French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron on Saturday called on U.S. scientists, academics and entrepreneurs at odds with Donald Trump’s administration to move to France.
French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron on Saturday called on U.S. scientists, academics and entrepreneurs at odds with Donald Trump’s administration to move to France.
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February 6th, 2017 at 1:01PM
it’s a clever line but in a world where the only choices are between technocrats and oligarchs the rest of us are in for a rough ride…
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/eric-schneiderman-donald-trump-new-york-214734
February 7th, 2017 at 8:45AM
I expect some of these “scientists, academics and entrepreneurs at odds with Donald Trump’s administration” would be upset to find that France has a burqa ban.
February 7th, 2017 at 5:39PM
Why do you assume that they wouldn’t be perfectly aware of that fact?
Personally I think the ban is a poorly conceived way to deal with a genuine problem, but it’s an issue on which reasonable people can reasonably disagree, and it certainly wouldn’t be a deal breaker either way.
February 7th, 2017 at 10:07PM
Hi Alan….I would bet that if any Republican–certainly if Donald Trump–were to propose such a ban in the US, then most of the people in question would denounce it as Islamophobic.
I also suspect that most of the people who are so anti-Trump that they would consider leaving the country would also be unpleasantly surprised by France’s heavy use of nuclear power for electrical generation.
February 8th, 2017 at 6:55AM
David, such a ban in the United States would be unconstitutional. Period, as Mr. Spicer is fond of saying. France has a different legal context.
February 8th, 2017 at 6:57AM
And while I’m sure there might be a few hypothetical migrants who would be shocked at your list of “50 Ways France Will Make Your Liberal Flesh Creep”, I suspect rather more of them might greet it with a shrug.
February 10th, 2017 at 12:55PM
Alan, it would *probably* be found unconstitutional in the US, but on the other hand, there is a precedent in anti-mask laws which were put in place to fight the Ku Klux Klan.
February 10th, 2017 at 1:57PM
Yes – I think the constitutionality question is not entirely straightforward.
February 11th, 2017 at 8:34AM
A ban on private citizens wearing certain types of religious garb? No, that’s pretty straightforward.
February 11th, 2017 at 9:27AM
Alan: I think the squishiness would be about specific circumstances and settings (photo ID is the prime example). Also: There’s a very strong argument to be made that the full veil is not religious – unless you want to argue that everything someone calls religious is religious because they say so… So we’re talking (as in several European and now North African countries) about partial bans. (Some places do have complete bans.) They could extend, for instance, to a variety of public settings.
February 11th, 2017 at 4:52PM
UD: the original statement was about instituting a ban identical to that in France in the US. It seems highly unlikely that such a broad prohibition, disproportionately affecting one particular faith group, would pass First Amendment muster. Some other, much more limited kind of restriction might be possible if its language was tailored carefully enough – but that’s not what we were discussing.
February 11th, 2017 at 6:07PM
Alan: Ah, okay – I didn’t remember that the subject was a total ban.
I do think it’s quite possible that this country could move toward a partial ban.