One French Socialist Edges Ahead of Another

From The Telegraph

By Daniel Hannan

There was never any doubt that a socialist would win the first round of the French election. This is because, with one partial exception, all ten candidates favoured socialist policies. Sarkozy fought the election promising to make France 'stronger than the markets'. François Hollande wanted a top rate tax of 75 per cent and a massive expansion of the state payroll. Marine Le Pen ditched her father's anti-scrounger rhetoric and ran on a platform which, on economics, was well to the Left of Sarko's.

Does Obama Know Who the President of France Is?

From The Telegraph
By Toby Harnden

It's long been the case that the easiest way for an American and a Brit - whatever their respective political persusasions - to bond is to chuckle over something rude about the French.

Jokes about garlic, frogs' legs, surrender, duplicity, take your pick - it's safe ground. If Barack Obama had gone on Leno and made a barbed quip about our Gallic friends instead of the Special Olympics he'd have been home free.

So perhaps the new president is being devilishly clever by, as Le Figaro reports, writing to Jacques Chirac, former French president, that: "I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world."

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What Would de Gaulle Say? Sarkozy to Make France a Full Member of Nato Alliance Once More

I would rather fight alongside a dozen Royal Marines than with whatever France has to offer, but for whatever it's worth...

From The Daily Mail

By Mail Foreign Service

French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to lead his country back into the core of the Nato alliance.

The announcement comes four decades after his predecessor Charles de Gaulle took the country into self-imposed exile.

France is Nato's fourth largest contributor of troops.

But in an effort to mark its difference with the United States it has long snubbed the organisation's integrated military command, which plans, trains and conducts joint operations.

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Europe Is Obama's First 'Global Test'

From American Thinker
By Soeren Kern

President-elect Barack Obama is already facing his first global test. And it's not coming from the usual suspects like Iran or North Korea, but from America's "allies" in Europe.

European leaders have congratulated Obama on his election victory by sending him a six-page letter in which they benevolently "offer" the United States a "partnership of equals" in order to address global problems in the post-Bush era.

That's right: Europeans are calling on Obama to "accept" Europe as America's equal on the global stage. The idea behind this new man-to-man relationship with Washington was hatched by (surprise, surprise) France, which currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the reason for establishing an equal transatlantic partnership is that "the world has changed." Europe has suddenly realized that the United States "is not the only one concerned by the world's problems. The European Union has become more resolute.... We don't want to play a secondary role any more," says Kouchner.

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"What Price Democracy, Mr. Sarkozy?"

Nigel Farage is one of the most articulate and impressive young leaders in Britain. He is a founder of the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party, and a member of the European Parliament for South East England. We're unabashed anglophiles here at Sunlit Uplands, and we think you will see in the following exchange between Farage and French President Sarkozy, how freedom loving Britons have routed the French in every conflict from Agincourt to the present day.

Sarkozy and Religion: For the Sake of Islam

From Brussels Journal
By Tiberge

A new book by Martin Peltier, published by Renaissance Catholique, is briefly summarized at the publisher's website. The very short précis is hardly sufficient to make a judgment, but what struck me was the remark about Nicolas Sarkozy's ulterior motives in his so-called campaign for "positive laïcité", i.e., placing all religions on an equal footing and encouraging equal respect for all of them:

By raising the issue of the "Christian roots" of France and of "positive laïcité" in Rome last December 20, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy made waves. The outrage of the old guard of defenders of laïcité reached the boiling point, and they declared the republican pact to be in danger.

The republican pact referred to is the strict separation of Church and State as decreed by the law of 1905. Since being elected, Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a veritable campaign to bring religion back into the public debate and to persuade the population of its importance. But, of course, he had his reasons...

However, if we take the time to read the book he wrote in 2004 – The Republic, Religions and Hope – and if we compare it to other statements, we soon perceive that the primary concern of Nicolas Sarkozy is Islam. His only reason for modifying the law of 1905 is to integrate Islam. The State will pay for mosques and the training of imams. The ghettoes will thus be pacified.

Beyond this policing effort, the President, indifferent to any revelation, hopes that the three religions of the Book come together to spread their common values on behalf of a humanistic globalization. His God is modernity, his God is the Republic.

I have lost track of the number of times I have said here that Sarkozy's only purpose in opening the debate on religion was to prepare the French population for the institutionalization of Islam. Because without the issue of Islam, there was absolutely no reason to talk about, let alone modify, the 1905 law. For better or worse, the French people had long ago adjusted to the law. But he had to force them to re-adjust to a modified law that allowed State funding for mosques. And in order to do this he created a phony debate on the need for all men to recognize the importance of religion (i.e. Islam).

Many Christians did not see this and welcomed the new debate, thinking it applied to them. On the other hand, the defenders of laïcité, most of whom are socialists and pro-immigration, became alarmed at the thought that he was shoving religion down their throats, when in fact he was merely justifying the State funding of Islam.

