France and Your Faithful Correspondent Go Insane

I don’t know how other journalists are even reading the news fast enough to make their deadlines right now. It’s easy enough to criticize the media; I do it all the time; I even do it more than anyone, I reckon. But this week all I can say is that I admire any colleague who managed to do the one thing a journalist has got to do to survive in this business: submit his report before the story’s no longer news.

I’ve been writing two pieces this week, one about last Sunday’s referendum in Turkey, the other about the upcoming election in France. I’ve worked to the point of near-tearful exhaustion on both, but neither are done. Nor, I fear, will either be finished before they’re no longer of use to any editor. So much has happened, so fast, and there is so much to explain, that I just can’t do it quickly enough. Those who can do it will be published; and even if their articles are riddled with errors of fact and interpretation or horrors of English prose, it is only right that theirs will be published and mine will not, because editors do need to fill their pages with something, after all. They can’t wait for writers like me to figure out how to compress my frantic thoughts about the history, the drama, the complexity, the personalities, the sheer weirdness of these epic events into “Five Facts You Need to Know Today” — and I can’t even blame them for it. The chief attribute you need to succeed in journalism is the ability to get 800 readable words on an editor’s desk before the day’s end, every single day, and I don’t have it. When yesterday Theresa May yesterday announced her plan to call a snap call a snap general election, my first thought was that another election was going to do me in — and I didn’t just mean the stress of living through it, I meant the prospect of explaining it.

So all I can say is thank God — and thank you — that I have a book to write, because it means that what I’ve written won’t be wasted. To everyone who’s made this book a possibility, I am truly grateful: The thought that none of what I wrote will be wasted is all that’s keeping me from staggering off the ledge into madness along with everyone else I’m writing about.

And to anyone in a generous mood, please consider contributing, or contributing again: I can say with absolute confidence that the book is being written even as I blow through deadline after deadline; because this book is what I’m really writing, and this book, for sure, will answer all your questions about Turkey’s referendum, the real meaning of France’s election cliffhanger, Britain’s future, and the way these stories unite to form a portrait of the ill-starred continent to which we’re bound, like it or not, its tragic and tangled history, and its uncertain future.

For those of you who can’t wait for the book, however, let me recommend a few articles about what happened in France this week by writers who managed to make their deadlines. All three are surprisingly good, despite not being written by me and despite being finished on time.

In Slate (of all places) Yascha Mounk has written a fine piece called A Primer on the French Elections: Four Candidates, three nightmare scenarios:

For many years, Mélenchon has been about as marginal a political figure as his endorsement of Fiscal Combat might suggest. After breaking with the center-left Parti Socialiste of President François Hollande, he has called for a 100 percent tax on incomes over 400,000 euros (about $426,000) and endorsed dictators such as Hugo Chavez. And yet, the latest polls see Mélenchon in a dead heat with centrist Emmanuel Macron, conservative François Fillon, and far-right populist Marine Le Pen. Any two out of those four might come out on top in the first rounds of the upcoming presidential elections.In other words, less than a week before the first round of the election, and less than three weeks before a runoff between the two leading candidates that will determine the next inhabitant of the Élysée Palace, the country’s political future is completely up in the air. France might soon be ruled by a self-described communist, by an untested centrist whose political movement was founded less than a year ago, by a traditional conservative under investigation for blatantly corrupt practices, or by the far-right leader of a party with deep fascist roots.

(And please, I beg you: Before averring the irrelevance of Marine Le Pen’s fascist roots, please, at least, wait for my book, or for the article that, God willing, I’ll finish in time to explain this, and to explain why they should frighten us. I spent most of the week writing about her and her lunatic family and about how criminally reckless it would be to dismiss the words “fascist roots,” words so overused that they have even perhaps come to sound anodyne to American ears. But at the very least, watch this. That is what is meant by “fascist roots,” and those are the roots from which her rotten branch grows — as last week she clearly reminded us.)

In The Daily Beast, Christopher Dickey gets right to the point with a piece called The Insane French Elections That Could Fuck Us All. It isn’t just vulgar sensationalism, I’m afraid.

Less than three weeks from now, in the final round of the presidential elections, the only choice left to the voters of France could well be between Le Pen, a crypto-fascist, or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a charismatic communist, both of whom are strongly anti-EU and anti-NATO.

