Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Part I

Yet Another Prime Minister Resigns: France is in a Deep, Deep Political Crisis

Well, there are government shutdowns and well, there are government shutdowns. I don’t want to speak so much about the one in the United States. I want to turn to France where it’s an absolute collapse of the government. It was announced yesterday that Prime Minister Sébastien Le Corneille has resigned as Prime Minister of France after less than a month on the job. Now, he is the third Prime Minister in a year.

The administration of French President Emmanuel Macron is clearly in trouble and France is in trouble and we’re looking at a crisis, but it’s a deeper crisis than just the fact that the Prime Minister, the last Prime Minister, Mr. Le Corneille, was unable to function immediately after announcing his cabinet. And for one thing, his cabinet was a lie because it had been promised that there was going to be a shuffling of the decks. You’re going to have new people brought into the administration and instead, it was basically a shuffling of the decks, as in some of the very people that opposing parties wanted out of the government just ended up with a different title.

Political plausibility failed, but there are some deeper lessons here. It’s a fascinating history and some deeper lessons. The shutdown of the American government, let’s just be clear, it’s not really a shutdown of the government. The political process is going on. As a matter of fact, this little drama is a political play undertaken with politics. Every bit as much in operation is in any of the day of the year, now perhaps even more so. And you’ll also notice that the strategic nature of the American government shutdown is that the government is actually functioning in all of its core functions.

The United States military is still very much in service, ready for deployment and other things are going on like social security. This is something of a political game. Now, in one sense, it is constitutionally a necessary game, but it’s a game, and that’s enough said for today. We’ll see where the game goes tomorrow. The point is that in France, it’s not a game. We’re talking about real life politics and we’re talking about a threat to the political operation of the entire government in France. Now, but that doesn’t mean government as in government services because in France, those aren’t directly accountable to the government anyway.

And so, there are some huge differences in the political system of France as compared to the United States. For one thing, you had the French president, Emmanuel Macron elected to a 5-year term taking office in 2017 and coming up on another 5-year term, running out in 2027, but time’s running out on Emmanuel Macron before his term runs out. And when you’re looking at three failed Prime Minister administrations in one year, you’re looking at a political crisis. There’s no doubt that France was already in a political crisis. It’s now in a deeper political crisis. And for much of the second half of the 20th century, France was in another form of political constitutional crisis.

And you say, “Well, why France?” Well, for one thing, just consider French history. The French Revolution was very unlike the American Revolution. The American Revolution was more like a reformation. Sure, it was a break with the British crown, but it wasn’t a break with the British tradition. As a matter of fact, the American Constitutional Order is amazingly like the British Constitutional Order, but with an elected president rather than a hereditary monarch, a very strong executive branch commander in chief of the Armed Services, just an absolutely powerful president.

But at the same time, you have a very powerful Congress that has the power of the purse and you have two chambers in Congress and Britain is the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In the United States, it is the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. Not exactly the same thing, but the similarities are just impossible to deny. Furthermore, when America began as a new nation, the United States of America, most of our laws were inherited from the common law tradition of Britain. So, again, massive continuity and America prizes political continuity. We’ve had one constitution since 1989, the longest serving written constitution in human history. Does it have weaknesses? Yes. Is it the most stable constitution in human history? Absolutely. 

In France, it’s different. You refer to the government in France as the Fifth Republic. Now if you’re doing math, that means there have been four republics before this. So, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, all the way to the end of World War II, four Republics. General Charles de Gaulle, who was the leader of the French military in opposition to the Nazis, he became the president of France, but it was a weak presidency in the Fourth Republic and the government failed. He was very frustrated. The French Fifth Republic that was put in place in 1958, at least in part to bring General De Gaulle back, put him in power. He demanded a very strong presidency.

How strong? Let’s just say no American president has the kind of power the French president has, and that is because it was basically created around one person. You say, “Well, that’s never happened before.” Yes, it did. It did happen before it happened in the American constitution that largely created the presidency around the person of George Washington. And so, it’s a very interesting political fact. When you’re coming up with this kind of constitutional order, you have some model in mind. In the United States, that model was George Washington. He was clearly going to be the first president and he actually set many of the habits and customs and practices followed by presidents thereafter.

In France, the Fifth Republic, largely created around the person of General de Gaulle, then President de Gaulle. And President de Gaulle had an extremely strong image of the presidential office, far stronger than is found in almost any other nation. And the French president has the power to name prime ministers, and the prime minister represents the entire government. The President of France, by the way, can’t fire a French prime minister. He can just request that the Prime Minister resign, which is kind of tantamount to the same thing, but it’s the kind of finessing the French love. 

