Back then, Europeans embodied environmental advocacy, self-actualization, self-expression and other values described by the University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart as “post-materialist.” Europeans actually used that term. They were proud of it. Today, European politics — and French politics above all — is crudely materialistic. The most explosive issues of the past few elections have been purchasing power, the price of diesel, the age of retirement and the shortage of housing (often taken by migrants awaiting asylum hearings). Europe’s preoccupations are closer to the 18th-century world of bread riots than to the 20th-century one of Save the Whales.

Here is more from Christopher Caldwell at the NYT.