Dear Friend,
We have never voted the same way and yet I understand you completely. Or
rather, I understand those who, like you, believe in the liberal right.
We share many things: the love of France and democracy. We believe in the
right of others to think differently. We share the pleasure of living in a
country open to the world. The passion of a State under the rule of law and
which protects the weak as well as the strong. Passion for the European
project. The desire to see our continent maintain its first place in the
world. We fight together against the violations of human rights and against
all the conspiracy theories whatever their origin. We both love the progress
of science, technology, mores. Without any taboo and dogma.
Many things separate us: for you, nothing comes before individual freedom,
before movement, competition, and the right to make a fortune. You do not
like, in my ideas, my desire to bring together the fight against poverty
with the protection of private incomes or even, when they are excessive, of
wealth. You do not like either my way of paying taxes, even very high, in
exchange, for one of the best health care systems in the world, of
unparalleled security and unparalleled infrastructure. You prefer to help
those who work rather than those who do nothing, even if they are eager to
work.
I have understood perfectly well, in terms of your values, that you voted
for Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. And I could understand, even if you were
disappointed, that you vote again for him in 2012. He had managed some
reforms and he had sharply distanced himself from the extreme right. I could
understand it until, six months ago, when he went in a drift bringing him
closer every day to the extreme right.
Yet everything should have been visible in his total lack of initiative to
advance European integration, to build a European military and industrial
force, in his rejection of any industrial strategy, and his disregard for
the countries of the South, of India visited in a few hours, of sub-Saharan
Africa for whom he said his total disregard one day. But all should have
become intolerable when he approved the offending order sending out of
France young foreign graduates of French universities: not admitting foreign
graduates is contrary to your values, but also to your interests: 40% of
Fortune 500 companies were created by foreigners or sons of foreigners.
You did not protest then. But today? How can you continue to support someone
who glorifies the restoration of all borders between nations; who wants in
particular to call into question the Schengen Agreement? You well know,
according to the principles you advocate, that going back on the free
movement of persons in Europe would lead to a questioning of those of goods,
services and those of capital, which you hold so dear. This means inevitably
to explode the euro, and, gradually, the closing of the French borders, and
irreversible decline.
Moreover, how can you continue to vote for someone who is willing to grant
the presumption of self-defence to a man who shot in the back another man
four times, on the pretext that the shooter wore a uniform ?
How can you still vote for someone who disavows his own stated principles
just to be elected, without realizing that in doing so he is only
strengthening a nationalist party, authoritarian and xenophobic, which you
are not?
How can you, in the end, vote for someone who has done more in six months
for the strengthening of the National Front than Jean Marie Le Pen himself
in thirty years?
I understand your last point: « I do not like him, I do not want him, I hate
this right, which is not mine, but I have to vote for him to avoid after his
defeat the taking of power by the extreme right in the right, and that,
after the defeat of the left, the chairing of the Republic by Ms. Le Pen ».
This argument, dear friend, this latter argument, is in my view unfounded:
If Nicolas Sarkozy is defeated, the liberal right, your right, will go up
again; it will have understood that repeating the views of the extreme-right
only serves this extreme-right and that this can only have the right wiped
out. The liberal right will return, respectable and modern political family,
crucial in French political life. And it will win one day, another election.
Provided that it has not, before, lost its soul.
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