What's Wrong With France?

Maria Farrell counts the ways. My favorites:

For falling asleep at the wheel in 2002 and letting back in to the Elysee a fraud who has no vision for France, no values apart from expediency, and whose number one professional objective was using the office to stay out of jail...

For endless rhetoric about the European ideal (especially in the pre-amble of said constitution) and the coming together of nations in harmony, etc. etc., based on the assumption that France is the true driving force.

For insisting in the first place that the constitution be written by a self-important old windbag / ex-President of France...

For assuming that if the French don’t like this painstakingly negotiated agreement, everyone else will quickly iron out the wrinkles and present one that’s more to France’s taste.

For the assumption that if France votes no, then the constitution is automatically dead. Just how democratic is that, protest voters? (Don’t Austria, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain count? They’ve all voted yes – in parliament or referendum – and by overwhelming majorities.)

For its refusal to have any debate about admitting Turkey to the EU that doesn’t start with straw men (‘then why not Syria too?) and finish with inchoate mutterings that are nonetheless held to be self-explanatory (But …they’re Muslims.).