"Classical Western values such as free speech and tolerance need all the defenders they can find these days, so kudos to French President Emmanuel Macron for volunteering for the mission. It's hardly an easy task, but it's an important one. Mr. Macron is right to conclude it's vital to France's future -- and we'd add, to America's.
Mr. Macron and ministers in his government in recent months have been fighting illiberal and divisive philosophies they say emanate from American universities. Mr. Macron in October decried the influence of "certain social-science theories entirely imported from the United States."
He means in particular the habit of viewing most matters in racial terms -- a core tenet of "wokeness" -- and his government wants educational institutions to eschew it. Minister for Higher Education Frederique Vidal this week promised an investigation into academics "looking at everything through the prism of wanting to fracture and divide."
This is part of a broader drive to reassert French values after many years of Islamist terror attacks. Mr. Macron also is pushing for a new crackdown on religious extremism, and his law to that end passed through one chamber of the National Assembly this week.
Mr. Macron's political and philosophical insight is to tie together the fight against violent extremism from outside France and the defense of democratic values within. His October speech detailing his new plan for combating Islamism included a warning that a focus on "post-colonial or anti-colonial" discourse constitutes a form of "self-hatred" of France that allows Islamism to flourish. Officials such as Ms. Vidal also warn against "Islamo-leftism."
Americans might chortle at this French assault on "American" wokeness. Many of the worst ideas in the United States grew out of the work of French philosophers such as Jacques Derrida. Cynics will also note Mr. Macron is up for re-election next year. His antagonism to left-wing intellectuals and radical Islamists may arise in part because his likely opponent in that race, Marine Le Pen, is a right-wing politician who will rally voters against mainstream politicians' failure to tackle extremism and willingness to bow to political correctness.
All the more reason for Mr. Macron, a center-left politician, to make his stand. His warning is that if intellectuals and politicians on the left can't find ways to defend French values of freedom and equality, a politician further to the right will.
It's a message American Democrats and progressive academics missed as their woke fixations prepared the ground for Donald Trump's rise -- and they miss now as they fail to speak up against the censorious progressive mobs in the media, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Mr. Macron is performing a public service by trying to make classical liberal values a bipartisan cause." [1]
1. Emmanuel Macron and the Woke
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]18 Feb 2021: A.16.
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