freedom of speech and conscience (sometimes LGBT rights, etc), that kind of "freedom".
The US has lost touch with that form of classic liberalism. In the Cold War period it was a shared platform for Reps and Dems that ebbed and flowed. Bush I was the last major representative in the US, and Clinton I to an extent (Clinton II naturally leans that way, but would have been under serious pressure to drop a lot of it). Tony Blair in the UK definitely. In France, Sarkozy afaik. Macron formally fits the profile on paper.
They're all, I gather, quite unpopular in our populist era that distrusts multilateralism and experts in institutions as smug know-it-alls.
