Actually, we do have that opportunity by looking at France, past and present.
Nicholas Sarkozy won the presidential election over the Socialist candidate Segolene Royal.
Right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy scored an emphatic victory in the French presidential election Sunday, trouncing Socialist rival Segolene Royal to win a clear mandate for tough economic and social reforms.
Of course the Socialist, liberal candidate resorted to threats of violence should Sarkozy win the election:
On the last day of the campaign Royal -- slipping badly in opinion polls -- had issued a stark warning that a Sarkozy victory would trigger "violence and brutality" across the country.
Now it falls to Sarkozy to turn back the hands of time and fix the damage that has been done by following the liberal roadmap to destruction.
Sarkozy will take over from Chirac on May 16, and has promised to act quickly to enact key items of his manifesto..
After legislative elections in June -- in which he will seek a clear majority for the UMP and its allies -- he plans a special National Assembly session to set off his reform drive.
These include the abolition of tax on overtime, swingeing cuts in inheritance tax, a law guaranteeing minimum service in transport strikes, and rules to oblige the unemployed to take up offered work.
On the social front he has pledged minumum jail terms for serial offenders and tougher rules to make it harder for immigrants to bring extended families to France.
In a great analytical piece done by The Telegraph we can see where France went wrong, the disaster it has wrought throughout the country and Sarkozy's plan change the course his country has been heading toward.
It rarely happens to a country that a clear opportunity is presented to it to save itself from ruin. Only once since the war has it happened to Britain, in 1979, when the people realised that the end of the road had been reached with the consensus that had prevailed since the Second World War, and it was time to start again on a different basis. Tomorrow, France can choose to have its 1979.
As I go through the article here with you, and show you the path that led to Frances near ruination, please notice the portions I put in bold and compare it to the liberal agenda of our own Democrats and the policies they are pitching to Americans around our country. Remember also that France, of late, has had considerable car burnings that they do not even bother reporting on anymore unless they take over 200 lives. (Captain's Quarters)
France's post-war rulers took the view that, to heal the wounds of 1940-44, they had to govern for all the French, not merely for a particular group within France.
What that has effectively meant is that the majority of French are bought off with a lavish welfare state and jobs on the public payroll, financed by a minority who pay high taxes for the privilege of living in France. That deal, however, is almost completely broken. Business has had enough of bankrolling bureaucracy and funding feather-bedding. Well-known French individuals, such as the popular singer and actor Johnny Hallyday, have sundered their ties with the country and gone to live abroad because of the penal wealth tax, which led to Hallyday complaining that he now has to send two thirds of his annual income to the French treasury.
Any of this looking familiar? (Hint: Raising taxes, especially for the rich and those that are responsible for employing hundreds of thousands of workers)
Unlike in Britain, small businesses are not engines of growth, because bureaucracy and high taxes make it very hard for them to grow. In some parts of France the signs of decay are becoming ever more obvious: shops boarded up in villages in the Dordogne, property not selling except perhaps to foreigners, and resentment about freeloaders, especially if they are perceived to be immigrants. France has numerous successful multinationals, and every French town has scores of one-man bands (notably retailers), but there is less and less in between.
The other factor that makes it so hard for energetic and enterprising French people to prosper is that they are usually prevented by law from working more than 35 hours a week. This law, brought in under the socialist government of Lionel Jospin, is now widely condemned, even by some supporters of Miss Royal, for the effect it has had on suppressing growth, living standards, wealth creation and productivity.
Are you beginning to see a pattern, the "window", if you will, into our future should we decide to adopt our democrats vision and socialist agenda?
The present situation, where 52 per cent of France's GDP is spent in the public sector (against 42 per cent of ours, which itself is too high) is unsustainable. It might well provide an opportunity in 2012 for the FN, who might feed on the greater social and economic problems that a hard five years of corrosive, introspective, un-radical and profligate Left-wing government would bring. But the state France would be in by then, even further detached from economic realities that are now commonplace for the rest of Europe, hardly bears thinking about.
[...]
