“As long as our contemporaries have not been made to understand once again that without saints there are no heroes, we will be condemned to fall.”—Jacques de Guillebon

The youth are mobilising against both Macron and Le Pen. They want to show that democracy is not only played out in the ballot box but also in the street, and that they contest the result of the elections in advance.

Liberal democracy is centered around the idea that a majority vote in parliament should have unrestricted jurisdiction to change society as the majority sees fit. By contrast, Hungary and America have constitutions that protect the country against runaway majorities.

The first generation of human rights promulgation after World War II sought to guarantee freedoms to the individual against the state. Now, we are in a situation where we are suppressing other rights, such as the right to freedom of expression, in the name of the “right to a safe environment.” 

Actual usage of the app for reporting and tracking cases was extremely low. Throughout the two years of the pandemic, just over 1% percent of the 11.6 million cases officially diagnosed in Spain were then reported on the application.

The life of the mind is fundamentally dangerous when divorced from the world. Indeed, intellectuals have a moral duty to seek out ways of encountering reality—the thing out there—if they are to avoid becoming a tremendous nuisance to others, a trait so common among their kind.