Springtime in Paris
In a remarkable performance in front of 83 young people in a setting designed to resemble an American townhall meeting, French President Jacques Chirac last week declared that France would "cease to exist politically" unless French voters approve the proposed European constitution in a May 29 referendum.
While the demise of France as a political force will cause few American Francophobes or British euroskeptics to shed tears, the fact that polls show that a slim majority of French voters is prepared to reject the constitution establishing the European superstate has the French political class in a collective hissy fit. A defeat on May 29 could well sideline the European project, as just one failed referendum (or one negative parliamentary vote) among the member countries is enough to sink the constitution.
Chirac's audience was not moved. For them, the defining experiences of their formative years have been high unemployment, job outsourcing, and a vague feeling of permanent economic insecurity. The test for the constitution, in the view of the students and the left generally, is whether it enshrines the "social protections" and the "acquired rights" which the French think are synonymous with Republican values under the benevolent guidance of a dirigiste state.
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That the EU constitution is perhaps the most appallingly written document of its kind in modern history apparently bothers no one in the French intellectual class. The constitution is a product of a self-selected clique of political grandees headed by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing whose major accomplishment during his years in power was to solidify French relations with the third world by dipping into the French treasury to pay for the coronation of the odious and murderous petty tyrant, Bokassa I, then Emperor of the Central African Republic.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said that constitutions should be short and difficult to understand. At 511 pages (exactly 500 pages more than the U.S. constitution) and laden with purposefully abstruse and obfuscatory language, the constitution meets only the second of Bonaparte's criteria. One sentence, for example, commits the Union to "work for a sustainable development based on balanced economic growth with a social market economy aiming at full employment and social progress." That sentence alone contains five ambiguous terms crying out for definition, and reflects the drafters' predilection to inject doctrinal and policy preferences in a document which, like most constitutions, ought to limit itself to general goals and procedural matters. The drafters couldn't resist the temptation to load the text with the pretentious and awkward terminology drawn from current political tracts. It speaks of "conferral," "proportionality," "participatory democracy," "loyal cooperation," and "solidarity," as if their restatement in this document confers truth and universality.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8067
