 Our guest this weekend is Louis Roene. He's a former summer fellow here at the Mises Institute. He writes frequently for Mises.org and he's currently a student at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. We thought we would get Louis' take on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and find out what the mood is amongst the French people. We also discussed whether the French, like Americans after 9-11, will allow a crackdown on civil liberties in the name of fighting a war on terror. We'll also examine the role that French history, especially in the Middle East and Africa, plays in this whole mess. So if you're interested in what's happening in France from a libertarian perspective, stay tuned for a great interview with Louis Roene. Well, Louis Roene, welcome back to Mises Weekends. It's good to talk to you and for those who don't know, Louis spent quite a bit of time with us here in Auburn as a Mises summer fellow. So Louis, how are you? Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Give us your initial reactions. I know you're in Paris now, but you were not in Paris during these recent terrorist events. Tell us what your reaction was, how you're feeling and what the mood is like in Paris right now. Right. So I was in South of France when it happened and I just learned about all those terrorist attacks the day afterwards. It was crazy. The emotion was very strong among the French people and it's also degenerated very quickly in the media. Very quickly, politicians were speaking about war, about a new patriotic attack or a French style patriotic attack. Almost immediately, the French president declared a state of emergency and the climate is still very tense. Do you know whether French borders are still restricted or closed? Oh, yes, right. They are still closed. That's an staggering thing to think about. Apparently, this hasn't occurred since WW2, so it's quite a week in France. How do you think most people have reacted to Hollande's, you know, he used the word war and he's immediately started ramping up bombing attacks in Syria? Do you think the average person in France supports this or has some reservations about it? Well, there was a poll about would you prefer more liberty or more security and 84% of French voters said they preferred more security. Of course, the poll is in itself badly done because you can't oppose security and liberty. It's the same thing in a way. Liberty is also security from the government and from migration. What is striking is the state completely failed to protect us. I see it that way. I mean, 129% killed, more than 300 injured. That's terrible. And the terrorists just like attacked at different places in Paris, so it's a complete failure of French intelligence services and protection services. But instead of criticizing criticizing the French secret service and well, the police, what happened is they said, no, there was no failure at all. And it's just that we can't control everything, of course, and it's not a blowback because of our foreign policy in Syria or in the Middle East. And before they knew anything about who committed those terrorist acts, they were already speaking about war. So this is their objective, their aim, to just explore this opportunity to go and make war. Well, I have to say, from reading what we read in the papers, it sounds very much like the atmosphere is similar to the atmosphere in the US after the 9-11 attacks. Of course, no one in government lost their job. No real inquiry was ever made into the intelligence failures or anything else. And what strikes me is that when you're talking about soft targets like a nightclub or a concert venue, you know, absent some sort of really totalitarian police state where you search everybody and have checkpoints everywhere, it's very, you know, increasing military spending can do nothing to make you safer domestically. Would you agree? Right. I mean, I was in the subway, well, yesterday, and I just crossed by, there were like nine soldiers. But you can think 20 minutes and invent a plausible way to commit a terrorist attack, even if those soldiers are here. They are not making you safer. They are just making you feel safer. But so I think also a good point will be that they, after Charlie Hebdo, after the past January, the terrorist attack in Paris, they increased like security, security, I mean, government spending in their like security services. There were a new law for, well, master billions, basically, it didn't make us safer, but it made some like politicians safer. Like the parliament, it's almost impossible to attack. So what they do is since many targets are overprotected, they just attack civilians and innocent people because they can't reach, they can't kill a politician or journalist or sort of people. It's too hard now to do. Well, I have read some people criticizing French gun laws. Can you tell us a little bit about what gun laws are in France? Are they different? For instance, in the countryside, do people own hunting rifles, that sort of thing? And what's your understanding of basic French gun laws? OK, so French gun laws are what we call no issue. So basically, it's illegal, except if you have a permit, but it's not hard to say don't like guns for civilians. And you can't carry a gun in the street or like in public spaces. That's very clear. The funny thing is that the government, the socialist government tried to make gun laws even worse, like even anti-gun. Now, I think the French people is questioning gun laws after this terrorist attack. And I have a friend who has a Facebook page about the right to bear arms and he quadrupled is a fan on Facebook. And I think he's, to last post, got almost 2.5 million views. So I think people start to question that. Now, I don't, I will not say that like the right to bear arms would have a deterred terrorist attack. I'm not sure that we'll have them. But clearly, what people feel in France is that they are defenseless. The government is not protecting them, but they can't even protect themselves. And there is also a paradox that French people are really anti-guns. They are anti, yeah, they are ready for street gun laws. But at the same time, the armories just sell a lot of guns since the terrorist attack. Like many Frenchmen try to have a handgun and to buy handguns, etc., to defend themselves. Do you think the reaction to the attacks differs across France? You know, in America, we talk about two Americas. There's red state America and blue state America. And those two sides tend to have very different