The French electorate preferred Nicolas Sarkozy as President of the Republic over the Socialist candidate Segolene Royal. Their preference for Sarkozy clearly showed that they want a right-wing government. Will they get what they voted for? It seems less likely by the day.

Dr. Daniel Pipes read one of my essays about the situation in Sweden, and asked my to explain exactly why Swedish authorities are behaving the way they are doing. First of all, maybe I’m demonizing Sweden too much. I write so much about Sweden mainly because I’m emotionally attached to the country since I’m Scandinavian myself. Still, although the Islamic situation is arguably worse in some other countries such as France, Britain and the Netherlands, I think it is accurate to say that there is less real debate in Sweden than in any other country I know of. I suspect that Multiculturalism for segments of the political Left all over the Western world is an anti-Western hate ideology and a continuation of Marxism by other means, but I will also look at some local factors shaping Sweden.

A quote from Jaak Aaviksoo, the Estonian defence minister, in The Guardian, 17 May 2007

At present, Nato does not define cyber-attacks as a clear military action. This means that the provisions of Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, or, in other words collective self-defence, will not automatically be extended to the attacked country. Not a single Nato defence minister would define a cyber-attack as a clear military action at present. However, this matter needs to be resolved in the near future.

I’d like to dwell on one aspect of Western culture that tends to be downplayed, but is quite important: We are the only culture in the history of mankind to develop realistic, faithful depictions of beings and matter in our paintings and sculptures, rather than merely stylized depictions. We are also the only culture to invent a way to depict three-dimensional subjects in a two-dimensional format. A similar perspective was lacking in all other types of early art, be that Chinese or Japanese, Indian, Mesoamerican, African or Middle Eastern. This could conceivably be because the Western man has perceived space and spatial relationships in a different way than other men. Westerners are different, from a very long time back.

What does this mean for our civilization? We need to understand why the West is so different from all other human cultures, and why it has produced so many different results.

The problem of melancholy is the problem of its appropriateness and expression. This is not the same as the problem of sadness or unhappiness within a specific context or situation: there are, after all, circumstances which universally and objectively call for the absence of happiness or satisfaction. Indeed, the absence of that absence may be regarded as evidence of insanity or moral decay, as when a loved one dies. The Homeric age knew that proper mourning was beloved of the gods — which is why there was such outrage at Achilles’ violation of Hector’s corpse before the walls of Troy — and even today, we see that the lack of proper grieving inflicts a moral wound on modern warriors. (On this subject, First Things’ Joseph Bottum will have an extended piece on the place of death in civilization shortly.) Whether or not one subscribes to the necessity of a thing’s opposite for the existence of that thing — and I do not — it remains true that sadness and delight are both part of the human condition, and both as necessary.

I’ve received some criticism for trying to figure out the ideological and historical roots of Multiculturalism. Critics claim that it’s all about hate, about a desire to break down the Established Order at any cost. Many of the proponents don’t believe in the doctrine of Multiculturalism themselves, so we shouldn’t waste any time analyzing the logic behind it, because there is none. A desire to break down Western society is certainly there, but I do believe there are some ideas about the desired end result articulated as well.

On one hand, we’re supposed to “celebrate” our differences at the same time as it is racist and taboo to recognize that any differences between groups of people exist at all. This is hardly logically coherent, which is why Multiculturalism can only be enforced by totalitarian means. Perhaps it boils down to the fact there are no major differences, just minor quirks, all cute, which should be celebrated at the same time as we gradually eradicate them.

One of my regular rants about the European Parliament is that it is almost entirely unaccountable. Over 80% of the votes are by show of hands, thus there are no possible records as to how people vote. This in turn means that the electorate have no way of knowing what their MEP has done, and cannot judge them on their actions.

Remember what they vote on becomes law. And breach of laws created here in Brussels can be prosecuted with prison and/or fines. Therefore it would be nice to think that the votes are accurately counted.

A quote from Walter Laqueur in The Chronicle Review, 11 May 2007

True, the achievements of the European welfare state had been remarkable. Americans can only dream about a 35-hour work week or five weeks of paid holidays a year. But the problem was that all those social-assistance programs were affordable only as long as substantial economic growth took place. [...] Future historians may well be at a loss to understand why the sorry state of affairs was realized only late in the day, despite the fact that all the major trends — demography, the stalling of the movement toward European unity, and the crisis of the welfare state — had appeared well before the turn of the century.

A quote from Tom Peters at his blog, 8 May 2007

[Segolene Royal] in fact handily topped Sarkozy among those who are in the 18-59 demographic. That ain’t Gen X, my friends, that’s more or less everybody on active duty in the workforce!

So how, in the end, did Sarkozy become the [President of France]? Simple. He beat the bloody hell out of Royal among the 60-and-up crew. “Beat the bloody hell out of” equates to unheard of margins that were above 2-1.

That is, Team Elder exerted incredible, decisive de facto unity and power in France's demographically old-and-getting-older-and-we're-healthy-and-will-be-around-for-a-long-long-time population. It's not that Sarkozy beat Royal. The actual story is that the 60+ geezers have ordered the wee 60 minus crew to get the hell to work and stay the hell at work ... so the Six Zero Plussers can get their hands on the loot they need to spend their remaining winters in Nice, or some such.

A quote from Helle Dale in The Washington Times, 9 May 2007

Mr. Sarkozy has been unabashedly pro-American in his campaign and his victory speech. “I want [...] to tell [our American friends] that they can count on our friendship, [...]” he said on Sunday. Then he went on to call for American leadership – in a cause that unfortunately has by now just about achieved the status of religion in Europe. “I want to tell them that [...] a great nation such as the United States has a duty not to put obstacles in the way of the fight against global warming, but on the contrary to take the lead in this fight, because what is at stake is the fate of humanity as a whole. France will make this battle its primary battle.”

There are other causes that one might have preferred for Mr. Sarkozy’s clarion call to American leadership – global terrorism, for instance, or political freedom, or even an end to world hunger, which would be easier to achieve than changing the climate of the earth by any measurable degree.