Pierre Manent: While waiting for things to unfold we note the return of the least likeable features of our State. In the name of a health emergency, a state of emergency has in fact been established. In the name of this emergency, the most primitive and brutal of measures has been taken: general confinement under police surveillance. The speed, the comprehensiveness, and even the eagerness with which the repressive apparatus was set in motion painfully contrast with the delays, the lack of preparation, and the indecisiveness of our policies of sanitation, whether concerning masks, tests, or potential treatments. Innocent or benign missteps are punished with exorbitant fines. We are forbidden from leaving our residences without passports, but the reestablishment of national borders is still considered a mortal sin. I do not believe the crisis is rehabilitating that State.
As for the nation, it has been abandoned, discredited, and delegitimized for two generations—just as any thought for industrial policy has been abandoned, discredited, and delegitimized. We have renounced the very idea of national independence. Oh, to be nothing more than a soft and pliant node of specialized expertise in the great network of global trade! And above all, the flux must never slow down! Are we discovering that we are dependent on China for almost everything we need? But we have organized ourselves in order to be dependent! We have willed it! Do you believe that, when we emerge weakened by the economic destruction brought about by the health crisis, there will be many who will be willing to reverse the course that we have been following for forty years?
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Cours méthodiques et populaires de philosophie - Le déclin de la légitimité démocratique
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