Belief in miracles
The general prejudice inherent to egalitarian and humanitarian utopias, as well as the philosophy of progress — which holds that ‘one can have everything at the same time’ and that reality is no obstacle.
We can have both guns and butter. One imagines, as liberals do, that an ‘invisible hand’ is at work spontaneously re-establishing a harmonious equilibrium. Here are some examples: Belief in the dogma that unlimited economic development is possible in every country without causing massive pollution and without ecologically disastrous consequences. This is the illusion of infinite development. Belief that a permissive society doesn’t lead to a social jungle, and that one can have both libertarian emancipation and self-disciplined harmony. Hence, the dramatic shipwreck of public education, whose violence, insecurity, ignorance, and illiteracy stem from pedagogical illusions that banish all sense of limits. Belief that one can maintain social security and medical assistance to the elderly in a period of demographic decline by remaining committed to a system that fairly distributes aid. This is the illusion that comes from the Communist conception of solidarity. Belief that the mass immigration of aliens is compatible with ‘the values of the French Republic’ and the preservation of European peoples and nations; the belief that Islam can be secularised and assimilate republican values. Belief that the active population can be regenerated by importing immigrants, even though most of them are unskilled welfare recipients. Belief that it’s possible to normalise the status of clandestine immigrants, that they can be integrated, and that in this way one can avoid the arrival of new immigrant waves, even though the reverse is everywhere obvious. This is the illusion of immigration as a benefit. Belief that aliens can be assimilated and integrated, as they defend and maintain the specificities of their original culture, memories, and mores. This is the communitarian illusion, one of the most noxious of all, particularly dear to our ‘ethnopluralist’ intellectuals. Belief that cancelling the Third World debt will enable it to economically ‘take-off’ and avoid future debt. This is the Third World illusion. Belief that nuclear power can be abandoned and replaced with oil and coal plants, while reducing carbon emissions. This is the ecological illusion. Belief that a world economy based on short-term speculation, a generalised indexation of computerised stock markets, and the replacement of monetary policy with the hazards of financial markets promises new and lasting growth. This is the illusion of the new economy. Belief that the reinforcement of democracy and ‘republican values’ will eradicate ‘populism’, that is, the direct expression of the people’s will.
The list could be extended. In each of these cases, the belief in miracles is explainable by the hapless optimism that comes from the secular religion of egalitarian progressivism; but it also comes from the fact that the dominant ideology, being at an impasse, doesn’t dare to deny its dogmas and make drastic revisions, clinging as it does to the idea that there ‘will be no storm’ and that everything is explainable by the sophisms of its fake experts, whose inevitable conclusion is that all will turn out for the best, that things will continue to improve, and that the situation is well in hand. It’s a bit like the driver, running a red light at a hundred kilometres per hour, who explains that the faster he goes, the less time he will be in the intersection and thus the less risk he has of collision.
‘Cultural exception’ was a concept introduced by France in the 1993 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) agreement in the United Nations in 1993. It called for cultural products to be treated differently from other types of goods, allowing France to maintain tariffs and quotas designed to protect its television and film markets from domination by the United States.
(see convergence of catastrophes; progress, progressivism)