Victory for either one would mean an end to the political, diplomatic, and economic order that has protected the United States as well as Europe for the last 70 years, preventing the kinds of cataclysms—World Wars I and II—that cost millions of lives in the first half of the 20th century while containing first Soviet and now Russian adventurism.

There are other possibilities, but as the French prepare to go to the polls (or flee them) this Sunday, April 23, the possible outcomes are a total crapshoot. The four top candidates in a field of 11 are in a virtual dead heat; the differences between their scores is within the acknowledged margins of error by the pollsters. The top two finishers will vie against each other in a run-off on May 7. And the reason something like panic has set in among many French, from the heights of the political establishment to conversation over espressos at the counters in working-class cafés, is that the candidate with the most solid base is Le Pen, while the one with the most momentum is the far-left Mélenchon.

As for Mélenchon’s astonishing sudden rise, my friend Arun has done an outstanding job of explaining this terrible turn of events, to the extent they can be explained:

… When I saw these numbers, my jaw dropped. This is, objectively speaking, insane. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not exactly a newcomer on the French political scene. He’s been around for a while and anyone with a merely passing interest in politics knows him and his trash-talking gauchiste persona. So WTF is going on here? This cannot be just his performance in the March 20th and April 4th multi-candidate debates. Ça ne peut pas suffire. The fact of the matter is, JLM has tapped into something profound in the id of a sizable part of the French electorate—both left and right—which I personally do not relate to but that is there. On this, I received an email a week ago from a faithful AWAV reader in Marseille—who is French, secular Jewish, a retired advertising executive, on the moderate left but no gauchiste—after JLM’s rally in the city. What he wrote is interesting and instructive, as his sentiments are no doubt shared by many:

Il y a la politique et puis il y a la politique.

I gave up on joining the crowd sur le Vieux Port, because it was already past 2 pm and I wanted to hear Meluche in good conditions, so I stayed home and watched him on TV… The magic worked, I had to admire the man and the talent.

He brought tears in my eyes. I didn’t agree on all of what he said, but I agreed on his choice of words, the value and the weight of the words, the tone, the gravity, the music, the emotional content.

It is part of my French heritage. It speaks to my roots. This is what France is all about. Something lyrical, fierce, generous and noble as is the Marseillaise.

Read the whole thing.

France, in short, has gone insane, and anything could happen.

Now I’ll go back to work in the hope of finishing both of my own articles before events overtake them. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll share a few of my thoughts about what just happened in Turkey. These are not trivial developments, and it is hard for me to feel that I’m not trivializing them by compressing my responses to them. But in the end, saying nothing at all would be worse. So I’ll do my best.

Update: Which French Political Party Would You Vote For?

Yesterday I posted a link to my friend Arun Kapil's (excellent) blog about French politics, particularly to his translation into English of a Sciences Po questionnaire designed to see which French political party you would vote for, were you French. I promised to offer my results and thoughts about them today. Voici. 

I found this test especially interesting because on more than one question -- in fact on most of them -- I strongly agreed with more than one answer, and found it very hard to decide which statement I most agreed with. For example: 

1. Whether or not one is religiously observant, one must not neglect the moral values conveyed by religion.

2. One must tolerate all types of religious practices so long as they are freely consented to, even when they may be shocking to some.

3. Religious morality should be combated, as it prevents people from living and thinking freely.

4. Religion may sometimes be incompatible with personal freedom but it can, at the same time, offer answers to the profound questions of human existence.

5. The message of religion is primordial, as it helps us distinguish good from bad in our lives.

I don’t agree with (3). But (1), (4), and (5) all seem like good answers to me; and in most cases I agree with (2), especially as an American who takes religious freedom seriously -- though we come up against some very hard cases when religious practices shock majority sensibilities or are in conflict with the law or with other religious beliefs. So I eliminated (2) as “too difficult,” and went with (1).

I found that if I went back and changed my answer in just a few places to one that I thought was “almost as good, or maybe better,” it moved me from center-left to liberal-republican and then, the third time I tried, back to center. So: small change, big variance.

But I think my responses are going to be different from most American's or non-French readers', because try as I might, I can’t separate “my own political principles” from “what I might think if I were French” (as I instructed readers to do). By this point, I’m just too familiar with French problems not to have an opinion about them. So whereas I suspect most readers would have gone with an answer other than this one, which I chose:

3. To facilitate the integration of immigrants it is necessary to fight against unemployment—which hinders their integration—and to make sure that the rights of immigrants are respected in countering discrimination of which they may be victims.

