On collectivism, or the art of deciding for others
Collectivism sets out from a charming intention: to entrust to an enlightened authority what each of us, left to his own devices, would inevitably get wrong. The snag is that the enlightened authority is made up of men, who have the unfortunate habit of being no more enlightened than those they administer. The twentieth century ran the experiment on a grand scale, with results that charity obliges us to call inconclusive. Friedrich Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom (1944), showed that whoever concentrates economic power ends up concentrating the other kind as well. Free cooperation, contract and exchange have this modest merit: they do not pretend to know better than you what you want.
On wokeism, or virtue as a standing tribunal
Fighting injustice is a noble cause; no one here dreams of shirking it. But to assign everyone to the box of their birth, to judge an idea by the cut of its author's jib, to topple the past for want of understanding it, and to hand the debate over to a committee for the surveillance of thought: that is turning one's back on the Enlightenment with a confounding self-assurance. I prefer the individual to the tribe, contradiction to catechism, equality before the law to equality of resentments. Old-fashioned, I am told. Good things often are.
On taxation, or the unwitting gabelle
According to the Institut économique Molinari, in 2026 the average French employee had to work until 22 July to pay his social contributions, income tax and VAT: 55.6% of the cost of his labour goes in compulsory levies, and that is the latest date in the European Union (La pression sociale et fiscale réelle du salarié moyen au sein de l'UE en 2026, 17th edition, July 2026; English summary). A gold medal one would gladly forgo. Taxation is necessary: it pays the judges, the soldiers, the gendarmes, and quite right too. Its excess, however, discourages work, punishes thrift and invites talent to sample other climes. Our forebears railed against the gabelle, the old salt tax; we have since done better, and in greater number. What the State takes, it always takes from someone; it does no harm to say so. Less tax, better State: the whole programme fits in four words, which compares favourably with the General Tax Code.