This could well mean a summer of unrest in France. But as the alternative would appear to be France being left further and further behind the rest of the developed world, perhaps a fight now is preferable to complete ruin later. By tomorrow night we shall know how brave the French are prepared to be.
We now know the French were brave and understood the road to ruin they have been on and elected change.
Read this all again and imagine, in 20 yrs, this story could very well be written and the only change that would be made are the names of the candidates and the country being discussed in the article which would be America.
France is our chance to look into the window of one possible future, a future in store for us if the Democrats are allowed to push their agenda of higher taxes for the rich, country wide free healthcare, refusing to protect our borders and insist that immigrants be allowed, and in some cases rewarded, for entering our country illegally, Hillary's "agenda for the common good" and surrendering to the extreme Islamists and Jihadist.
What sounds good on paper or coming from the Democrats has been played out in France and we see, now, the consequences of those policies.
A country that could erupt in Civil War.
More on the election can be found at Pajamas Media.
Times Online weighs in.
For those that have asked in the past why I watch and defend Israel's right to live in peace so forcefully, my mother was Jewish.
For those that will ask why I keep an eye on France and what happens there... my father is French.
I will be updating this with the latest news or will place a link here to the next post that updates the situation in France.
[Update] As promised there have been some violence in protest to Sarkozy's win.
More than 700 cars were set alight and 600 people arrested in violence that hit cities across France after the presidential election victory of rightwinger Nicolas Sarkozy, police said Monday.
Seventy-eight police officers were injured in incidents after his triumph over the Socialist Segolene Royal in Sunday's vote.
Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Toulouse, and Rennes were among cities hit by violence blamed by police on extreme-left groups, anarchists, and apolitical gangs who clashed with police.
A total of 730 cars were burned in the high-immigrant suburbs where Sarkozy is a hated figure for his tough stance on immigration and law and order. Police said a total of 592 people were arrested.
Royal had warned in the run-up to Sunday's election that a Sarkozy victory could see the country slide into violence and unrest, similar to the rioting that rocked French suburbs in late 2005.
At the height of those riots, about 700 cars were being burned every night in cities across France for about three weeks. These incidents were combined with attacks on public buildings, 300 of which were hit.
There were few reports of attacks on public buildings since Sarkozy's vicory Sunday.
Earlier Monday, a police spokesman said that the widespread rioting some had feared if Sarkozy won had been largely averted. But he made that comment after police had reported less than 400 cars burned and less than 300 arrests.
After the updated figures were announced, a spokesman declined to comment when asked if police were now saying that the predictions of widespread violence were coming true.
Thousands of police reinforcements were deployed round Paris to head off the risk of unrest in the suburbs.
Wild celebrations broke out in the capital Sunday night, with 30,000 supporters packing the Place de la Concorde where Sarkozy delivered a victory speech, pledging to bring reconciliation.
Riot police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protestors who burned an effigy of Sarkozy in the Place de la Bastille, a rallying point for Royal supporters.
On Monday, some 200 protestors, most of them high-school students, staged a rowdy anti-Sarkozy protest at the Bastille.
Blocking traffic with metal barriers and camping in the center of the road near the square, they chanted "Sarko, Fascist, the people will get you!" and draped a French flag scrawled with the slogan "Resist Sarkozy" across the steps of the Opera house.
Reuters also weighs in:
Hundreds of people were arrested in France overnight in clashes between police and protesters angry over conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in Sunday's presidential election, police said.
Expect more of the same for a while, change like this will be difficult and Sarkozy has a very big task ahead of him.
More stories and reactions can be found at memeorandum, including a decent piece from Opinion Journal.
[Update #2] AP is now reporting over 600 arrests and LGF has more on the medias lies about what is happening in France right now.
Not only did the Associated Press bury their report that 367 cars had been torched in France, now it turns out that the media have been lying about the violence.
Because the actual number of cars destroyed by “youths” last night was 730—about twice the number reported by the AP.
[...]
This comes as no surprise, because French media have openly stated that they will cover up the true extent of the violence. And the French Constitutional Council recently passed a law criminalizing the reporting of acts of violence by anyone other than professional journalists.
Read the rest at LGF.
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