The start of another week in Paris and more rioting, looting and burning.

Wonder how far will Macron get?

His lofty ambition from the beginning was to lead the EU. A genius like him deserves no less, right?

He certainly is pushing his pro-immigrant, globalists, EU-controlled financial institutions agenda with full force. The only problem is that member countries want no part of it. Of course a little bump like that does not bother a ruthless dictator like him: there are new Stalins even though communism is dead, at least officially. The "new" elite in Europe makes sure his teachings are alive and well.

Yes, there is a whole thing going on about the UN migration program they want, it is a bunch of money and a whole lot of rules and laws THEY want all the countries to implement, a pure railroad session, if ever there was one.

Thanks Nickursis.

Macron's approval rating now stands at 23%.

The UN is pushing its agenda about immigration, parallel with the EU's migrant quotas.

The quotas have been voted down before but the bureaucrats are taking another shot at it, no matter how unpopular it is.

That is very true, and well put ewv.

Rumbles of election fraud, now a no confidence vote for Monday, and an increasing move by countries to tell the UN they will not allow the UN to tell them how to handle immigration and they will not make welfare and citizenship a "human right"...for some...

More precisely, a protection racket. So long as you pay, you never actually see the weapon drawn.

It's fantasy that it can work in the sense of making possible (let alone guarantee) human flourishing of the individual, but as a philosophic premise it begins with rejection of the individual as the fundamental ethical value -- not belief that little work results in plenty, which is an evasive psychological wish, not a philosophy at all.

How the collectivist fundamental hatred of the value of the individual manifests itself shows up in the implementation of the various collectivist schemes. The collapse of one scheme has not stopped collectivists from trying another one or becoming more extreme in enforcement as they maintain their false collectivist basic premise.

Rejecting collectivism requires attacking it at its root by identifying and defending the principles of individualism based on a proper ethics of egoism and rationality as a matter of consistent principle. It's not enough to try to convince people that collectivism "doesn't work" by any strictly empirical or shifting "Pragmatist" standard. It requires rational, conceptual understanding. Collectivism doesn't work for anything but sacrificial submission to the collective, which goal as the premise must be rejected for individualism: the necessity and freedom of the individual to think for himself exclusively by reason to choose the values of his own life.

We may also be on that road, the deep state education system has produced 2 generations at least of unthinking sardines...

I have held the belief that all the versions of "collectivism", "socialism" "communism" are all a manipulation of a fantasy philosophy that says everyone can work a little and it all adds up into plenty for all. It seems that is the story and it always ends up with 90% working so the 10% can be the masters and use force to persuade the 90% it is better to work than die, or be reeducated. That is why I have never given any of them an ounce of serious consideration, It is always greed on steroids. The current state of Europe is unsustainable, and since I have not seen where all these exorbitant taxes disappear to, I am inclined to believe it is on a financial edge of the cliff, like all socialism ends up.

That begs the question of why they think someone else has an obligation to provide for others' needs while they "slack", and why they think their parasitism is a proper way to live at all. That altruism and collectivism are philosophical premises.

One of the consequences is that there is no "sitting back and relaxing" under collectivism. It only causes more problems and prevents problems from being solved as individual initiative -- goal-directed thinking and individual action -- is stifled. When the collectivism doesn't "work", their premises lead them to more collectivism with more statism to enforce it.

With more egalitarian collectivism people can sit back and relax, letting someone else take up the slack.

The rioters don't seem to understand the root cause of their problems, though. They may well go on blaming Jews and capitalism and demanding even more globalism. This to me is a much more "ominous parallel" to 1923 than the supernaturalist hogwash to which Peikoff attached that title.

If I lived in Western Europe right now, I'd get the heck out even if I had to sneak across borders. They are going to have a war for stupid reasons.

No, I guess not. And historically, the French seem incapable of doing a * proper* revolution, anyway.
They just don't have a proper philosophy. (But perhaps, with the right propagandists...but who from here would have the time, or the interest, anyway?)

True.

If you recall, Robespierre (he was a lawyer, BTW) in the name of the Jacobin, took control and he "introduced" the "Rein of Terror", for which he gained a dubious notoriety. In modern days ISIS bears similarity, and increasingly mobs and groups of leftist thugs in the US.

