France: World Leader in Soft-Despotism

The French Disease

Without a Christian foundation, democracies inevitably drift into soft, then increasingly hard despotism. The Christian Scriptures stipulate a very limited role for the state. They forbid allowing demand-rights to have any place in justice and judgment. They stipulate the equal ultimacy of church, state, and family, thereby severely limiting the role of the state. The Christian faith insists upon self-rule and taking responsibility for oneself and one's dependants. All of these serve as bulwarks against despotic actions by the state.

Without these Christian doctrines and principles widely believed in the hearts of citizens, people inevitably become dominated by uneasiness, fear, and envy. They look to the state to aid and abet their interests. The upshot is a public demand that the state become more authoritarian, more intrusive, and more controlling. All democracies, separated from a living Christian faith, end up arrogating power to the state and gradually squeezing formerly free peoples into subjection and despotism.

In Europe, France has never recovered from the Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Empire. Of all Western democracies, France has led the way in the downward spiral into soft-despotism. As one political philosopher has put it:

In France, the State is everywhere to be found. It runs all of the universities; the various religious sects are closely supervised; and the police still keep extensive dossiers on the public and private comportment of everyone who is thought to be of importance, as they have under every government since the time of Robespierre. Two centuries have passed, adjustments have been made, and a great deal has changed, but the spirit of the laws remains the same.
Paul A Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 234.

In these matters, whilst France is the leader, the rest of the West has proved to be a fast follower. Turning away from the Christian faith and a Christian foundation has meant that all Western democracies have moved persistently, and in some cases rapidly, into more and more despotic extensions of the power of the state. France, however, continues to show us where we are all headed (until the West repents and returns to the Lord).

And this is where we are headed . . . . The French government has just announced that it is going to make "nasty speech" within marriages a criminal offence.

France will become the first country in the world to ban 'psychological violence' within marriage later this year.

The new law, which would also apply to co-habiting couples, would see people getting criminal records for insulting their loved ones during domestic arguments.

Electronic tagging would be used on repeat offenders, according to the country's prime minister, Francois Fillon, who announced the law. . . .

The law is particularly aimed at protecting women who currently suffer the worst attacks of this kind, ranging from off-hand comments about their appearance to threats of physical violence.

Now, it seems that the electronic "tagging" to be used against "repeat offenders" means that the authorities will attach a transmitter to the offender so that all his or her speech can be monitored.

Mr Fillon said: 'It's an important step forward as the creation of this offence will allow us to deal with the most insidious situations - situations that leave no visible scars, but which leave victims torn up inside.'

He added that his government would also be experimenting with electronic surveillance measures to 'monitor the effectiveness of restraining orders against a violent spouse'.

Now if this were not bad enough, the critics of the measures dismiss it as being "unworkable"--that is, impossible to administer. The problem is one of "administration" not justice or tyranny.

Psychologist Anne Giraud said: 'Squabbling couples will allege all kinds of things about each other, but they won't necessarily be true.

'The police are likely to be called out more and more when this law comes into force this year, but often it will be a case of one person's word against the other.

'Psychological violence is a very serious matter, but punishing it through the courts is a very different matter altogether.'

Critics have also said the government should not be intervening in private domestic arguments in which no one got hurt.

Sociologist Pierre Bonnet said: 'The next step will be to make rudeness a criminal offence. The police and courts will be over-stretched trying to deal with the numerous cases.'

The clear implication here is that if the system could be properly resourced and if sufficient armies of state-eavesdroppers could be engaged, then there would be nothing inherently wrong with the law. We expect it is only a matter of time before it is seriously being proposed in New Zealand.

This madness of a relentlessly expanding state despotism will not be reversed until the people stop worshipping man and return humbly to the (comparatively light) yoke of the Living God.