France's Silent Majority?

Fire of Liberty
It looks like there's some young students in France who are a tad bid angry with their fellow students shutting down the universities in order to raise hell in the streets against the newly formed First Job Contract. Here's what the Times had to note about the students who prefer their studies rather than act like complete fools:

SEVERAL hundred students packed into the hall, cheering and clapping as one speaker after another urged a blockade of their philosophy faculty. Then Félix Lambert took to the podium and said he did not agree. The audience erupted in furious booing and whistling.

Meet the new French revolutionaries. Lambert, 20, is in the second year of a philosophy degree course at the Sorbonne, the focus of student protests against a new youth employment law. He does not throw Molotov cocktails or attend demonstrations and sit-ins — all he wants to do is to get on with his studies.

"“The protest is so undemocratic,"” he said last week. "The students are being manipulated by the unions."

Lambert's 18-year-old sister Lily, in the first year of an economics and management course, is also a dissident. She opposes the law making it easier to sack young people but not, as the protesters argue, because it will promote insecurity in the workplace. In her mind the law does not go far enough. "“What we need in France is a lot more employment flexibility for everybody, not just the young," she said.

Its about time we hear more about these brave souls who are trying the best to better themselves but can't because some idiot is burning a newspaper stand or holding sit-ins.