An Unlikely Messenger

From BreakPoint Commentaries
By Chuck Colson

French President Nicholas Sarkozy is an unlikely scourge of European secularism: He is on his third marriage and has been called the “playboy president” by his critics.

But it is what Sarkozy has just said about the role of religion in French life that has really got his critics up-in-arms.

For more than a century, what the French call laïcité has been the defining characteristic of French politics and public life. The word, which has no English equivalent, goes beyond the separation of church and state. It is a kind of secularism that tends to see “any strong religious views as a direct threat to [France’s] freedom and way of life . . .”

Thus, discretion about one’s religious views, especially among leaders, is regarded as “a necessary part of being French.”

Sarkozy disagrees. In a book he wrote before becoming president, Sarkozy declared, “I am of Catholic culture, Catholic tradition, Catholic belief, even if my religious practice is episodic.”

He continued this theme after becoming president. He has criticized removing references to “Europe’s Christian roots” from the European constitution. In a speech in Rome last December, he emphasized France’s Christian roots. He invoked France’s ancient title of the “Eldest Daughter of the Church.”

He proposed a new version of laïcité, one that “does not consider religions a danger, but an asset.” That is because, according to Sarkozy, when it comes to teaching right and wrong, “the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.” Well said.

Sarkozy has also stood up for France’s often-beleaguered Jewish community. He recently announced that, starting next fall, French fifth-graders will have to learn the story of at least one of the 11,000 French children killed in the Holocaust.

He defended his plan by blaming the wars of the twentieth century on the “absence of God.” He further shocked French sensibilities by adding that Nazi racism was “radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism.”

This latter point is not hypothetical for the French president, whose maternal grandfather was Jewish.

Critics are appalled by Sarkozy’s invocations of religion. As one socialist leader put it, “a speech citing God not only on every page, but on every line, creates a fundamental problem for the republic.” Others chide him for disregarding the separation of church and state.

And, of course, they do not hesitate to point out the gap between his rhetoric and his lifestyle.

I wish that Sarkozy’s “religious practice” was less “episodic.” Nevertheless, I am gratified that he is taking on what has been called a “major taboo” in French public life. This may be the first time since the French revolution that a French leader has spoken seriously to the people about God.

A French-born writer, Hilaire Belloc, put it this way, “the faith is Europe.” Without Christianity, Europe would not exist. European secularism and the denial of its Christian roots have cut it off from its own heritage, leaving it vulnerable to the challenge of Islam.

After all, you can not fight something with nothing, which is what a “post-Christian” Europe is left with. That is why I welcome Sarkozy’s message—however unlikely the messenger.

Barack Hussein Obama Would Hold Muslim Summit

PARIS (AFP) — US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has told a French magazine he wants to organise a summit of the Muslim world if he makes it to the White House.

Muslim and Western leaders would be invited to the summit for "a discussion about how we can prevent the widening misunderstandings and gaps between the Muslim world and the West," Obama said in the interview to Paris Match.

I will ask them to join us in battling terrorism but we should also be willing to listen in terms of some of their concerns," he said in the interview to be released Thursday.

Obama, 46, is battling Hillary Clinton to stand as the Democratic party's candidate in the November presidential race.

Obama lived in predominantly Muslim Indonesia with his mother and a Muslim stepfather for four years as a child, but his parents were not religious and he was baptised as a Christian as an adult.

In the interview, Obama also said he wanted to shut down the US Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba and end the war in Iraq.

"As long as we are maintaining an occupation in Iraq, it's going to be hard to focus on other things," he said.

The senator who wants to become the first black US president praised French President Nicolas Sarkozy and said he would come to Paris to meet him if he wins the Democratic nomination.

"He is a man of enormous energy and enormous talent," said Obama of Sarkozy.

"I was impressed with his willingness to look at the issues that France faces in a new ways, not bound by tradition and dogmas."

"That is an important thing for any leader -- to be able to look at problems in a fresh way," he said.

That "Dangerous" Democracy

The Daily Telegraph reports on a closed door meeting in which Nicholas Sarkozy has told senior Members of the European Parliament that referenda on the European Union Treaty are "dangerous" and would be lost in France, Britain and other countries.

Sarkozy stated that, "France was just ahead of all the other countries in voting no. It would happen in all member states if they have a referendum. There is a cleavage between people and governments."

He added that "A referendum now would bring Europe into danger. There will be no Treaty if we had a referendum in France, which would again be followed by a referendum in the UK."

The French President's admission makes plain that the European Union has no support among the majority of European people and explains why the British Prime Minister and others refuse to allow referenda on the EU "simplified treaty." The tragic reality is clearer every day; a sinister and totalitarian cabal of unelected socialists are tightening their grip on Europe.