Le Malaise

The New York Times' Roger Cohen writes an elegiac column about the current state of France, which he recently visited. Cohen finds the French are experiencing a Jimmy Carter-style malaise.

That the French are unhappy has become a commonplace. A nation that loves ideas is living in an ideological void.

Unemployment in France is at about double the German level. Growth is at zero. Investment is at new lows. If the European economy is stirring, the French has (sic) shown an exceptional capacity to resist signs of life.

France is a modern country as well as a beautiful one. (snip) But the French dislike modernity. They mistrust modernity. That is the nub of the problem. They dislike and mistrust it for two reasons. Modernity has redefined space and relegated the state. This is intolerable.

It remains, however, the largest nation in the EU.