Friday, June 06, 2003

Sabine Herold is a courageus young woman who has put herself at the head of a popular uprising against the tyranny of union militancy to which President Chirac constantly kowtows, as reported by the Telegraph. She has been compared to Joan of Arc, and her impatience with her Gaullist government is certainly reminiscent of the saint's frustration with the French monarchy.

She is another example that despite the Left's intellectual hegemony established since the 1960s that turned France into a second-rate country with delusions of grandeur, some French individuals can transcend that context. The kind of liberal, cosmopolitan conservatism Mlle Herold embraced is almost extinct in France.

She has a memorable phrase for those, Left or Right, who are leading France to perdition: "reactionary egotists". Her movement may mark the beginning of the end of the organised egotism that has held France (and countless visitors) to ransom for so long. For France's sake, let us hope that it is not a revolt, but a revolution.

The good news is that she is by no means the first and only one. One only needs to visit Dissident Frogman's dacha or Merde in France to see how the blogosphere helped to flush out the illuminated few. The bad news is that if their numbers start growing, that popular Anglo-Saxon past time, 'frog bashing', may no longer be completely justified.

Vive les Français liberes!