views of things like, for instance, the war on terror. Is there a real split in France today? Do Parisians generally see politics, French politics, very differently than rural French? Well, there is a difference, but not that much, because France is very centralized. Basically, almost everything happens in Paris. So I don't think there is a big split between rural France and Paris. Well, now to come back quickly to guns. In fact, many French households have guns. I think it's 30%, but it's mainly for hunting and in rural areas, not that much in cities. France has one of the largest military budgets of any country on earth. It's really in the top five or six. And in Europe, it only lags slightly behind the UK. You know, in the West, we tend to think of Europe, and especially France, as being these socialist welfare states. And they can get away with it because NATO protects them, which is really, NATO is really America. And they don't have to spend a lot of money on defense. But it really, it looks like France is very much like the U.S. and that it's trying to have both a big welfare state and a big military complex. So military shrinks those past few years, because it's easier to reduce military budgets than the welfare state's budgets in France. But however, the paradox is the French government is really interventionist. And that's, I think, because we were a huge colonial power. And so we still have many soldiers in Africa. What's interesting too is that we are partly responsible for what happens in Syria. I mean, Syria was a French protectorate before, I think 1945. And there were really strong relations between the Syrian regime and the French regime. In fact, a few years ago, Bashar al-Assad was invited to the 14th of July in Paris. And from one day to another, they just stopped supporting him and supporting his regime. And so, I mean, now what the French government is doing is air striking in Syria. Also, another thing was Iran, which is maybe the country most opposed to ISIS in the region. France was the country with strictest commercial embargo directed to Iran. I mean, they were really severe against Iran. I mean, and say I'm not a nice guy, obviously, Iran, but we have our share of responsibility for what happens in the Middle East right now and some ethnicities. And does that explain also why France is targeting France in particular? France has a long history in Africa and in the Middle East, a lengthy war in Algeria, for example. Do you think that there's still a complex amongst the French sort of a guilt complex relating to their colonial period? Do you think that colonialism still informs people's opinions about what France ought to be doing today in terms of fighting ISIS or accepting refugees or anything else? Okay. So what France did in Algeria was really, really bad, awful. And the state of emergency we have today, it's the first one since the war in Algeria. So that's a fact we have to remember. But I think there are two camps. Those were maybe nostalgic of the colonial area, but this group is getting smaller and smaller because often it's like migrant parents, for example. And the groups which use this colonial period to just create guilt and say, well, look, we have to give to those people. We have to give them money and put them under welfare just because we were unfair to them. It also requires young people today to pay for the sins of the past. So it's a very tough question because we certainly want to understand why people seem to hate countries in the West, but we also don't want to keep this conflict going forever and ever amongst the younger generations. Let me ask you this in closing. Do you think French people blame America and maybe to a lesser extent, did they blame Sarkozy or Shirok for following America into this latest Gulf War in Iraq and Afghanistan, which now, depending on one's point of view, is causing blowback? Do Americans, do French blame America at all for this mess in the Middle East? Well, maybe some, but I don't think so. But what's very clear today is, so I mean, every politician's virtually are war mongers and they support war. I have the words of the Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, and he said just a few days ago, because we are at war, we take exceptional measures. We must annihilate the enemies of the Republic, expel all these radical imams deprived of citizenship, those who violate the soul of France. I predict a conflict that will last for months, perhaps for years. I mean, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, said that we are in a total war. In a total war, what does that mean? We're definitely not in a total war. There is maybe only one exception. It's Dominique de Villepin. If you remember, he was the Prime Minister when America went to Iraq and he's the one who said, no, France is not going to Iraq. We are not doing this. We are not following you. And so he's maybe the only one with kind of anti-war, even if he's not Libertarian. But also, it's just crazy. I think 12 members of parliament a few days ago said we should, the government should control the press, those sort of things. You have maybe like five or 10 by ideas a day. Some people are speaking about draft. Some people are saying, look, the terrorists, they were consuming weed. And so we should reinforce the war on drugs. Some of us are saying, oh, look, they want to get a nuclear weapon. So we have to go there and fight them. I mean, you have all those crazy explanations about what happens and it's becoming completely irrational because it's just your fear and so they are exploiting. When you turned 18, Louis, did you have to sign up for some sort of draft service in case a draft was ever called? No, absolutely not. No, no, we don't. We still do that in the United States today. 18-year-old young men and now 18-year-old young women are required to register with the selective service in case we ever have a draft. So it's not that far fetched. I will say this, Louis. I'm sure if you had polled Americans in the days and weeks following the 9-11 terror attacks, a similar number, 80-some percent would have said we need more security and not more liberty. So I certainly hope that France does not make the same errors that the United States did in that period and I hope that the French learn something from it. But we very much appreciate your time and your perspective and we look forward to hearing and seeing more of you in Auburn next year. So Louis, thank you for your time and ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend.