smoking in self-defense (or the ban is a pleasure ...) "According to Matthew" is an interesting film left. From left because it offers a perspective on key social reality of class struggle. Interesting because it falls in crude Manichaeism and the usual pulpit rant filmmakers committed "in the style of Kean Loach, Fernando Leon, Robert Guédiguian or George Clooney (the There are in all latitudes and for all tastes).'s director, Xavier Beauvois,
which recently talked about "Of Gods and Men" , is among those who deign to respect the intelligence of viewers.
What sparks the drama-loving working on "According to Matthew" is that the father of a family worker is dismissed from the company that had years ... For smoking a cigarette! As we saw in "The Class", with punishment to a student who had insulted a teacher, the French Jacobin laws apply the weakest with the rigor and strength with which they opposed the Nazi ...
The so-called "snuff Law" prepared by Trinidad Jimenez and Leire Pajin pursued by a sinister liberal version of the Salvation Army is a symptom and a symbol of "repressive tolerance" in which we installed. To appreciate the morals of these saviors of our souls and our lungs can not miss the sarcastic portrayal of them was Joseph L. Mankiewicz in "Guys and Dolls"
Javier Marías published yesterday in El Pais a Zapaterin about this law and freedom-character
"Pajín and Zapatero would have been comfortable in Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile in the GDR of the Stasi, they would be in Chavez's Venezuela, Castro's Cuba and Iran's Ahmadinejad " The" Law of Snuff "is not so, even against smokers, but This is a new restriction on civil liberties and a reminder by the rulers (protected by a dictatorship of the majority) that may be imposed by force and repression of a particular world view. In the same way that the Constitutional ban on the "homeschooling" (even worse than the "tabacazo"), the perennial outlaw some drugs (as the state keeps getting the boots collect taxes with which it does have legalized), hunting for prostitutes and their clients, the censorship of bullfighting in Catalonia and RTVE ...
The Marias core argument is that this law is prohibitive and intrusive. That is, due to a conception of power under which the state can and should impose on people a certain way of acting and thinking. This is a common characteristic of conservative and liberal socialists, differing, of course, some of the constraints with which they seek to subjugate the individual. Hence the reference to Franco and Honecker.
Of course there are conservatives and socialists "by dint of liberal" (great label Fernando de los Rios). People who combine their conservative sensibilities and progressive liberal vision of the individual's ontological and political prominence on the State or any other social institution. Among the Socialists "by dint of liberals" are Marias, Savater (
"pure poison" ) and Francisco Rico (
"Theory and reality of the law against smoking" ). A great example of liberal conservative
was Lord Acton. Among those who currently have opposed this "Prohibition of snuff, in several examples Libertad Digital (editorial:
" Snuff, or the State ubiquitous ). Both
Mary, Rico Savater or have had problems with that character would reply, rebellious, critical and untimely (ie, a truly liberal spirit) the tolerant spirit while repressive, with Zapatero and most prominent feature, confused with gastroentiritis. On the contrary, constructed in the minority Tribune persecuted seems a positive and necessary trait in someone who thinks for himself and not subject to the dictates of his tribe.
Then, of course, liberals are "pure" they neither story ...
As Marías I disagree is in his allusion to freedom-interventionist attitude is not genuinely socialist. By contrast, "strong socialist liberals are a minority within the mainstream socialist doctrine has historically characterized by violence, repression and the only thought as a way of doing politics. Homosexuals (
see "Conduct unbecoming" ) or women who have abortions have been casualties of politics associated genocidal utopian search for a "new man" (see
"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" ) and only thanks to the liberal influence of socialism has changed its policy in these cases. Better late than never.
However, the influence of anti-smoking hysteria promoted by the U.S. (Typical of the leftist anti-US copy the worst of that great country in general, more communitarian than liberal, indeed, as Tocqueville saw) the dominant Socialism has found a new way to subjugate politically correct, criminalizing smokers on behalf of "public health", a concept that someone with a little historical knowledge should make you tremble
(and so ironically unmasked
Eric Rohmer in "The Lady and the Duke" )
On the other hand, am not surprised that most of the population to accept change liberty for a little comfort or safety. A few centuries wrote Boetie "voluntary servitude" (
discharge and required reading.) And we continue ...
PD. A Foucauldian added: it is interesting alliance of the medical establishment to repressive power. As Foucault and Szasz reported at the time about ... mental illness, most physicians (pulmonologists and oncologists) have become fanatical and intolerant political, confusing medicine to politics following the paradigm of Plato.
funny thing is that they have abandoned "the myth of mental illness, psychiatrists today are much more tolerant of" deviations "from the norm (
few exceptions of which Sostres or Drago could talk ... ), but enthusiasts have embraced the "myth of physical illness." First is the snuff, then it will be fat. Or sugar. O Louis Ferdinand Céline (
read Journey to the End of the night while smoking a cigar health
this damned infernal and phenomenal writer)