I chose it strongly over the others (probably pushing me toward “center” or “center-left”) -- because I firmly believe, after seeing it and the effects of it every day, that excessively strict French labor laws keep immigrants out of the labor market and unemployed; that this consigns them to ghettoization; and this in turn makes it vastly more difficult for them to integrate. I also find this to be a form of discrimination, of which immigrants here are very much victims. The consequences of this have become a serious problem in France.

If I were taking this quiz in America, though, I’d probably answer:

4. In order for the integration of immigrants to succeed they must not suffer from discrimination but, at the same time, they should respect the values of the host country.

I don’t think immigrants to America suffer from a want of entry-level jobs, or that the lack thereof is the source of huge social problems. I think statement (4) best describes what we might call the “basic American integration compact.”

(Also, I’m pretty sure I skewed things by giving myself the vote. Why not? I pay taxes, I’m integrated, I obey the laws, and I’m very much affected by what French politicians decide — why shouldn’t I be represented? But I reckon I’m the only American respondent who’d let me vote, though, at least, the only one who doesn't live here. That pushed me to the left on one version.)

Now that everyone's had the chance to take the test without being overly influenced by Arun's interpretation or mine (and if you haven't, go take it, first), here's Arun’s interpretation.  I think his observations are pretty much right on, especially the parts I’ve marked in bold:

One day in 2005 or thereabouts I was watching a political talk show and in which one of the guests was a well-known American journalist in town and regular on TV and radio (he had carved out a niche for himself as a great explainer of America to the French, but also as an observer of the latter, writing humoristically about the natives and their us et coutumes with his œil américain; his books sold well, which I found mystifying). During the show this journalist asserted that the French equivalent of the US Democratic party was the UDF—the centrist party led by François Bayrou and that had long been allied with the right (and never with the Socialists)—and that there was no significant electoral force in American politics on the left side of the political spectrum such as it existed in France. Hearing this almost caused me to fall out of my chair. To equate the US Democratic party with the UDF betrayed an ignorance of the latter—a party with Christian Democratic roots, a moderately conservative sensibility, and mainly provincial bourgeois voting base—and of the former as well. There was, moreover, the implication here that mainstream American Democrats in France would gravitate toward the UDF—which, despite its claimed centrism, was marked in the public mind as moderate right—over the dominant party of the moderate left, the Socialists. It had, in fact, long been my hypothesis that American Democratic party voters would find their natural political home in France to be the Parti Socialiste—and with left-wing Dems leaning toward the left-wing of the PS (now Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Parti de Gauche) or Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s MRC—, and with Republicans naturally identifying with the UMP. In other words, that the American liberal-conservative/Democrat-Republican cleavage would find a near precise correspondence in France with the left and right. Now with the Politest, I could test the hypothesis.

So I translated the questionnaire into English and e-mailed it, along with the Politest link, to friends and relatives in the US, who could follow the translation while taking the test, and requested that they report the results back to me. My hypothesis was confirmed, based on the fifteen or so responses I received. Liberals were identified primarily with the PS or center-left PRG, those more to the left with the “gauche du PS” or MRC, and the Republican or two in my sample with the UMP (a couple of the results were unexpected, e.g. a relative of the older generation and from the American heartland, a yellow dog Democrat but with unprogressive views on several issues—her kids accuse her of being a secret Republican—, turned out to be closest to Chevènement’s MRC, followed by the Communist party! provoking both stupefaction and hilarity).