But I’ll tell you where the French are right now. The French in their Fifth Republic, which is just about as old as I am, as a matter of fact, you look at the French Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle was its model. You have had some successful French presidents, you’ve had some unsuccessful French presidents. Emmanuel Macron was elected, took office as I said in 2017. He was a technocratic leader. He formed a new party. He was supposed to bring technocratic efficiency to the French government, and this is something that was kind of parallel on other fronts politically. You had Tony Blair of Great Britain and Bill Clinton in the United States both came to political power basically as new political models. They advertise themselves more technocratic.

It came a little later in France, but it came in a big way with Emmanuel Macron. He was from the political class. Now in France, the political class just get this, most of the highest-ranking people in the political class in France graduate from one school, just one school. So, it’s a tightly very, I’ll just say self-referential group. And there are political differences. There’s a left to right and the center, but in France, the political class is overwhelmingly a professional political class. 

Again, in the United States, quite different. Peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, of course, he’d been elected to previous office was the governor of Georgia and had been involved in politics for a long time. But let’s just say he didn’t come from the political class. Donald Trump emphatically his entire brand is he didn’t come from the political class. His only elected office has been two terms elected as President of the United States. Let’s just say that’s rather unprecedented. 

But the problem for France is the fact that its economic situation is dire and the numbers just won’t add up, and that is because France has had an expanding welfare state, massive government spending. One of the recent prime ministers just tried to eliminate two paid holidays in order to move a little bit towards resolving some of the fiscal crisis and unrest in the streets broke out.

The French weren’t about to have the elimination of two paid holidays. Their nation is facing an absolute fiscal cliff and the far left and the far right have absolutely opposed proposals, but they actually have proposals. And guess what? It’s not working as the technocratic center. Another lesson just in terms of democratic constitutional self-government. If the middle or something like the middle doesn’t hold and isn’t competent and can’t solve the problem, then you have alternative arguments that enter, and let’s just say in the United States right now, not completely different. We have a democratic socialist, a young Muslim who’s running way ahead in the race to be the mayor of New York City. Now that’s not the President of the United States, but that does tell us something about what’s going on here. And in France and in many other European nations, what they’re really worried about, the political class is scared to death of a conservative uprising. They’re scared to death of what they will define is the parties of the right. And in both of his presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron is facing off against a conservative alternative. And you know that conservative alternative is still very much there and waiting in the wings.

Emmanuel Macron has been doing everything possible to operate out of the center-left, and that means a lot of government spending technocratic solutions that don’t work, a welfare state that is frankly not being paid for, the French economy is going to suffer, and there’s no plan to get France out of this crisis. It’s going to be incredibly politically costly and it might cost Emmanuel Macron, his political and historical reputation. And there are open calls for him to resign as president. He says he won’t do so, and frankly, there’s not much reason for him to do so. There’s every reason, at least by his own calculation, to stay in power hoping that things just might get better. Of course, they just might get worse.

So, it’s going to be interesting to watch, but which is better? That’s a legitimate question. The English parliamentary system, is that better? Well, I don’t think so, although I admire the British, but I don’t think so. I don’t think that fits America. For one thing, we do not have a head of state who is a crowned head, who’s a monarch, and we don’t want one. So, you know what? We’re going to have to elect a president and we’re going to have to have a strong executive. The strength of the American system is its strong executive and its clear delineations of three branches of government and respective powers.

The French system, well, I think American presidents might be just a little envious of the power of French presidents. And they don’t have to put up with the separation of powers in the same sense that American chief executives do, because basically by the appointment of prime ministers and by the appointment of government ministers, you have a French president having incredible power over the legislative process. But nonetheless, it is also I think a tell. It’s a very interesting situation here that we do have to refer to the current government of France as the Fifth Republic, and that refers to Fifth Constitution, soon, we presume the fourth prime minister in just about a year under President Macron at this point.

Very late in his second term, France is in a crisis. This demonstrates what it means for France to be in a crisis. How it got into it is now easy to explain. How it gets out of it, that’s going to be harder to explain, but very interesting to watch. 

But at this point, I think we need to shift and just consider that there once was a time when this kind of technocratic leader was very much in vogue in European governments. The idea was we’re not going to put up with the kind of populist leaders. We’re not looking for charismatic, colorful candidates. We’re looking for technocratic professionals.

The exceptions to that have been pretty spectacular, and that was kind of the way that Ronald Reagan ran by the way, when he ran for the Office of President of the United States. He’d been an actor, he’d been a spokesperson for General Electric. He was elected governor of California for two terms, but he did so as a non-politician. And of course, he had served as California governor. He’s governor of the nation’s largest state for two terms before he ran for president, but he still had the non-politician image. Meanwhile, you had other people like, well, Gerald Ford who became president after the resignation of Richard Nixon.

He spent his lifetime in Congress in electoral politics, and that has been the norm for much of American politics, but in European politics, even more so. And a recent article appeared in the New York Times telling about a meeting known as the Global Progress Action Summit in London, and it really was brought about by political leaders of the Left, and you might say here the center-left, that is to say more Democratic Party than democratic socialist. And in the UK of course, they have the current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who was by definition a technocrat, very much like Emmanuel Macron. He rose kind of quietly and without much personal charisma to be the head of the Labour Party, and then the Labour Party won the election.

And thus, he is now the prime Minister of Great Britain, but he’s kind of just holding on. He’s one of the least popular prime ministers of recent history, and honestly, he just hasn’t been able to make as much political headway as he could if he had a lot more popular support. He just doesn’t seem to be able to attract that kind of popular support. This particular meeting about which the New York Times is reporting is about center-left leaders trying to figure out how they can block the right in their respective countries who appeared, for instance, from the United States. Well, two interesting governors.

One of them was Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who was the vice presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2024 election. JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois showed up. So, you had two American governors adding their two bits, so to speak to that conversation. You also had other figures such as Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, the ultimate technocrat. He was head of two national banks, the National Bank in Canada and the National Bank in Britain. And so, you can’t talk about anyone more technocratic in terms of the way we speak of that in government, in terms of the inner workings of government in kind of a technological way.

I mean, you’re looking at the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney as like the poster boy for that entire movement. They are in trouble because of pressure coming from the populist right. In some sense, they also have some challenges from the more extreme ideological left. But in the main, their challenge is coming from populist uprising. That’s certainly true in Europe. It’s something very interesting to watch. It’s also interesting that let’s just say this kind of meeting collect some pretty interesting people. Maybe American voters ought to remember this as well.

Part II

Will Japan Have Its First Woman Prime Minister? The Likely First Woman Prime Minister in Japan, Like Margaret Thatcher In Britain, Is a Conservative

Okay. Then shifting to the fact that in changes of government, Japan is also in a period of political turmoil. And the big story there in worldview terms is that the next prime minister of Japan is likely to be a woman. That’s never happened before. So, you can do the math that she would be the first woman prime minister of Japan. So, it’s a very interesting story. Her name is Sanae Takaichi, and she is likely to become the head of the liberal Democratic Party, and she’s likely to become the next prime minister. Miss Takaichi is a very interesting character because she is described, even the New York Times says this, she is a hardline conservative lawmaker who, “Won a critical leadership vote on Saturday of last week, putting her on track to become Japan’s first female prime minister, a Milestone in a country where women are vastly underrepresented in politics.”

Okay, so what makes this really interesting is that there’s a pattern here. So, Hillary Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee, the first female nominee for the Office of President of the Democratic Party. She ran against Donald Trump in 2016, and even on election day, she was sure she couldn’t lose. She did lose. Kamala Harris, the second Democratic female nominee. She didn’t come to the nomination by a normal means. It was of course the resignation of President Joe Biden from the race that made all the difference, a big soap opera there. But the big story is I think at one point, she clearly thought she was going to win the election and she didn’t.

So, what’s the point? Well, who was Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and she was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990. Britain’s Iron Lady. So, what’s the lesson here? The lesson is, and it looks like it might be repeated here in Japan, that when the first woman is elected to this kind of high political office, she’s not a liberal, she’s a conservative, and that just seems to be a really interesting pattern. Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Iron Lady won, but she won in a very defined role. She won leading a conservative resurgence in the Conservative Party in Britain, and it took Britain’s Iron Lady to see those reforms through, and that’s a remarkable tenure from 1979 to 1990.

And even right now in Britain, as much as liberals hated her in Britain, the fact is that she is still spoken of with enormous respect because of her transformational power there in the country. I think there are even some liberals who would like to go back to the stability of Britain in that age in Japan, it now looks like Sanae Takaichi is going to become the first female prime minister. She really is a hardline conservative. And by the way, what does that mean? Well, it’s of course related to fiscal and political policy, but also cultural policy in Japan. For one thing, one of the big issues in Japan is a shortage of male descendants in line to the Chrysanthemum throne.

That is to say in line in the succession for emperor, and thus there are some people who are saying, “It’s the 21st century. We need women to be included in the line of succession. We need women to be able to come the Empress of Japan without an emperor, not just the empress consort, but the empress reigning.” And you know what? She’s against it. She doesn’t think that will aid the stability of Japan. Japan needs the stability of the imperial line being a male line, very similar to the approach taken by Margaret Thatcher. Some Christians ask the question, should a woman serve in this kind of role?

And I’ll simply say that theologically, the most important thing is to say that Scripture speaks with immediate clarity on the issue of the role of men and women in the home and in the church. It doesn’t speak so definitively in the culture. I think there’s some general principles that pertain, but there’s no doubt that Margaret Thatcher was very much needed in Britain in 1979, and something like that may be going on right now in Japan. It still is in most countries, a deviation from the norm, and I think there’s a good creation order explanation for that. There’s also an explanation for why I have a photograph of Margaret Thatcher in my study with my wife. I’m very proud of that.

