A “Royal” mess

Throughout the contemporary Western world, women keep getting raised to positions for which they are obviously not suited or competent. In the latest development on this front, a former Socialist prime minister of France declares that Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal is a disaster whose doomed candidacy will turn the Socialist party into a “field of ruins.” Now that the left has harmed even itself as a result of pursuing affirmative action for females, will it have learned its lesson?

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Charlton G. writes:

I have often thought that perhaps the only way liberalism could be defeated would be to let it burn itself out. It has occurred to me that such a process could also burn out our entire civilization. However, it may be worth the risk of standing back and letting it rip unless something else more promising turns up soon. The French situation with Royal seems to be tracking along with similar disasters lurking in other Western nations. Steve Sailer has an excellent article at Vdare today showing the same mindset at work in American education vis à vis the No Child Left Behind Act. It’s as if liberal extremists have now gone beyond the “unprincipled exception” rule and are actively promoting schemes that have no chance of succeeding (affirmative action) and an excellent chance of doing harm (No Child Left Behind). It’s as though they are so transfixed with their own rhetoric, they no longer are capable of practical thinking. I believe the Soviet Union was rife with this madness in the last decade of its existence. If a Five Year Program did not work, simply change its name!

LA replies:

Actually, the Soviet leadership recognized the USSR’s problems in its final years: witness Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika. The problem was not that the Soviets refused to recognize their problems. The problem was that, having recognized their problems, they tried to fix them while still holding on to the system that was their source. America is actually in worse shape than that: America today is more irrationally committed to its liberalism than the Soviet Union in its final years was committed to its Communism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 19, 2007 01:30 PM | Send