You nailed that one, Peter.

Would, however, that their insidious worldview were merely confusion.

Peter,

Over 50% of French GDP is run by the government, mostly in state-owned industries. The French want even more government. I distinctly remember a point in the mid 80s when more of the French economy was state-owned than was the economy of Hungary(which was in the Warsaw Pact at the time.)

The kind of micro-managing that still upsets people in little England, if Boris Johnson knows more about the British electorate than he does about grooming, is taken for granted in France. For example, the first thing that DeGaulle, an alleged conservative, did when he took over was to nationalize the banking system. In France, you cannot even select the color you wish to paint your house, but must instead paint it in the color that local government insists you do. If you want a blue house and the city tells you to paint it off-white, you can either paint your house off-white or move to some town where they paint the houses blue. There are very few 'start-ups' in France and when they do occur they are viewed with suspicion, as if the people involved must be criminals. New money is always seen by the State and the people as somehow tainted. Horatio Alger wouldn't have sold a comic book there.

Bart:

Yes, I know. But as the EU has been a statist project from the get-go, and a bedrock of socialist thinking for even longer, the question is why is the French left turning on it suddenly and with such passion? More Turks and Poles than Brussels or Washington, I think.

But however nasty and dishonest it is, the fact that the left has tapped into such an emotional wellspring was completely predictable and largely the fault of decades of elite arrogance. If I were there, I'd probably be voting viscerally too.

Peter,

I think the average Frenchman is not thrilled with having his money supply determined by Germany, prefering the Clouseau-like Banque de France. Also, the French fear the impact on the EU of the Brits, the Dutch, the Czechs, the Hungarians and probably the Poles all of whom are far less interested in statist solutions to matters. They honestly do fear an EU that is far more 'Anglo-Saxon' than they would like. The end of the two-hour lunch has been greeted with universal howling.

It's pretty tough to claim the vote is racist though. France has been an immigration destination for centuries and even today something like 1/4 of all native-born Frenchmen have a foreign born grandparent, usually Italian, Polish or Portuguese. Any list of accomplished French people includes plenty of immigrants and children of immigrants. There is a fear of the Turk but that is shared by everyone in Europe, so it is not an especial reason for their opposition as there is about as much of a chance of unfettered Turkish immigration into EU members as there is of Ariel Sharon being invited to Mecca.

Not racist. Xenophobic. Or equal opportunity racism, if you like.

Peter,

If it were Quebec, with the Volkist history of its 'nationalist' movement since the days of Bourassa and the Abbe' Groulx, I might agree. But that kind of racism or xenophobia is so un-French. The French don't object to people coming to France and behaving like Frenchmen, they object to foreigners behaving like foreigners and, horreur des horreurs, imposing a non-French system or policy on them from above. As you well know, the French see themselves as the epitome of civilization, a kind of ancient Athens, so any attempt by 'les barbares' from wherever to change the way they do things, which since it is the way they do things must be the best way, will be greeted with brickbats and worse.

Bart,

That is exactly what makes their 'non' so strange. The proposed constitution is the last, best chance for the French left to codify their statist mindset into European law.

Daran,

They don't have the votes and they know it. There are more Brits or Italians than there are French. And once the East was admitted, where everyone knows the cost of uber-statism, whatever chance they had of codifying their statist mindset on Europe went out the window. If Ukraine is admitted, it gets even worse for them.

bart;

You say that the French are not xenophobic and then provide a description that is text book xenophobia. Presuming your description is accurate, I'd say it matches perfectly with Peter's original point.

The main motive for the French 'non', and the growing Dutch 'nee' (54% against, 27% pro) appears to be a desire of the lefties to make a statement to the governing coalition in both countries (current Dutch coalition is centre-right). Cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The main argument of the Dutch pro-constitution politicians appears to be that a no vote will cause instability in the EU region. With the current developments in the Middle East in mind, instability sounds absolutely wonderful.

In my (uneducated) opinion the EU region is prosperous enough and economic ties within the region are sufficiently well-developed that a collapse of the EU and/or Euro will be a boon to the common market, and thereby also to the people of the EU. It will cause more than a little pain and discomfort, but better to take care of it now, than wait until the last factory and research centre have left the continent.

AOG,

The French are not racist in the American, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic sense, but they are cultural imperialists of the first order. They don't like foreigners if they insist on remaining foreign but recognize that foreigners can choose to become 'French.' The debate since 1789 has been what exactly in means to become 'French.' That is a wholly different matter from the experience of foreigners in Germany, Britain and often in the US.

An EU that tries to be little more than a Customs Union is doomed to failure due to the vast cultural and developmental differences across the continent.