MARK LILLA
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cantonal races, a referendum on the New Caledonia treaty , and now
two more local elections - nine votes in under a year. They also
seem depressed by the emptiness of this endless campaigning, by
Mitterrand's naked use of nationalistic symbols to mask his program
of personal ambitions, by the right's inability to put forward an at–
tractive candidate, and by the new media tactics employed by all the
parties .
But the dissatisfaction goes much deeper than electoral politics;
it reflects the fact that the high drama of 'French intellectual politics
is disappearing, and with it the caffeine- and nicotine-enhanced
thrill of polemical battle . Even the more serious liberals whom one
would expect to defend the current ideological cease-fire now find
themselves disappointed with what they have wrought. Pierre Ma–
nent, an editor of
Commentaire,
recently wrote in his own magazine
that he fears "a new orthodoxy of the center." Pierre Rosanvallon, in
his essay in
La republique du centre,
goes further, disdaining the
"angelic celebrations of national unity and consensus" heard during
the recent campaigns, concluding that "the vacuous thinking found
in this vacuum is no accident: it is to the flabby politics of the '80s
what Marxism was to the ideological politics of the '60s and '70s:
background music." And wherever one turns today the same phrase
is repeated:
"Les droits de l'homme ne sont pas une politique."
Well, yes , one is tempted to say. Denouncing totalitarianism
and reciting the rights of man is neither a political theory nor a
policy.
Fran~ois
Furet himself has criticized the now universal
French practice of wrapping one's views in "the flag of human
rights," a gesture that erases the greater responsibility to specify
which rights are to be defended first, and how. But Furet is not
scratching any deeper metaphysical itch When reproving this shallow
human-rights liberalism; his concern, shared by his coauthors, is
that the current consensus on the priority of human rights masks a
more troubling new individualism among the French that prevents
them from critically reconsidering their republican institutions.
Even if the will to have a centrist republic is there, Furet and com–
pany are not at all sure that French political and social institutions
can deliver it. Taking his cue from Tocqueville, whom he has la–
bored so long to revive, Furet wants to redirect French attention
away from a habitual repetition of principles and programs (yester–
day class struggle, today human rights) , and towards more sober
reflection on the unintended consequences of political action.
