Unveiled Intolerance

The French tolerance doesn’t tolerate all kinds of clothing. Some totalitarian states also care about what their citizens wear.

Clothes are relatively unimportant and principles without consequences are hardly worth fighting for. You can still live well without insignificant liberties. But when a system contradicts itself, when its laws go against its own principles, then the whole thing is rather distasteful.

A state that values cultivation of manners higher than immediate liberty may consistently forbid certain costumes, but a state that praises direct freedom cannot in such an elementary and obvious way strip away the same freedoms.

The French Republic is battling itself.