Let’s say that you are a newly-elected French president and you have a lot on your plate. The unemployment rate is 10.2 percent and youth unemployment hovers around 23 percent. The budget deficit is 4.5 percent of the GDP and the explicit national debt 90 percent of the GDP. Your economy is at a standstill and your currency is on the verge of collapse. Many of your most productive people wonder if they should pack up and leave, because you have just asked them to fork over 75 percent of their earnings to the taxman. Your popularity is shrinking faster than you can say sacre bleu! So, what do you do?

Easy. You switch the subject and start talking about something completely different … even if it is, well, a little crazy.

Thus, “French President François Hollande has said he will end homework as part of a series of reforms to overhaul the country’s education system. He doesn’t think it is fair that some kids get help from their parents at home while children who come from disadvantaged families don’t.”

Better that all children suffer, so long as they suffer equally. Equality of misery—that pretty much sums up socialist mentality everywhere.