The Yellow Jackets Protests: Socialist Demands, Libertarian Rage

It seems the socialist crumbs that President Macron has thrown to “les canailles” to keep them from ripping him apart are not sufficient to abate their canine rage, as the “Yellow Jacketa” protests in France continued today for a fifth-straight weekend.

The promises to raise the minimum wage — an anti-individualist tyranny designed to make it virtually impossible for low-skilled workers to get any kind of income except welfare, and a dart specifically aimed at the young and minorities, — and to reduce taxes on pensioners have not stopped the rage that is evident on the streets of Paris, and throughout France.

The fact that people are making socialist demands is not surprising in a socialist country. The French are economically uneducated, and have been brainwashed, in a hugely bureaucratic society, to renounce individualism and to subject themselves to the diktats of the State. This is a profoundly anti-masculine, totalitarian subjection which the average Frenchman seems to accept with a shrug of the shoulders. Or, at least, up until now.

While I believe these demonstrators are largely socialists who are being pinched by the big-brother Obamaism that Americans had to suffer under for eight years, and don’t seem to realize that fact if they are just asking for more socialistic programs, their anger seems to me to be solidly in the economic tradition of the Founding Fathers,and Congressman Ron Paul and those who share his economic views.

It sounds like the French have had it with the encroaching Leviathan State, constantly restricting and demanding, turning them into a subject rather akin to what they were under the French Monarchy, rather than an Individual who has the Freedom to determine his own life according to how he best sees fit, as under the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, or the unwritten Constitutional tradition of Great Britain.

So in France it’s Socialist demands, but Libertarian anger. Perhaps one day they will realize that and make another and better French Revolution.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-vegan Libertarian

Is a Libertarian Revolution Beginning in France? The Yellow Jacket Protests

It looks like a Libertarian Revolution against Socialism is breaking out in France, as the common people are taxed to death by the Socialist Democrat politicians who run the French Government.

President Macron has condemned the violence, but he doesn’t seem to condemn the violence of his own taxation that sparked the ructions.

I doubt that many of the protesters are Libertarians, but they are reacting as Libertarians react to taxation, the difference being that the masses are firm believers in the State and the socialist set-up that rules in the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, and the United States. It’s just that those masses are now being pushed to the brink of destitution by the Social Democrat politicians, like Macron, and in America by people like former Governor Jerry Brown, and current Oregon Governor, Kate Brown. If the protestors weren’t being pinched severely in the wallet, they’d be quietly at home, watching their videos.

It looks like the People of France are finally learning the lessons that Frederick Hayek discussed in his seminal work, “The Road to Serfdom”. Only, Hayek realized these truths in 1943; the French masses seem only now, in 2018, to be comprehending what he meant when he said that, under Socialism, the worst rise to the top, both of the government and of its numerous bureaucracies.

On the demonstrators side,they don’t seem to realize that the destruction of police vehicles and government property will only mean that the government will have to raise taxes even more to replace the equipment, and it will be big corporate capitalist companies who will get the contracts and the profits. Moreover, attacking the police is both stupid and immoral. The people they should be attacking are the actual government officials and the heads of the bureaucracies, and those attacks must always be non-violent. In a Libertarian society, those attacks would come in the form of boycotts, and non-violent political agitation. These people are also free to run for office or to form a political party that rescinds taxation.

It is about 50 years since the Student Demonstrations in Paris that rocked the World in the 1960s, led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit. After 50 years of Big Brother Socialism in France, and ridiculous taxation, it looks like the People have finally cottoned on to how destructive the Socialist system is.

Hopefully, the “gilets jaunes” or Yellow Jacket protestors will become Libertarians.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian