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Theodore Dalrymple, who has a second home in France, writes on Sarkozy and what his election might mean.
The French Revolution having taken place only two centuries previously, Chou En-lai famously remarked that it was too early to tell what its effects might be. A fortiori, it is too early only a few days after Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in the French election to say what that victory means. One thing is certain: It means something.
The rioters in the Place de la Bastille agreed. What they feared was that Sarko, as he is known to both his friends and his enemies, is in reality what he has all along presented himself as being, a man determined to change France. One of the ironies of the election was that the conservatives wanted change, while the liberals wanted everything to remain the same. And there is nothing like the prospect of change in France to spark a riot.
It is instructive to compare Sarko’s dignified and decent statement after his election — that it was important for everyone to respect Ségolène Royal because millions of French people had voted for her — with the rioters’ contorted faces of hatred. Like Mrs. Thatcher (and George Bush), Sarko evokes hatred completely disproportionate to anything he has done or might conceivably do. It is his ideas that are hated and feared more than the man himself. …
… Sarko has been called American in his attitudes, but has taken it as a compliment rather than as a criticism. His problem is that, without reform, France is headed for very serious violence, amounting almost to civil war; with reform, it is headed for serious, though temporary, conflict. But the reward of reform is that France would soon be one of the very richest countries in the world, as well as what it is now, the country with the highest per capita consumption of tranquillizers.
John Fund has ideas for the World Bank.
Modern Malthusians see nothing but trouble ahead. Jeff Jacoby sees good news.
… take infant mortality. Before industrialization, children died before reaching their first birthday at a rate exceeding 200 per 1,000 live births, or more than one in five. “In the United States as late as 1900,” Goklany writes, “infant mortality was about 160; but by 2004 it had declined to 6.6.” In developing countries, the fall in mortality rates began later, but is occurring more quickly. In China, infant mortality has plunged from 195 to 30 in the past 50 years.
Life expectancy? From 31 years in 1900, it was up to 66.8 worldwide in 2003. …
Great Corner post from Victor Davis Hanson.
Good news worldwide on school vouchers from The Economist.
… Anders Hultin of Kunskapsskolan, a chain of 26 Swedish schools founded by a venture capitalist in 1999 and now running at a profit, says its schools only rarely have to invoke the first-come-first-served rule—the chain has responded to demand by expanding so fast that parents keen to send their children to its schools usually get a place. So the private sector, by increasing the total number of places available, can ease the mad scramble for the best schools in the state sector (bureaucrats, by contrast, dislike paying for extra places in popular schools if there are vacancies in bad ones).
More evidence that choice can raise standards for all comes from Caroline Hoxby, an economist at Harvard University, who has shown that when American public schools must compete for their students with schools that accept vouchers, their performance improves. Swedish researchers say the same. It seems that those who work in state schools are just like everybody else: they do better when confronted by a bit of competition.
Claudia Rosett thinks Zimbabwe as head of CDC is perfect. Instead of calling it the Commission on Sustainable Development, she says how ’bout, “U.N. Commission on Sustainable Dictatorships.”
Couple of Wolfowitz items. Chris Hitchens and WSJ.
Carpe Diem posts on Wal-Mart health clinics.
Our May Month article describes prison camps in NoKo.
The most salient feature of day-to-day prison-labor camp life is the combination of below-subsistence food rations and extremely hard labor. Prisoners are provided only enough food to be kept perpetually on the verge of starvation. And prisoners are compelled by their hunger to eat, if they can get away with it, the food of the labor-camp farm animals, plants, grasses, bark, rats, snakes — anything remotely edible. It should be noted that below-subsistence-level food rations preceded, by decades, the severe nationwide food shortages experienced by North Korea in the 1990s.
Great Cafe Hayek post on unintended consequences.
Reason’s Hit & Run posts on the foolishness of Lou Dobbs.
Jim Taranto writes on what can happen to a college student who suggests carrying weapons.