New Leaders Say Pensive French Think Too Much

[Demeter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/world/europe/22france.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
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July 22, 2007
New Leaders Say Pensive French Think Too Much
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, July 21 — France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes’s one-liner, “I think, therefore I am,” and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers.

But in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet.

In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

Citing Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich.....
“This is the sort of thing you can hear in cafe conversations from morons who drink too much,” said Mr. Lévy, who is so well-known in French that he is known simply by his initials B.H.L. “To my knowledge this is the first time in modern French history that a minister dares to utter such phrases. I’m pro-American and pro-market, so I could have voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, but this anti-intellectual tendency is one of the reasons that I did not.”

Mr. Lévy, who ultimately endorsed Mr. Sarkozy’s Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, said that Ms. Lagarde was much too selective in quoting Tocqueville and suggested that she read his complete works. In her leisure time.

AMERICA DIDN'T GET INTO THE MESS WE ARE IN BY THINKING TOO MUCH, THAT'S FOR SURE. SARKOZY WANTS TO BUSHBOTIZE FRANCE! IS IT MORNING IN LA BELLE ESTATE?

[eleny]

1. K&R

[Me.]

2. So Does That Mean The Very Familiar Je Pense

Is going right out the window?

[illinoisprogressive]

3. Yes, we do think too much but, you cannot just stop it.

[Demeter]

4. And Only a Power-Mad Idiot Would Want You To!

THINK ON!!!

[ixion]

5. As one human who "thinks too much"

as I've been told time and time and time again, I can say this after watching a bunch of people who don't think much at all run the show: Don't you believe it.

Keep thinking. Use your brain. It is all we have.