I have a really cool friend, he is from France and he is all about wine, the history of the different sorts of strange beverages of Tolouse and so on. He is into the different strategies of the french colonial powers, the history of France, and the current strategies of EU. EU is largely run by France, so a french perspective on the megelomanic, corrupt, undemocratic french system is enlightening.
One of the main competitions of today, is the competition between danish and french intellectualism. Denmark have a lot of followers, and France just control the core of the EU state. One of the good things about France is the respect for culture. Everything in France is culture, the way you eat, fight, do politics and talk. It is not about the money, it is about the cultural capital. This puts the philosophers in an elevated state, they are not, as in Denmark, treated as dangerous creatures to either kill, or at least ignore. Levi- Strauss the jewish french philosopher of a very high quality was respected in France as Glucksmann is today. Me, the danish jewish philosopher is NOT respected.
The common man of France however, does not seem to care much about truth and enlightentment. According to my friend all they need is the family to run smoothly, then Paris can do whatever they want. There are only revolutions if the family unit starts to break down due to famine og war.
In Denmark it is the opposite. The cultural elite has no real respect for enlightentment and truth. They try to control the public, and deceive the common man. Not all off cause, there are exceptions, but a truthsearching journalist is a very rare thing. Naturally the philosophers have a lot of respect and support from the common man. Grundtvig a great danish philosopher totally gave up on the cultural elite and decided to talk to the people. That is my field as well, my support comes from the poor, the persecuted, the bikers, the resistance. All who are the loosers of the foul deeds of the politicians.
Now there are two competing strategies in relation to immigrants. One, the french, is to buy them, educate them, change into loyal servants of the republic. This is, probably a Roman strategy, and has worked for the Roman empire, and could work today. Now, with all respect for Romans, they were on a very high level of culture when they ruled Europe. There is another strategy to solve the immigrant problem, and that is to repatriate them. To send them back to where they came from. This is the danish solution.