Posted on 12/04/2015 2:09:56 AM PST by Nextrush
France's far-right National Front is set to score huge gains in regional elections on Sunday, redrawing the political landscape of the euro zone's second-biggest economy as it gears up for the next presidential election in 2017.
The anti-immigration, anti-Europe party, boosted by fears over the refugee crisis and the Nov.13 Islamic State attacks that killed 130 in Paris, is seen leading in the first round on Dec. 6 in six out of 13 regions, a survey by Ipsos pollsters showed on Thursday.
The party, known by its initials FN, has become increasingly popular since Marine Le Pen took over the leadership from her father in 2011. It does not govern any region now, but a series of opinion polls shows it is likely to win one, maybe more, in a run-off on Dec. 13.......
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
No it is based on Culture. Islam is a culture incompatible with Judeo-Christian values.
Sarkozy was France's version of our GOP, i.e. their Mitt Romney: arguably better than the openly socialist alternative on some points, but mealy-mouthed, weak, and hypocritical on most issues, including those that matter most to the nation's survival.
To the European press, Bill Clinton would have been considered "far right". If you are not socialist, then you are "extreme right".
You miss my point.
For FN the view is that culture emerges from the French as a "race" or biological entity.
For conservatives the view is that first principles - in the case of the West, Judaeo-Christian values - create culture, not blood.
Syed Farook and Bobby Jindal have the same ethnic background, and Charles Cooke and Piers Morgan have the same ethnic background as well.
But two of them are staunch defenders of the West and its Judaeo-Christian values, and two of them are enemies.
FN would want to keep out Jindal and let in Morgan.
I do not believe that is the case anymore with the Post-Jean-Marie FN.
Japanese who - as a matter of mere opinion - share French values aren't French, but any of them who would sacrifice their time and effort to come to France and participate in their institutions - and agree to risk their lives to defend them - can become French.
To build on another example I used, if Bobby Jindal were just some guy living in the Punjab who basically agreed with the US Constitution and American values in the abstract, it wouldn't make him an American.
It's the fact that his family wanted to come here and adopt and embrace American principles and values - and that he fully embraced US culture even more deeply - which makes his family an American family and not a Punjabi family.
No, it is based on "nation", having a shared culture, language, and, yes, values too, but it's not just values. An Italian or German or Englishman can be just as white as a Frenchman, but the average Frenchman will not consider them French.
Part of it is pride in the accomplishments of your nation, and attachment to the fellow members of your nation. A Muslim must consider himself part of the Islamic Ummah more than he could consider himself a fellow to Christian French.
Yet there are several million Frenchmen of British, Spanish, Italian, German, Flemish, Polish, Corsican, and Portguese ancestry.
And they are considered Frenchmen. Very few Frenchmen would say "Chopin? MacMahon? They weren't real Frenchmen."
The borders, language, and culture of "La France" took on their classic acceptation only fairly recently.
France is a deliberate cultural construct, not a Platonic Idea come to life.
Yet he grew up in Algeria, the son of a Spanish mother and an Alsatian father (who was born in France, but grew up in a German-speaking home) and did not set foot in Europe until he was an adult.
Also the father of French New Wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, grew up in a Swiss Protestant household and was of Swiss-French, Swiss-German, and Danish background.
They both adopted - and helped create - mainstream French culture - and they are considered purely French.
The average Frenchman does not view them as interlopers, or somehow "off."
According to whom? Here is the accepted definition, not the one you make up: a sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language.
Nationalist movements have always been the friend of collectivism, and of the "will of the people"/"national will" overriding individual rights.
Was the Declaration of Independence based on patriotism or nationalism?
Patriotism is based on shared values, not shared blood.
The accepted definition of patriotism: devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty
Le Pen's opposition to immigration is based primarily on race, the French people's opposition is based more on values.
What race? MLP wants an end to illegal immigration, and a moratorium on legal immigration regardless of race. How is that racist?
Marine Le Pen advocates to "vote for the abolition of the law enabling the regularization of the illegal immigrants". In her view, "this measure corresponds with the interest of France, the respect of its authority and the most elementary justice"
"They don't tell you this but the immigration situation in France is totally out of control," Le Pen said at a meeting to mark the start of France's new political season. "My aim is clear: to stop immigration both legal and illegal."
The FN's programme officially calls for immigration to be limited to 10,000 people per year but Le Pen went further, declaring, "We need national borders for France."
Undocumented immigrants should not receive state-funded medical care and social security payments to asylum-seekers should end, she said.
Repeating a demand she made after the 21 August failed attack on a high-speed train from Belgium to France, she called for "all foreigners on file for links with radical Islamist movements to be deported", adding that "radical mosques" should be closed and their imams be thrown out of the country if they are foreigners.
The most important characteristic: do they consider THEMSELVES French, give France their primary loyalty, and give confidence to the Frenchmen around them that they are loyal to same idea of "France"?
For me, to consider somebody an "American", I would need to have confidence that they are loyal to America and their fellow Americans, and that this loyalty is senior to any loyalty to any non-Americans.
Which was my original point: I do not care what someone's ethnic background or country of origin is, as long as they are willing to fight and die to preserve and uphold the US Constitution.
That's a patriot.
Do you really believe that it's practical or realistic to filter immigrants based on "shared values?" If you ask somebody who wants to get in whether he has stronger loyalty to his ethnicity, religion, or nationality than his new home, he can easily just lie and say "my new home."
With no further information about a person (which is basically what you get with mass immigration, barring an in-depth psychological profile of each immigrant), who is more likely to fit into French society and make a good French citizen, a French-speaker from Switzerland, or a Bantu from South Africa?
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