QOTD

Joshua Trevino in Brussels Journal:

As predicted, or more accurately, threatened by Ségolène Royal, there is violence in the wake of Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in the French presidential election. . .

This sort of behavior over elections that don’t go one’s way -- the anguish, the hysteria, the paranoia, the weeping, the smashing -- is ridiculous and dangerous, and it’s almost entirely the province of the left. As in America, so too in France now. The difference, of course, is that in France they go farther than tears, shrieks and profanity. The socialists and the anti-Sarkozy forces wade into the streets, deface grand monuments, fight police, torch automobiles, and generally behave exactly as citizens of a mature democracy should not. Their standard-bearer threatened that they would, and her threat is made good.

It is pitiable and worrying all at once. They are bad losers who deserve whatever misery they bring upon themselves, be it abiding depression or a police truncheon. On the other hand, they are fellow-citizens, whether of America or France, whom we need to make democracy work. Democracy fails when its results are only sanctioned in the event of victory. In their anger, violence and loathing, the despondent leftists of America then, and France now, are not merely rejecting a particular election -- they are abandoning the very idea that sustains their republic.