A few qualifications, though. For several of my liberal, Democrat-voting friends, the test result specified that though they were closest to the PS no party entirely reflected their views. I interpreted this as signifying some political-cultural differences between Americans and the French, notably with the cult of the state and Jacobin reflexes one finds on the French left, which even big government sympathizing American liberals do not entirely relate to. Mainstream American Democrats are more libéral—in the classical economic sense—than mainstream French Socialists (though the gap here has narrowed over time; and there have long been leading social-libéral PS politicians—e.g. Michel Rocard, DSK—with whom American liberals could identify). At a dinner-debate in March 2007 of the Paris chapter of Democrats Abroad—on the subject of the French presidential campaign, and in which I was one of the speakers—the question was posed to the 80 or so present—a certain number of whom had acquired French citizenship—as to which candidate they were supporting. Ségolène Royal came in first but a significant number of hands went up for Sarkozy and François Bayrou (Democrats Abroad members, most of whom are high-income professionals, tend toward the center, particularly on the economy; and it should be noted that a certain number of PS voters in the 2007 election defected to Bayrou, and even Sarkozy). I could understand the appeal of Sarkozy at the time for Americans, in view of his atypical profile and pro-Americanism. In this regard, I noted in the 1990s through the 2002 election the attraction of some American Democrats in France—including myself, to a certain extent—to Alain Madelin, a solidly right-wing politician but whose economic libéralisme—the alpha and omega of his discourse—, pro-Americanism, and sunny optimism were a breath of fresh air in this country. But the interest here was with the personalities of Sarkozy and Madelin, not with their parties or larger political families (e.g. I would be most surprised if US Democrats in France who liked Sarkozy also feel the same way about Jean-François Copé, let alone the UMP as a whole).

A new hypothesis: with the mutation of the residue of François Bayrou’s erstwhile UDF into the MoDem—which loudly proclaims its centrism, is not allied with the UMP (and is shed of the ex-UDF’s right-leaning elements), and has made local electoral deals with the PS—, it is possible that some moderate US Democrats may identify with this over the Socialists (and particularly as the incriminating UDF label is now gone). Personal disclosure: in the 2007 legislative election, I voted for the MoDem candidate in the first round in my safe UMP constituency (a throw-away vote, and mainly because I was more impressed with the candidate personality-wise than the PS one).

One of the points I’d stress, generally in agreement with Arun, is that the impression many Americans have of France being a socialist country in the sense that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist country is wildly off-base. The socialist party here is very close to the mainstream wing (not the far-left wing) of the American Democrat Party. And there are many parties here in which a Republican or a conservative in the US would feel at home, including a number described by Politest as “centrist.” France is — this is the key point — a lot more conservative than Americans tend to think, partly because the word “socialist” throws them, and partly because the French left is disproportionately noisy and disproportionately popular in the US. Far more than it is, in fact, in France.

Also, as I expected, not many Americans on Ricochet (a polite discussion site for Americans on the center-right) found themselves in the National Front camp. Only two of them did, and I honestly don’t know how, because to support them you'd have to want a welfare state that's stronger than any American conservative would find congenial, and you’ve got to believe in things no normal American -- of any political stripe -- would believe.

For example, you might be put in that category if you believe that under no circumstances should anyone be allowed to become a French citizen unless he or she descends from at least one French parent by blood. That would rule out citizenship even for someone born, raised, and completely integrated in France, someone who has no other country (or language, or culture) at all — someone who’s served in the French military, even — but who happens to have, say, Portuguese immigrant parents. Maybe there’s some permutation of answers to the other questions that can land you into that camp, but I played around with the test a bit and couldn’t figure out what it might be. (It’s possible that prioritizing “defense of rural life” above all other issues gets you there, but I can’t imagine that ideal warming the hearts of American conservatives more than the other possible answers to the question at hand.)

Most American Ricochet members found that they would be natural voters for Les Républicains of the "liberal tendency." (Meaning economically liberal, in the classical sense.) François Fillon is the LR candidate this year, so they discovered they were Fillon enthusiasts. But alas, this result is, I think, misleading. The test was written way before this election, and didn't include what I'd think were highly relevant questions for Americans -- ones that would have moved many of them, I reckon, sharply away from Fillon. 

I suspect for most of them the attitude the candidate has toward the United States would be quite decisive. Fillon, regrettably, is very close to Putin, and short of Le Pen (who’s Putin’s girl, 100 percent), he’s the candidate — or at least, the only candidate with any chance of winning — who's least favorable to the US, and closest to Russia. He often talks, for example, about taking a strong stand against “American imperialism,” or uses other similarly and weirdly anachronistic locutions to describe the US position in the world. I’m sure he’d be a complete pain in the tuchus to us were he elected. So I wouldn’t vote for him, if I had the vote, unless the only alternative were Le Pen — which I very much hope it won’t be, but it might.

This is especially true since, sadly, we learned after the primaries (when it was too late) that Fillon is corrupt as the day is long. This was both deeply disappointing and genuinely shocking. Even though Fillon's wobbly to the point of dangerousness on foreign policy, I did like some of his economic proposals, and I thought some of them might do the country good. I also liked (what I thought was) his stature as a serious, dignified politician from a traditional French Catholic background, one with the experience and gravitas suitable for the Presidency and the ability to siphon off right-leaning votes from the execrable Le Pen.

