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We live in a time of catastrophic political experiments. Americans are learning how far the institutions of civil society can protect democratic norms in the face of an autocratically minded president. The British are about to find out how much economic pain they can endure for the privilege of flipping the bird to Europe. Italians may soon hand the reins of power to a clown literally.

For this reason, the results of the recent legislative election in France feel as miraculous as a lantern suddenly lowered into a cave. With President Emmanuel Macrons Republic on the Move party having gained a solid majority of seats in the National Assembly, France is about to show the world how far liberalism can succeed in a profoundly illiberal era. Macron himself prefers the label neither left nor right to liberal, a word that in French carries the purely pejorative meaning of laissez faire but he is recognizably a Third Way liberal in the mold of Bill Clinton or Tony Blair. The fact that the French have traditionally viewed liberals as heartless servants of capitalism makes his success that much more remarkable.

Macron has begun meeting with representatives of business and labor in order to push through his plan to end Frances statist tradition of negotiating work rules at the national level. He plans to issue an executive order this summer, permitting industry-wide or firm-level negotiations with labor that will allow variation in the workweek and enable firms to more easily hire and fire employees. When his predecessors, Franois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, attempted to reform the labor market, massive street demonstrations forced them to back off. The main French union has already set September 12 as a day of action against the proposed reform. However, Macron may have both the grit and the political support to push his plans through.

Next year, Macron hopes to implement reforms that will regularize a fragmented pension system and convert unemployment insurance into a source of lifelong career training. At the same time, he hopes to increase the minimum wage, cut the amount deducted from the average paycheck for social welfare programs, and invest 50 billion euros over five years into training, green energy, and other fields. If he can even make serious headway on that immensely ambitious agenda, Macron may manage to restore the tattered French belief in politics and the state. He may even drain some of the poison from the word liberal.

Still, it is not because governments are too statist that liberalism is in crisis in the West; thats a distinctly French problem, requiring a distinctly French solution. What has provoked the crisis is a widespread sense among middle- and working-class voters that they have been left behind both economically and culturally in a globalized world where jobs, money, ideas, and people sweep across the planet with little regard for borders or traditions or national identity. That, in its many variations, is what accounts for Donald Trump and Brexit and the National Front and the illiberal democracy of Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orban. The Macron experiment is thus even more portentous, and even more difficult, than it seems.

The Macron insiders whom I met during the election are acutely aware of the need to address the disaffection of industrial workers, village dwellers, the unemployed, and others. They believe that the economic reforms and targeted investments he has planned will create new opportunities for those groups and thus win at least grudging support from far-right and far-left voters who loathe him. There is a view recently expressed in Edward Luces book The Retreat of Western Liberalism that the fear and anger toward Islam, and the resentment toward elites seen to be soft on Islam, are ultimately caused by frustration over declining economic prospects and thus can be cured, or at least brought under control, with the medicine of economic policy. But nationalism afflicts prosperous countries like Sweden, as well as stagnant ones like France or Hungary. Liberals are much too inclined to see values as the ephemeral consequences of real i.e., economic conditions. Thats why Americans on the left think that Republicans have used some sort of black magic to persuade working-class whites to vote for them despite the GOPs plutocratic policies.

In France, issues of culture, identity, and nation center on the countrys large population of North African immigrants. During the campaign, Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Front, pledged to reduce immigration to an impossible 10,000 people a year (from a current figure of about 200,000), while Franois Fillon, the candidate of the center-right Les Rpublicains, said he would amend the constitution in order to cut down the flow. Even former Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls openly criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel for accepting so many Syrian refugees.

Macron is as liberal on matters of identity as he is on the economy, though there is very little political hay to be made on the left side of the issue. In his campaign book, Revolution, he asks, How can we insist that our fellow citizens believe in the Republic if some among us use one of our founding principles, lacit the secular code to tell them that they have no place in it? Macron defends the right of Muslim women in universities to wear the hijab and in one debate ridiculed Le Pen for making a burning issue of the burkini, an Islam-inspired full-body swimsuit. He speaks of immigration as a source of economic and national strength the classic liberal position and, in a rebuke to Valls, thanked Merkel for defending European values by accepting refugees.

