This week, CNN’s ERIN BURNETT, HOST of OUTFRONT, and “a valued member of the OUTFRONT Strike Team,” whatever gimmick that stands for, entertained the possibility that President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party might just “save Europe’s economy and ours.”
Burnett’s babbling was boosted by “striker” Bill Gross, CO-CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER of PIMCO, who positively spun the political platform of Francois Hollande by describing France’s manifestly socialist agenda as “pro-growth,” and as “a different way forward.”
I listened to the Gross man live on TV. CNN’s transcriber failed to transcribe Gross’s salutary reference to France’s founding principles of “liberté, égalité, fraternité, writing in their place: “(INAUDIBLE)”
But here is Mr. Gross(out)’s verbatim nod to the blood-drenched, illiberal French Revolution and its legacy:
I think what [Hollande] is trying to do is favor labor as opposed to capital. Remember the (INAUDIBLE) [Gross actually said “liberté, égalité, fraternité”] and you know he’s moving in that direction. To the extent that he moves only gradually, I think that’s a positive. What France needs, what Euro land needs is growth. And to the extent that they can prevent a continuing recession, then the growth is going to be positive.
An “anti-austerity vote in France” Erin’s strike-man has conflated with a “pro-growth” agenda.
The Law is a pamphlet published in June, 1850, by Frédéric Bastiat, a great classical liberal “economist, statesman, and author.” Bastiat castigated his countrymen for becoming “the most governed, the most regulated, the most imposed upon, the most harnessed, and the most exploited people in Europe.”
In 1860, Bastiat saw France as a society that “receives its momentum from power”; a passive people who “consider themselves incapable of bettering their prosperity and happiness by their own intelligence and their own energy.”
“So long as they expect everything from the law,” he warned, “their relationship to the state [would be] the same as that of the sheep to the shepherd.”
Moreover, Bastiat, who had a mind like no other, did not share Mr. Gross’s fondness for French “fraternity.” “Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty,” he proclaimed.
“In fact, it is impossible for me,” wrote the great man, “to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.”
******
As always, I appreciate your generous support during hard times. To keep such commentary coming, click to Donate.
ILANA