I must confess, too, that I like the French electoral system, with its broad spectrum of parties and its two-round vote runoffs. I think it has some advantages over the US system: It does a good job of giving a voice to people who’d have nowhere to go in a strict, two-party system. This year is, of course, very unusual because we might see a runoff between two candidates from parties that have never held power before. But that this can happen at all shows the way this system has the potential to be more responsive — in a healthy way, I think — to voters' concerns, while still ensuring a very low likelihood that a malignant figure such as Le Pen (père or fille) will actually end up winning.

Even though (depending on my response to a few questions on which I could go either way) I generally fall under the “liberal-wing Républicain” penumbra, I’m close enough to the French center that if I could vote here, I’d vote for Emmanuel Macron. He’s positively-disposed to the United States, he doesn’t shoot his mouth off about France not being responsible for the Vel d’hiv (I have a great deal more to say about that comment and how sinister it is in the context of the National Front’s history), and he seems to understand, basically, that France simply must liberalize its labor market, cut spending, and lower taxes. I think, too, that he’d work well with Merkel to reform the EU in the ways it must be reformed without altogether destroying it -- which is a subject for another post, for another day. I have reservations about Macron, to be sure, but in a contest between Macron and Le Pen, I would -- like most French voters, if the polls are to be trusted at all -- have no hesitation whatsoever. He will be at worst a disappointment, not a wholesale catastrophe. 

Here's a nice Macron moment, one that suggests why he might appeal to someone like me:

 Follow

Emmanuel Macron 

✔@EmmanuelMacron

D’un côté, une gauche communiste prétend vendre des rêves... mais avec votre argent. #MacronBesançon

7:37 PM - 11 Apr 2017

 
•  516516 Retweets
 
•  486486 likes

He reminded me (just a little) of Thatcher there. (I apologize for the lack of subtitles on the clip; if any of you are studying French and would like to translate it as a homework exercise, please do; I'll correct it for you -- if necessary -- and post it. Otherwise, I'll translate it later this week.) 

Thoughts?

(By the way, if the mechanics of French elections confuse you, you're not alone. I've written a simple explanation of how they work, here.)

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Which French Party Would You Vote For?

 

Let’s take a break for a bit of mild amusement. My friend Arun has translated the questionnaire below, designed to see which French political party you should vote for, into English. As he notes:

[T]his is a multiple choice questionnaire developed six or seven years ago by former students at Sciences Po, to determine where one is situated on the French political spectrum. There are questions on twelve key issues, with some of the choices complex and only slight nuances of difference between them, so as to identify precisely which political party or current within a party—of a list of some 25—most closely articulates one’s views (and with a runner-up). So the algorithm is sophisticated. N.B. It does not speak to how one may actually vote, just which parties one is politically closest to. The test’s satisfaction level has been very high (see ‘Les taux de satisfaction’ tab), particularly for those supporting the major parties of government.

Here are the rules. You’re on the honor system:

1. Don’t click on Arun’s site until you’ve taken the test (so you don’t prejudice yourself), and — although his comments are very interesting — don’t write anything about what he says until tomorrow, after everyone’s had the chance to take the test and come up with their own thoughts about what they think their score might mean.
2. Take the test before reading anyone else’s comments and before seeing how everyone else did.
3. Answer the questions, as much as possible, based on your own political principles, instead of trying to second-guess what you might think if you were French.
4. Be honest about your results, even if they surprise you. It’s fine — encouraged, even — to speculate about why they were or weren’t what you expected, but again, take the test before reading everyone else’s results and before reading their thoughts about why they scored the way they did!
5. Were you surprised? If so, why? Why do you think you scored the way you expected to, or why do you think you came up with a surprising result?
6. I’ll tell you my results, why I think I got them, and what I think that means, tomorrow.

Here’s the translation from Arun’s website. (Remember, take the test first before clicking on that link. Ideally, don’t look at his site at all until after you’ve reported your results and speculated about why you scored the way you did — it’s not apt to influence you hugely, but it may prejudice you a bit. And we’ll talk about his hypotheses tomorrow, not today.) Some of the questions may have more than one answer that seems right to you; just pick the statement with which you most strongly agree.