Of course, Macron is a calculating politician. He has promised to institute a more humane asylum system so as to quickly separate those who merit protection from those who must be expeditiously deported. While during the campaign, and in his book, he repeatedly asserted that France needs no new law to deal with terrorism, his government is now promulgating a bill that would, in effect, make the current state of emergency a matter of standing law, transferring many powers from the judiciary to the Interior Ministry a measure that has drawn a howl of protest from the editors of the left-of-center Le Monde. (The government has now promised to soften the measure.)

But Macrons policies are much likelier to inflame nationalist opinion than they are to mollify it. He is the supreme representative of the French elite, and on the right his policies on immigration and refugees are seen as signs of elite indifference to the situation of ordinary Frenchmen and women. Christian, my French teacher when I was in Paris this spring, called himself un dplorable a fan of Trump and Le Pen. Christian raged at the West African immigrants who increasingly dominated the life of Montreuil, the town outside Paris where he lived, and at cosmopolitan elites (like me) who, he thought, held traditionalists like him in contempt. In the midst of one of our innumerable arguments, Christian would say, You and I cant talk to each other. We had too little in common even to find common ground.

Ive heard this sense of estrangement from supporters of the nationalist right in Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Germany, and in France. And, of course, it lies at the core of Donald Trumps appeal. The fact is that while the state really does have levers to dislodge economic frustration, there is relatively little it can do to assuage fears of eroding national identity at least without capitulating to the right. Macron has to hope that the economics-first theorists of the liberal crisis are correct. That, perhaps, is the true magnitude of the experiment he has embarked upon.

Photo credit:ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/Getty Images

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Can Nationalists Ever Make Good Liberals? - Foreign Policy (blog)

Submitted in response to a column by Dr. David Palmer, DDS, of Huntington.

Myth No. 1. Liberals believe they are better than you. Nothing can be further from the truth. Democrats, whether centrists, moderates or liberals, believe that everyone counts and that everyone has something worthwhile to contribute. They dont think all conservatives are deplorable (those who hate gays, women and freedom of speech for others). Liberals support public schools, private schools, vocational schools, on-the-job training, blue-collar workers and the self-educated, as well as those who have a college education.

Myth No. 2. Liberals are not very patriotic. Ridiculous. Democrats (centrists, moderates and liberals) say the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the national anthem and think America is great. They continually try to make it even better, and thats why they are called progressives. Liberals honor the troops that are sent to life-threatening wars declared by politicians, and they honor these brave soldiers after they come home, unlike politicians on the other side of the aisle, who vote against veteran benefits as a rule. They honor the flag as well as the country it symbolizes, and 99 percent are horrified when one is burned.

Myth No. 3. Liberals have a major problem with the Constitution. Democrats are astounded when they hear this condemnation, as they honor and value our Constitution and the civil liberties stated in the Amendments. Liberals see the First Amendment being threatened by conservatives, as they talk about banning peaceful protest and marches. Liberals believe in the constitutional right to worship any way one wants or does not want to worship, with no exceptions. The Constitution does not support a national religion, as they fear some conservatives wish. Liberals believe in the Second Amendment wholeheartedly, which gives U.S. citizens the right to bear arms, and they understand why our founders insisted on that amendment being added. Being against mass death doesnt mean being against gun ownership. Supporting gun reform to reduce death caused by automatic weapons doesnt mean supporting gun confiscation. Conservatives were convinced that our previous president was going to take all the guns away, but it never happened. However, this fear-mongering resulted in many gun and ammo sales (Smart marketing, if unethical).

Myth No. 4. Liberals dont want to debate. Democrats welcome debate when the conversation is respectful (being called libtards or other schoolyard names on social media is admittedly a turnoff). Liberals deal in truth, and when the other person is unwilling to research his claim and back it up with facts, but instead claims fake news, the response is usually an emoji on Facebook of rolling eyes or face palm. If ideology is the topic, liberals also welcome the conversation, as long as its not passed off as fact.

Myth No. 5. Liberals/Democrats are attracted to certain jobs. Really? Does that mean that conservatives/Republicans are also attracted to certain jobs? This ludicrous statement cannot be backed up with fact. Some conservatives claim that liberals are attracted to journalism careers simply because they want to influence elections, citing the previous presidential election, specifically. Actually, the newspapers and media reported just what Donald Trump wanted reported; in fact, many people believe CNN got him elected by airing every vulgar thing he said, which was appealing to his supporters. Should people be restricted from considering various viewpoints and options? Should citizens be restricted from pursuing certain jobs? Of course not.

