“La Preference Nationale“ has reentered the French political vocabulary. In June, former Prime Minister Edouard Bahadur shocked the French establishment by calling for an open national debate on the tabooed questions of immigration and the French identity. The dialogue would inevitably include Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front (FN), which continues to grow in popularity and support.

Describing M. Balladur as “un honnête homme” of the old school, Le Pen went on (in his publication Français d’abord!) to add that any sane man, endowed with heart and reason, would endorse the positions of the FN: “In fact. National Preference has nothing to do with racism, Nazism, or who-knows what else. . . . The national preference is a natural preference. It is inscribed in the natural logic of the world, which desires that a man protect, above all else, his children, his kith and kin, in a word those who belong to the same community. Ethnology, the study of the behavior of animal species in their natural habitat, is in this regard of the highest interest for political life.

“For us French, our constitution is based on the feeling of belonging to the nation, which is a community of destiny. It is therefore normal that the organization of social life take account of the national preference, when certain problems are posed on the grand scale. Even Prime Minister Michel Rocard recognized that France could no longer accept all the world’s misery. One of the essential functions of politics consists in confronting choices. Certain choices have to be made against the heart, without enthusiasm, but they must be made because the greater interest of the country requires them. The reversal of migratory influx is one of them. When a country is no longer able to supply its children with work, when it is no longer capable of assuring them a decent life, . . . then, yes, when one is a politician, one must have the courage to make choices.”

On the question of immigration, Le Pen made his own choice years ago, and while it has endeared him to millions of his fellow-citizens, it has cost him the support of all right-thinking people in politics and the press. There are American politicians and journalists, far less forthright than Le Pen, who have paid the same price. If you can believe the Republican press, Mr. Buchanan is the worst thing that ever happened to America. There can be no room for a national debate on immigration, because that question was settled by Emma Lazarus’s tinny verses on the Statue of Liberty. Because, for there to be a national debate, there would first have to be a nation, which is exactly what the globalists have to deny.

This past Bastille Day, Jacques Chirac (a figure adored by globalist conservatives in America) reiterated his opposition to national preference—and to any idea of French nationhood—declaring in a televised speech: “I do not see any motives compatible with our humanist, democratic, and republican principles that would allow us not to give foreigners the same rights that we give to the French.” The good news from France is that although President Chirac continues to sell out his country as every sensible person on the left and right knew that he would, a few establishment figures have read the handwriting on the wall and realized that it is not written in French.

Here in America, where we do not have the long tradition of national patriotism that is still felt in some French hearts, there is still no sign that any establishment politician in either party is an “honnête homme,” much less a patriot capable of making hard choices.