TAXES (1 /12)

1. There should be a tax cut for everyone when government has the means to do so and a tax increase for everyone when this is necessary.

2. There should be an across-the-board tax cut to enable business and individuals to invest more money in the economy and in order to create more jobs.

3. There should be a tax cut for lower-income persons and a tax increase for the rich or on business, in the interest of social solidarity and to finance public services.

GLOBALIZATION (2 / 12)

1. Globalization should be regulated. International institutions (or even national governments) should impose rules to better protect the rights of working people, the environment, and sensitive sectors of the economies of each country (for example, agriculture or culture).

2. All customs barriers should be abolished, as well as subsidies and national regulations that distort competition, so that competition between firms throughout the world may take place in all areas and without impediment. It is by these means that optimal economic efficiency will be realized and which will be in the interest of all.

3. Globalization can be an opportunity. It enables firms to find new markets. Jobs that are lost due to outsourcing and plant closings are generally compensated for by those that are created elsewhere in the economy, which are higher skilled and raise living standards. But government should help those who lose out due to globalization.

4. Globalization of the economy aggravates the exploitation and pollution of poor countries, and brings about outsourcing and plant closings that destroy jobs in rich countries. International institutions that are truly democratic should protect the rights of people (and not multinationals). The profits of business that are generated by globalization should be taxed in order to help poor countries develop.

5. Globalization is an opportunity, as the opening up of borders gives firms access to new markets and which enables them to create jobs. “Barriers” that prevent goods and services from circulating freely should thus be brought down. But in order for national firms to fully benefit from this, they should be freed to the utmost from regulatory constraints that place them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis foreign competitors.

POVERTY AND EXCLUSION (3 / 12)

1. Rather than having people depend too much on public assistance (or in tempting them to profit from the system) they should be made responsible [for their own fate], so they will depend more on themselves and less on government in order to get out of the situation they find themselves in.

2. Government should come to the aid of the poorest members of society, though they should not become too dependent on government.

3. Government should do what is necessary so that each person receives what he or she needs to live decently.

PUBLIC SERVICES AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT (4 / 12)

1. Government should focus its efforts on the principal missions of public service and share other missions with the private sector (such as health insurance, postal service, universities…), in order to lower their cost and increase efficiency.

2. Public sector employment should be increased and with much more money allocated to public services, so that each user, whatever his or her means, has access to quality public services (health, education, culture, water, energy, communication, public transportation…). Public services have a social mission and must not seek to make a profit.

3. All public services have a social mission—not to leave anyone by the wayside—that private enterprise cannot assume. They should have sufficient means to serve the public, but government should also seek to make them more efficient.

4. To ensure their mission but without representing too heavy a burden for government, public services should become both more efficient and less costly. Some of them (the postal service or rail transport, for example) can be made to compete with private firms and even be partially privatized (though where government maintains majority control), which will motivate public services to improve.

5. Government should focus only on its three veritable missions, which are the police, justice, and national defense. All the rest can be given over to the private sector, whose methods of management are much more efficient.

BUSINESS (5 / 12)

1. Laws benefiting working people (e.g. health care, pensions, collective bargaining, paid vacations and maternity leave) should be imposed on business, and indemnities paid to laid off employees by profitable companies should be increased.

2. Government should give business total freedom by doing away with the various taxes and regulations that impose handicaps on their development.

3. Priority should be given to aiding small business, by lowering their taxes and lessening regulations, and government should not interfere in labor-management relations.

4. The profits of companies should benefit employees before they do shareholders. Moreover, there should be a law that forbids mass layoffs by profitable companies, under penalty of being requisitioned by the state and to the benefit of the employees.

5. The tax burden on business should be lessened and regulations reduced, so that companies will create more jobs and be more competitive.

RELIGION (6 / 12)

1. Whether or not one is religiously observant, one must not neglect the moral values conveyed by religion.

2. One must tolerate all types of religious practices so long as they are freely consented to, even when they may be shocking to some.

3. Religious morality should be combated, as it prevents people from living and thinking freely.

4. Religion may sometimes be incompatible with personal freedom but it can, at the same time, offer answers to the profound questions of human existence.

5. The message of religion is primordial, as it helps us distinguish good from bad in our lives.

HOMOSEXUALITY (7 /12)

1. LGBT parenting should be recognized, with gay couples enjoying the same rights as heterosexual couples, and who should be able to openly live their homosexuality as they wish.