Myth No. 6. Liberals want to kill unborn babies. This is a bunch of baloney. Democrats do not want to kill unborn babies, period. They march to protect a womans right to have a tubal ligation, a hysterectomy or a D&C. All these things are protected by Roe v. Wade, and were not protected before this Supreme Court ruling. They are pro-choice, which supports a womans right to make a choice to have an abortion based on health and personal reasons, including rape, incest or endangerment of a mothers life. They think this decision should be made between the woman, her doctor and her faith, but not the government, and the Fourteenth Amendment protects this choice. Liberals are not just pro-birth as many conservatives are, but rather, they believe in birth control, sex education, counseling, helping the pregnant mother and helping the baby when it is born. With counseling provided at Planned Parenthood, abortions are avoided 80 percent of the time at one California clinic, according to a nurse who works as a counselor there. Liberals note the fact that some conservatives want to de-fund Planned Parenthood, which provides many more services than abortion, but not hospitals where abortions also are offered.

Myth No. 7. Liberals have no sense of humor and are easily offended. Democrats dont get their feelings easily hurt, despite what youve been told. Political correctness is a term made up by conservatives; liberals simply believe in showing respect.

Myth No. 8. Liberals want to reward lazy people. Democrats do not want to dole out welfare checks to able-bodied men or women who will not work. They are definitely in favor of doubling down on prosecuting welfare fraud and are amazed when this is not mentioned. Liberals believe in helping people with education, training and finding jobs, while maintaining their dignity. Liberals do think its a shame that people who work a 40-hour week still qualify for food stamps. This fact is either not understood, or it is ignored by most conservatives. The majority of food stamp recipients arent the lazy stereotype, but are children, the elderly, the disabled, and yes, the working poor who make up 56 percent of them.

Myth No. 9. Liberals are not very religious. This is simply false. The Christian left is extremely strong in the belief of following in Christs footsteps of helping people and not turning away from anyone, even though one might not hear them pound the podium with righteousness and take to the airwaves to point fingers at others. They are puzzled as to where our critics get this information (Just look around and you wont see many liberals going to church), and for that matter why it concerns them at all. Our Constitution very clearly is against our government interfering in anyones right of religious freedom. There is also a very strong Jewish left, Hindu left, Buddhist left. (Not your brand of religion? Remember, liberals believe in the First Amendment.)

This list could go on and on, but if you want to understand liberals ... Ask a liberal. Not a conservative dentist.

Vernay Carrington of Lufkin is a former centrist turned moderate who is leaning further left with every news cycle.

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GUEST COLUMN: Dispelling common myths about liberals - Lufkin Daily News

British Columbias Liberal government, which faces defeat in the legislature as early as Thursday, has released a fiscal update that shows a surplus far higher than what was projected just a few monthsago.

The updated numbers, which have not been audited by the provinces auditor general, are designed in part to explain why the Liberals recently presented a Throne Speech full of expensive promises that deviated widely from the partys spring election campaign. They also leave the Opposition New Democrats with a comfortable surplus to pay for its agenda while insulating the party from claims that its plan would hurt the provincesfinances.

Do we wish we knew the money was there beforehand? Yes, B.C. Premier Christy Clark told the legislature after the update was released.

Gary Mason: Christy Clark pins her hopes on forcing a snapelection

Explainer: How B.C.s Liberal government could fall and what happens next

Globe editorial: B.C. politics get weird, but thats life in a hung parliament

Heres what you need to you about the fiscalupdate.

The Finance Minister says the province ended the 2016/17 fiscal year with a surplus of about $2.8-billion, which is roughly 10 times what his department forecast when it released a budget in February, 2016, and almost double what it predicted when the most recent provincial budget was released this pastFebruary.

That puts it just below the 2014/2015 surplus and makes it the fourth surplus in arow.

The Liberal government says the increased revenue was primarily driven by an economy that performed better than expected, which , in turn, brought in moretaxes.

The government says the increased tax revenue was driven by GDP growth that exceeded every other jurisdiction in Canada and, again, was significantly higher than initially projected. The 2016/17 budget predicted GDP growth of 2.4 per cent in 2016, but that figure grew to 3.7 percent.

B.C.s Finance Ministry says the growth was spread across most industries, including real estate, construction and manufacturing. Housing starts in particular have remained strong in recent months despite starting 2017 significantly lower than the average for lastyear.

The Liberal government is also trumpeting its debt performance. The government says the total provincial debt increased by almost $600-million compared with the year before, though taxpayer-supported debt decreased by$1.2-billion.

