Hugo Chavez-Style Totalitarian Populism on the Rise in France

"S?gol?ne Royal, the presidential candidate of the [French] Socialist Party, unveiled a long-awaited platform on Sunday, veering sharply to the left on economic policy while also stressing discipline and 'traditional values.? Ten weeks before the election, Royal is hoping to reverse a slide in popularity that has seen her lose ground to her main challenger, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. In a two-hour speech to about 10,000 supporters north of Paris, she laid out a 100-proposal platform, pledging to raise pensions, to increase the minimum wage to ?1,500, or about $2,000, a month and to guarantee a job or further training for every youth within six months of graduating from university. She also said that randomly selected citizens' juries would watch over government policy and that juvenile delinquents could be placed in educational camps run by the military. As if to preempt her opponents on the right, she stressed throughout her speech that her ideas had been nourished in 6,000 debates with citizens throughout France , a method she has called ?participative democracy'." Frederic Bastiat must be spinning in his grave; Hilary Clinton is probably taking notes.