Old Europe

The radical French are beginning to sound like old conservatives.

Furious with Donald Rumsfeld's remark that France and Germany now constitute "old Europe," French government spokesman, Jean-Francois Cope, played right into Rumsfeld's hand and sounded more Old Regime than either classical liberal or radical Left, arguing that "when one is an old continent, a continent with an old historical, cultural, and economic tradition, one can sometimes inherit a certain wisdom, and wisdom can be a good adviser."

That sounds like Joseph de Maistre, not Karl Marx or Jacques Derrida. Poor Marx would be aghast at appeals to the wisdom of tradition. This is the current condition of the French Left: when all else fails, revert to being Ultramontane. What a joke.