Liberty Belle: France's new libertarian youth leader.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: Columns

MOST FRENCH PEOPLE devote their summers to quintessentially Gallic pursuits: celebrating Bastille Day, spending some of their mandatory eight-week vacation time, going on strike.

But Sabine Herold, to put it mildly, is not your typical Frog. Herold, the 22-year-old leader of Liberte, J'ecris Ton Nom (Freedom, I Write Your Name), has in the last few months emerged as the massively popular and highly photogenic leader of--zut!--a burgeoning pro-market, pro-American counterculture in France. Earning comparisons to Joan of Arc, Brigitte Bardot (!), and Margaret Thatcher in the panting British press, she represents something French politics hasn't seen in years: a public figure eager to take on the country's endlessly striking unions.

It is startling to hear any Parisienne, let alone a college student, drop references to F.A. Hayek in casual conversation, describe Communists as "disgusting," or lead pro-war demonstrations in front of the American Embassy. Herold is fond of issuing heretical statements guaranteed to make any good fonctionnaire's skin crawl.

"I think you have no legitimacy [as a politician] if you've never worked" she tells me during a phone interview in July. "I don't want to be a kind of apparatchik. I think if you're not able to do things for yourself, or show that you can help a company, how can you help the state?" She supports gay marriage and legalizing pot, reputedly whips up a mean five-course meal, and uses the word libertarian as the highest possible compliment.

Still, no amount of contrarian spunk could have prepared Herold for the summer that has just passed. On June 15, in the midst of crippling transportation and education strikes against Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's plan to reform France's ailing pension system, Herold led an anti-union rally that shocked her and the rest of the country by drawing 80,000 angry people. In a realm whose coin is the demonstration, this was reportedly the largest right-of-center protest since 1984, giving some optimists reason to declare it a turning point in public attitudes toward the Never-Ending Strike.

"We were so surprised to see all these people who just came to say that they were fed up with the unions and fed up with the strikes," Herold remembers, still amazed at the response.

When the pension-reform strikes subsequently fizzled, Herold was immediately feted by Fleet Street. (To date, British newspapers have given her far more coverage than their French counterparts...