Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM) is in many respects a liberal party. It is engaged in a coy flirtation with the liberal group in the European Parliament ahead of the election in May — but it refuses to fully jump into bed with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). [...]
Officials in the LREM say the reasons are more nuancées. As a “party of government” with an overwhelming majority of seats in the National Assembly, Macron’s 3-year-old party is reluctant to commit itself to a group that uneasily unites smallish parties from 21 countries. [...]
The popular meaning of the word “liberal” has long been variable. In the United States it means “leftie." In Britain it means “centrist.” In Europe it means secular right-wing — pro-market and pro-individual liberties, anti-state and anti-church.
In France, however, the word has taken on the darker meaning of “heartless capitalist.” Liberalism is a force in French politics but it no longer dares to answer to its name. [...]
Tocqueville, though a great liberal thinker, was more concerned with political and personal freedoms than economic freedom and the power of the market. He warned against the market-driven, despotic power of the “manufacturing aristocracy,” which he saw developing in Britain and the U.S. The “French Adam Smith,” Frédéric Bastiat, was admired in theory but ignored in practice.
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