The provinces debt-to-GDP ratio decreased to 15.9 per cent in 2016/17, according to the fiscal update less than the 17 per cent initially projected and lower than the previous years figure of17.4.

MORE FROM THE GLOBE ANDMAIL:

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What you need to know about BC's post-election fiscal update - The Globe and Mail

Considering the extent to which the political left kvetched well into Barack Obamas presidency on the topic of George W. Bush having ruined America, some commentators find ourselves a bit reticent to do likewise regarding Obama and the state in which our nation now finds itself despite the fact that the ex-president richly deserves such criticism, and then some.

That said, it does occur to me that the monumental exertions being put forth on the part of the establishment press and liberal politicos toward derailing Donald Trumps presidency would have been more appropriately applied to the high crimes committed by the Obama administration. Indeed, they would not have needed to engage in all of the futile excavation in which they now engage in order to find some nefarious tidbit with which to oust Trump, since Obamas offenses were legion.

Additionally, the level of the lefts projection accusing political opponents of transgressions of which they are themselves guilty has reached an all-time high in recent months. In a way, the calumnies against Trump and dogged persistence in trying to bring him down are aspects of the aforementioned projection, but the lefts proclivity toward all of the distasteful practices of which they accuse Trump and the political right are far more telling in this regard.

Every now and then, a prominent liberal articulates something so damning and precisely illustrative of their twisted vision that one wonders how they let it pass their lips. Well, liberals arent known for being terribly reflective or judicious with regard to their rhetoric, and the last few months of advocating violence against political opponents is indicative of this.

Last Friday, HBOs Bill Maher stated on his cable TV show that refraining from having children was the best thing a person could do for the environment. Because you know what Mother Nature loves even more than electric cars? Maher asked. Condoms. Theres literally nothing you can do thats better for the environment than to not produce another resource-sucking, waste-making human being, probably with a bad attitude.

Well, I for one am delighted that Maher himself decided to put his money where his mouth is (or put his reproductive concerns where his mouth is) and elected not to reproduce, but the point is that his statements reveal the deep misanthropy most liberals appear to possess.

Despite their mantra of love, tolerance and egalitarianism, liberals hate people. Indeed, many of the deceptions liberal politicians, pundits and activists foist upon their followers are employed based upon the premise that the latter are so abysmally stupid that theyll never detect these deceptions. This sweeping judgment obviously evidences a low opinion of people that is antithetical to their supposed creed of love, tolerance and egalitarianism.

While eternally pessimistic leftists such as Maher would inevitably find people, places and things with which they could find offense no matter how Utopian they managed to make society, they still envision themselves finding peace and contentment in a world wherein their political opponents were either completely disenfranchised or had somehow magically departed from this plane of existence. Given their maturity and intellectual bent, one may presume that these enemies would either ride off on unicorns, slide into oblivion on the handiest rainbow, or wind up abducted in the night by wee dark faeries.

Christians might find that this philosophy rings rather Luciferian in context. Judeo-Christian convention states that the devil was jealous of humanitys position in the eyes of God and so eternally seeks to corrupt and destroy human beings. This is quite in keeping with liberals misanthropy, as well as their desire to advance absolutely anything that is antithetical to Judeo-Christian doctrine.

Liberals demonstrate their disdain for humanity primarily through the environmental movement, wherein the very presence of human beings on the planet is viewed as a vile plague. This is readily exemplified in the rhetoric environmentalists typically employ. Bill Mahers reference to people as resource-sucking and waste-making denotes this quite effectively.

This is also consistent with how the political left perennially advances morbidity, or aspects of death. Unfettered abortion, assisted suicide and substandard health care are among these. Enabling the mayhem in which Islamists, illegal immigrants and even common criminals engage is another. Finally, two weeks ago at a baseball practice in Virginia, we witnessed that to which leftists have always defaulted at some point during their political ascendency: outright murder (attempted murder, in this case). The political lefts position regarding the death penalty (theyre against it) has much more to do with their disdain for the law than any concern for the sanctity of life.

As Ive said before and will no doubt say again: Leftists murdered, maimed and enslaved half a billion people during the last century. This demonstrates not only their innate disregard for human life, but the phenomenon of projection in their ceaseless accusations that those on the political right in America are inherently violent. The empirical evidence however, speaks for itself.

Media wishing to interview Erik Rush, please contact media@wnd.com.