2. Homosexuality is dangerous for society. Anything that encourages it should be opposed.

3. The attitude of society toward gays needs to change so as to do away with discrimination that they may be subjected to, but gay marriage should not be authorized nor should gay couples be allowed to adopt children.

4. There should be total equality of rights for gays, who should be able to live normally, marry, and adopt and raise children.

5. If homosexuality in itself does not pose a problem, it may do so when it is openly displayed. The traditional couple—with a father and a mother raising children—should be defended.

ABORTION (8 / 12)

1. The right of abortion should be guaranteed but women should also be made aware that abortion is not a trivial act.

2. Women should be able to have abortions but only in cases of rape or if their health in is danger.

3. The right of women to freely have abortions must be defended.

4. Abortion should be illegal. To abort an unborn child is a crime.

DRUGS (9 / 12)

1. The legalization of cannabis would be a serious error. The use of all drugs must be opposed.

2. Soft drugs should be legalized. The consumption of hard drugs should be decriminalized.

3. Cannabis should be legalized, though, as with alcohol, it should be consumed only in moderation.

4. The issue of drugs is complex; the viewpoints of specialists should be accorded particular consideration.

DELINQUENCY/CRIME (10 / 12)

1. Each person is responsible for his or her acts and has it within his or her power to decide not to engage in delinquency. To deter people from committing delinquent acts, the punishment they risk should be truly dissuasive (i.e. sufficiently severe).

2. Delinquency often develops in difficult contexts (unemployment, ghettos, family problems, difficulties in integrating into society…) but context does not explain everything. In order to effectively counter delinquency the right balance between dissuasive punishment and preventive measures (i.e. getting at the causes) should be sought.

3. Delinquency is above all the result of difficult contexts (unemployment, ghettos, family problems, difficulties in integrating into society…). In order to obtain lasting results in countering delinquency, tackling its causes should be given priority.

VOTING RIGHTS AND NATIONALITY (11 / 12)

1. All foreigners who have lived in France for a long time, regardless of where they come from, should have the right to vote at least in local elections. The acquisition of French citizenship should also be facilitated for them.

2. Only French citizens should have the right to vote, and, except in special cases, one cannot be French without having at least one French parent. The mere fact of having been born in France should not lead to the automatic acquisition of French citizenship.

3. Only French citizens should have the right to vote. All persons who were born in France and live here, whatever their origin, should have French citizenship.

4. All foreigners resident in France should have the right to vote, whatever their nationality.

5. Only French citizens should have the right to vote. The only immigrants who should be able to become French citizens are those who have demonstrated their attachment to France in making an effort to integrate, and who have applied for French citizenship on their own volition (and including children born in France to foreign non-naturalized parents).

IMMIGRATION (12 / 12)

1. Integration works when immigrants feel that they not only have rights but also responsibilities. It is also important to fight against illegal immigration.

2. Problems linked to immigration do not come from immigrants themselves but rather from the various contexts (economic, social, historic…) in which immigration occurs. The first order of business is to make sure the rights of immigrants are respected, whether the immigrants are legal or not.

3. To facilitate the integration of immigrants it is necessary to fight against unemployment—which hinders their integration—and to make sure that the rights of immigrants are respected in countering discrimination of which they may be victims.

4. In order for the integration of immigrants to succeed they must not suffer from discrimination but, at the same time, they should respect the values of the host country.

5. Some immigrants will always remain foreigners. They should therefore return to their home countries, for our good and for theirs.

OPTIONAL QUESTION — THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR YOU IN FEELING CLOSE TO A PARTY OR POLITICAL PERSONALITY IS SHARING THE SAME CONVICTIONS ON:

1. Economic issues.

2. Social and moral issues.

3. The idea one has of France, Europe, or the world.

4. None of these in particular.

OTHER ISSUES NOT MENTIONED IN THE PRECEDING LIST:

1. Defense of the environment, and particularly ending nuclear power.

2. Defense of rural life.

3. Defense of republican equality (i.e., refusing special treatment based on the specificities of regions or individuals, such as Corsica, homosexuals, those who practice such and such a religion, etc).

4. None of these in particular.

And here’s the test itself.

Have fun! I’ll refrain from weighing except in response to specific, factual questions, or problems of translation, until tomorrow — so that I don’t prejudice anyone’s answers or thoughts about their results.

And a bonus for those of you studying French, or interested in French politics …