A victory in France

A week ago tens of thousands of French people protested in the streets of Paris against the family policies of the French Government.

The good news is that the French Government has backed down and has shelved plans to introduce the proposed legislation. That's a rare, but welcome, victory against the imposition of a liberal agenda in a Western country.

I thought some of the most interesting commentary on this came from a blogger named Autheuil, quoted by Tiberge at Gallia Watch. Autheuil is not sympathetic to the protests:

It didn't take twenty-four hours for the government to beat a retreat. After the success of another demonstration by the reactionary right (after all, 80,000 persons), the government announced the postponement of a law that should have already been submitted...After such a backing-off, it isn't even worth the effort to hope for the slightest societal reform before the end of his term in office.

He calls the protesters the "reactionary" right. He believes that they are currently a significant political force in France:

The government acknowledges that the reactionary right ... really weighs heavily in France. One can be in disagreement with their positions (as I am) and recognize nonetheless that they are a political force to be reckoned with. That the movement is still able, one year after the great demonstrations against "marriage for everyone," to mobilize 80,000 thanks to a threat as unlikely as "gender theory," is an important sign. The reactionary right is back in France, and it isn't an epiphenomenon, it's a groundswell, begun no doubt years ago, that will last a little while longer.

That's the terrific thing: the French mobilised to defeat an aspect of liberal ideology, namely gender theory (the idea that our sex - our being male or female - can and should be made not to matter).

What is unfortunate for the left is that they are very well mobilized but François Hollande has done almost everything in his power to dissuade part of his voters and to make them stay home in disgust during the next election. An election is won or lost on the ability to mobilize the voters. What is also unfortunate for the left is that this movement is acquiring an intellectual armature. True, it's very reactionary (in the original sense of the word) but we would be wrong to see it as just a lot of gobbledegook behind the ranting and raving about "djender". This movement is a violent opposition to the eradication of the difference between genders in Western culture. It is the anthropological protest in favor of maintaining a social structure based on the difference between masculine and feminine, implying differentiated roles, hence a different place for men and women.

Tiberge cleverly titled her post "Tradition rules the streets (for now)". Who would have thought? Usually it's the radical left that rules the streets. Note too that Autheuil is worried that the opposition to liberalism is developing an intellectual "armature". He recognises the strength that a movement gains when it learns to defend its positions intellectually. Autheuil, in the above paragraph, also fairly portrays the aims of those opposing gender theory (an "opposition to the eradication of the difference between genders in Western culture").

Finally, a reader has created a larger version of the iconic photo of the protests that I used in my previous post (if you click on it you'll see it full size).