It is no exaggeration to say that the bookshop’s closure has been a loss not just for Paris but for the West. It is a betrayal of the intellect—and a reminder that this ultimately is a battle for cultural survival. The shop stood as a challenge to the homogenizing forces of globalism, to the intellectual conformity that stifles debate, to the erosion of the particular in favor of the universal. It was a library of resistance—a bulwark against forgetting.
An electoral reform has just been passed to break the cycle of cronyism that has prevented residents of France’s three largest cities from enjoying genuine local democracy.