Robespierre sanctioned rules by which it was sufficient for your neighbor or anyone to claim you were a traitor to the "cause" resulting in a guillotine event. The French sure can be proud of that.

Robespierre reached a fitting death under the guillotine himself.

He was the first hypocrite of national significance: he was against the death penalty but guillotined countless people, including the King and Queen of France. He was the first looter, too, demanding price controls and distribution of goods.

"Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" - a useless slogan from that era. The French did not see anything wrong with it when they had Hungary chopped into pieces after WW1.

Macron is dead set against "nationalism", while at the same time the French are the most nationalistic and chauvinistic people you will ever find on this Earth.

A nation of Hypocrisy.

True, the topics role down the list as comments drop off. Not sure if there is a way around it, unless they set up a context comparison of some kind.

I see it as the inevitable rejection of the pressure of the socialust system. The financial pressures in Europe to gove away free stuff has built for the laast 40 years, this tax for "clean energy" is just lighting the fuse.

It's more pro-socialist than you think. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... It's mob violence by people who don't like what they are getting but who don't know enough to advocate what is right. We are seeing the predictable chaos, violence and calls for tribalism that can be expected from irrationalism and collectivist ideology widely accepted. Don't expect a second American revolution under these conditions.

That isn't why they are protesting. The organizers are mostly populists who don't like the results of French statism but who want more egalitarian collectivism.

Gasoline taxes in France were already $7/gal before the tax increase, and according to one recent report I saw, gas prices in France even with the new tax are lower than they were several years ago. Yet there were no mass protests before now.

Those incited to protest the new tax on them apparently would not mind a tax on others. According to an article today in The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018...

"The protesters see the ex-investment banker as an arrogant 'president of the rich' who is out of touch with ordinary folk struggling to make ends meet.

"A widespread complaint is that the low-income provincial workers of 'forgotten' France can no longer scrape after paying some of the highest tax bills in Europe.

"A large number want a partially-scrapped wealth tax to be reinstated. Yet their demands are incredibly broad and sometimes contradictory.

"Many yellow vests are calling for taxes to be slashed but say more should be spent on public services. The prime minister pointed out that you can’t have both."

This is like an alternative version of the plot in Atlas Shrugged in which mass protests against Dagny Taggert call for socialism.

The course of a nation depends on the dominant philosophical ideas and outlook. Not liking a new tax does not tell anyone what is the right way to organize society by what fundamental standards.

more and more, as governments get more powerful and controlling, people are separating into two camps- the producers/beseiged and the takers/controllers. There is NO compromises between these two groups. The only compromise that could ever be is how much of what the producers make can be given to the takers. Civil war has started in 2016 here, and is headed to open warfare if the leftists dont lighten up

It seems that the French never did know how to do a proper revolution. I've read two books about it (one by Carlyle), and our Revolution seems rather cold, legalistic, and bloodless by comparison. A lot of thought-out ideas, written down. And not a lot of rioting. And we got a well-thought-out Constitution, written in 1787, with a procedure for amendment not just a lot of screaming for blood.

H***, yes! Worse than mere theft: armed robbery.
But the way to handle that would be to repeal those taxes, and the socialistic laws which brought those taxes about. And maybe we'd better watch it. We don't want to have a wave of mob violence over here.---And look at what's going on in California, and where they may be headed.

As much as I don't approve of mob violence, I might have expected that this riot was pro-Socialist. As much as I don't condone mob violence, this one makes me kind of hope they set up a guillotine and execute a few of those people who voted those tax raises into place, and maybe that they march on the legislative building and tear it down!. Kind of makes me want to get up on a soapbox and sing La Marseillaise ! (Of course, I can't really condone that way of handling things--but I kind of think that the "intellectuals" have brought this on themselves. Except that maybe they're not going to have to be the ones to pay for it).

According to news, the French were polled if they thought someone else would make a better leader?

50% voted "No".

The French are hopeless. So are the Germans. They still don't know whom to elect in place of Merkel.

No offense taken.

I was just curious for the reason that the same topic gets posted several times. Apparently the system will not warn people.

Much info gets lost due to this b/c we can't follow an event over time.