What Mr. Stancil says is largely true, but most Americans don't know about it because our media grotesquely under reports on European politics.

Sarkozy is a dangerous man, on many levels, and Segolène Royale is no socialist, whatever the name of her party may say. If we are to believe what he says, Bayrou is well to the left of Royale on many issues. None of them, however, challenge the prevailing vision of corporate globalism. Nonetheless, that vision, as applied to the creation of European institutions, is very largely the reason -- not xenopobia and the "Polish plumber -- that the French voted against the EU Constitution, a document containing hundreds of pages of neo-liberal economic doctrine that the people of the world, though not, it seems, their leaders or financial elite, recognize as dangerous to their well-being. The whole matter goes to the heart of democracy: will the rules governing the behavior of states be subject to the will of the governed or will "free trade" agreements compel governments worldwide to act against the interests of their own citizens, as the IMF and World Bank have already done? As we know by know, nothing trickles down of the profits of "le capitalisme sauvage". Yet a divided French Left may keep M. Royale out of the second round, humiliating the Socialists for the second time in a row. It isn't all about leftist Gallic egos, though, as I have seen it characterized. A real leftist would find it distasteful in the extreme to vote for the free-trade Socialist candidate, especially as she has provided no numbers indicating how she would pay for the programs meant to ameliorate the ravages of laissez-faire.

Lawrence Austin

Albuquerque, New Mexico