Forgive me, Lord, for I have had revolutionary impulses

Agnès Poirier, The Guardian:

Declinology is the new dandyism. They have brought in a new attitude, which until now had spared the French: self-hatred. The declinologists don't speak about "la crise" - that is much too lame. What they are talking about, and secretly dreaming of, is a national cataclysm. It would serve the French right. The declinologists are the kind of people who, after such national tragedy, would surely erect a new cathedral in Paris, just as others built the Sacré-Coeur after the Commune, in order to expunge France's sins. No doubt they would organise compulsory pilgrimages for their fellow countrymen, who would have to repeat 100 times: "Forgive me, Lord, for I have had revolutionary impulses."
Indeed, what the declinologists are advocating is an anti-France, a France cleansed from its revolutionary heritage, from the spirit of the Enlightenment. Yesterday they were confronted with France as it is: two million on the streets and the country convulsed by a strike against labour deregulation.