Part III

Creation Order Asserts Itself: The Life and Work of Jane Goodall in Perspective

Finally, for today, I want to reflect just a little bit on the news stories about the death of Jane Goodall, a very, very famous scientist. She’s credited very much for being a scientist there in the Gombe region of Kenya where she studied chimpanzees. Now, there’s an interesting story here. She did die at age 91. She died in the United States on a speaking tour, a very, very famous scientist working particularly with chimpanzees. And there in the Gombe National Park, she observed chimpanzees actually moving with chimpanzees, earning their trust. They became comfortable with her. She then observed them, and of course to a lot of publicity, and so there were TV specials.

That’s the way it was in the old days, and other features about her research, fascination, of course with the civilization, so to speak, the society of these chimpanzees. And she humanized them in many ways. She gave them names. Many scientists, by the way, were very offended by the fact she gave them names because that was just implied too close a relationship. But actually, many others joined in doing so after her with different species. The interesting thing I want to point to is the fact that she was operating out of an evolutionary viewpoint, which was very, very clear. She went over to work with Dr. Leakey, this very famous evolutionary paleontologist, and he was he who assigned her to go study the chimpanzees. And of course, the assumption there is that they’re genetically the closest species to human beings. At least that’s one of the claims that was made. 

The point is that Jane Goodall, of course, after we’re told, earning the trust of the chimpanzees and being able to observe them, she observed that they have a complete society, that they have a language that they communicate, that they dance even she said for rain, which seems less plausible to me. But nonetheless, they have their own mating rituals and society, dominant chimps and all the rest. They have their own way of communicating. I think that makes sense to a lot of us, a lot of that. 

But the big thing is that of course, she said that they’re more or less like us. So, the New York Times article said, “Once in their confidence, she quickly discovered that chimpanzees made and used tools, a talent then considered uniquely human. Her revelation rocked the research world. Goodall also discovered chimps had lasting relationships between family members that extended beyond mother-infant bonds. They’re just like us, just like us, just more body hair.” And then she went on to say other things, and the New York Times reports it this way, “She learned too that chimpanzees weren’t vegetarians as animal experts had believed, but avid meat eaters. She was dismayed to discover that these chimps also were capable of warfare infanticide and cannibalism.”

“I thought they were like us, but nicer than us,” she said. “Then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal, that they like us, had a darker side to their nature.” The Times then said her findings revolutionized primatology and laid the foundation for other women researchers. Okay. Okay, so here’s the thing. They’re just like us. She discovered that when they did bad things, they’re even more just like us. Of course, the Christian worldview explains sin, but sin only makes sense with human beings because we’re the only creature made in the image of God. And thus, our rule breaking is also creator denying. It’s a moral rebellion in a sense that’s very much lacking in this analysis.

So, if they’re just like us, they have communication, they dance, they have familial bonds and all the rest, and I think a lot of that is, by the way, clear in the animal kingdom, and there’s a sense of some kind of society. Even dogs run in a pack. So, I understand that. I don’t want to take anything away from, but there is the admission here that she was shocked by their misbehavior, including not only the fact that they eat meat, but that they engage in warfare and cannibalism and things like that, and infanticide, especially of other chimps offspring. Well, here’s the thing, if they’re just like us, why didn’t the Kenyan police arrest them? If they’re just like us, where are the indictments? Where’s the trial?

In other words, implied in all of this is the recognition they’re not just like us. But it just also demonstrates the fact that if you abandon the Christian worldview, if you abandon a biblical worldview, then you’re just left with something like evolution. And by the way, there is also in this, the participant observer problem, because what we don’t know is what these chimpanzees were like when Jane Goodall wasn’t with them and watching them. That’s a big problem in observational science. What difference does the observer make in the observed phenomenon when it came to the chimpanzees? Who knows? But if they were smart as Jane Goodall thought, maybe they were outsmarting her as well. I don’t really think so.

My point is there’s a categorical distinction, a creation order distinction between human beings and all the rest of the animal kingdom. They might come back and say, “There’s just an enormous overlap of chromosomal structure between chimpanzees and human beings. But you know what? I think I can tell the difference. I think a 3-year-old can tell the difference. I think even a paleontologist can tell the difference. I think a chimpanzee expert can tell the difference, and I think accidentally, Jane Goodall told us the difference. My point is not to discount all that can be learned from her research. That’s hardly the point.

But the Christian worldview reminds us, we’ve got to keep our understanding clear in terms of human exceptionalism, and it’s not just that we have more cranial matter. It is because we alone are made in the image of God, but we didn’t come to understand that ourselves. God had to tell us, and he did.