Valin Posted September 3, 2023 Share Posted September 3, 2023 Gatestone Institute Amir Taheri September 3, 2023 Dreaming of freedom in his prison cell in Château d'If, Edmond Dantès, the hero of Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel, The Count of Montecristo, dreams of the nearby port of Marseille as a haven of peace and freedom. Two centuries later, Dantès might have revised his dream as France's second-largest city and biggest port is depicted as a European version of Chicago in the Prohibition times with gang warfare, shootings, protest strikes by police and tension among "communities" as routine features of daily life. The usually tame French media describe the situation as a "challenge to law and order" while France's ebullient Interior Minister and his supreme chief of police Gérald Darmanin talk of "widespread incivility". President Emmanuel Macron goes further by warning about a "loss of authority" that he intends to correct by as yet unknown measures. Loss of authority isn't limited to Marseille gangs engaged in war over a bigger share of the drug market with Nigerian yardies, North African "fraternities" and cabals from the Balkans trying to acquire, defend or expand their respective turfs. Authority is also under constant challenge in Paris itself, where one could see numerous shop windows shattered by protesters in the recent riots against a two-year increase in the legal minimum retirement age. Even once sleepy cities such as Nîmes and Limoges have been affected by "loss of authority". It is, therefore, no surprise that Macron has chosen "restoring the authority of the state" as the main theme of his post-holidays political performance. In a press interview last week he mentioned the word "authority" 15 times, following that with an invitation to political parties and trade unions to attend meetings at the Élysée Palace to probe ways of restoring the seemingly lost authority of the state. However, Macron's first moves and the ideas his entourage are circulating look more like dancing around the issue rather than addressing its root causes. The first move has come in the shape of imposing a ban on the wearing of a North African abaya dress in public schools. Minister of Education Gabriel Attal presents the move as "an urgent measure to protect the nation's secular values." This despite the fact that the French Council of the Muslim Faith, a group funded by the government, has ruled that the abaya isn't an Islamic symbol. Where does authority come from? The classical answer is that it comes from the two key tools of persuasion and coercion that a properly constituted government has for imposing its decisions. Beyond that, however, one may argue that authority emanates from continuity of rules and mores, the accumulation of a cultural, including religious, heritage that transcends here-and-now considerations. Seen in that light, one might claim that France lost the concept of authority with its first Great Revolution in the 18th century. (Snip) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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