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Evidence liberals hate people - WND.com

The Liberal Party contains moderates like George Brandis, Christopher Pyne and Malcolm Turnbull, and conservatives such as Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz and Peter Dutton.

Do politicians read history any more? Liberal MPs who have not read Robert Menzies Afternoon Light: some memories of men and events (1967) should get it from the Parliamentary Library and read Menzies chapter on my humiliation of 1941. He writes:

There was a strong view that, having regard to our precarious parliamentary position, my unpopularity with the leading newspapers was a threat to the survival of the government. It followed that, although they had a warm appreciation of what I had done as prime minister, a change in the leadership was called for.

Menzies resigned, and Country Party leader Artie Fadden succeeded him as prime minister. Five weeks later the government fell: two previously supportive independent MPs switched their allegiance after Menzies was pushed from office. Labor was in power for the next eight years.

Key participants in the current Liberal leadership drama know a similar dynamic is at play. If Malcolm isnt PM, Shorten will be, one says. If Abbott took over, several people would retire and the government would fall.

This echoes the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd turnstile, redolent with the same animus. But with fringe right parties feasting on the margins of conservative political discontent in Australia, deeper questions are being asked about whether the Liberal Party itself is at risk.

Menzies famously welded several conservative political entities into a new one, the Liberal Party, in 1945. He then led it to victory at its second general election outing in 1949. Its lineage, Old Testament-style, is this. The Free Trade Party and the Protectionist Party of the early Federation era fused into the Commonwealth Liberal Party, which begat the Nationalist Party of Australia, which begat the United Australia Party which, with Menzies as midwife, begat the Liberal Party of Australia.

Thus party reconfigurations on the conservative side of politics in Australia, while only occurring around the edges post-second world war, were common before it and could be so again. Despite the sulphur and brimstone being whipped up by some commentators, however, this does not seem to be one such moment.

Fringe party flare-ups are common in Australian politics. Since the second world war the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), Liberal Movement, Australian Democrats, the Greens, and Pauline Hansons One Nation Party have all influenced the major parties room for policy and political manoeuvre. In this context, the latest, Cory Bernardis Australian Conservatives, is not unusual.

Nor is having to rely on minor parties or independents to form government unusual. Every federal Liberal government has been a coalition government, in league with the National Party (before the mid-1970s called the Country Party). This is despite Menzies private hatred of his coalition partner.

On the rare occasions the Liberal Party has had enough MPs to govern in its own right, it remained in coalition, mindful that forming government in more normal political times is impossible without it.

English academic David Runciman recently observed in the London Review of Books that Britain is now a 40:40:20 nation (where) deal-making is the essence of politics the 20 being MPs returned to Westminster from the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, and the Democratic Unionist Party, among others.

Since governments rarely have a majority in both houses of parliament in Australia, coalition-building and deal-making have always been everyday life in our polity. Minor parties come and go in such equations.

It is ironic that Tony Abbott, singularly incapable of acquiring and practising those skills as prime minister, should so successfully destabilise his successor Malcolm Turnbull who, with the Gonski 2.0 school funding legislation, seems finally to have worked out how to govern.

There is irony, too, in the fact that, as Liberals soul-search about whether to move further to the right, Labor strategists see the Coalitions vulnerability as not moving quickly enough to the new centre on issues like marriage equality and, especially, the environment.

Affluent, educated, urban Liberal voters children are, in increasing numbers, not reproducing their parents voting behaviour but rather going Green. Abbotts drive to double down the Liberals alignment with climate denialism could only compound this.

Christopher Pyne is as much a Liberal MP as Tony Abbott, and attempts to portray him as a pinko outlier are a travesty of conservative political history in Australia. Menzies called it the Liberal Party, not the Conservative Party, for a reason: he intended it to be a broad church of conservatives and liberals, not least because he understood how difficult it is to win office without bringing the centre along with you.

While mouthing broad church rhetoric, John Howard drove liberals out of the Liberal Party, and persecuted those, like Pyne, who survived the scouring. This shrank the liberal ballast protecting the party from an even sharper lurch rightwards.

Turnbull isnt very good. We limp towards defeat, one Liberal wanly puts it. But that could be so much better electorally than the alternative. If Abbott again becomes the public face of the Liberals, prepare for it to become a very small party indeed.

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Note to Liberals: on the leadership front, best to keep calm and carry on - The Conversation AU