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PARIS — One thing is clear after political chaos sparked violence in French cities. Americans can learn a lot about how to reunite and prosper from France’s idea of democracy. Just not by the way today’s obstreperous Gallic society goes about it.

On Monday, the National Assembly forced President Emmanuel Macron to dump his centrist prime minister, the second in 270 days. The first lasted only 99. When he named a likeminded ally, a “Let’s Block Everything� revolt tried to shut down the country.

Robocop riot police using helicopters, drones and armored cars overwhelmed about 250,000 protesters, mostly young leftists and apolitical hellraisers. Some lit fires and sacked buildings. Mayhem added to government spending, which the crisis is all about.

Macron, widely seen as an elitist committed to big business, tried to trim the budget by cutting two national holidays but refused a 2 percent wealth tax on the very rich.

Scant U.S. news coverage missed the big picture. CNN focused on turmoil. A brief piece in the New York Times international edition pictured a sign at the mobbed Place de la Republique in Paris: “Macron, the people will punish your contempt.�

But last week shined harsh light on a global trend that is reshaping the world into ugly class-based authoritarianism. France is crucial to democratic principles, basic human values, free trade and stability as Donald Trump plunders at will for his own profit.

Memories are long in France, and history matters. Last week’s “breaking news� goes back a long way.

Consider the first National Assembly in 1789, which faced remarkably similar conditions. The people’s “deputies� faced a powerful clergy and an aloof king who taxed the poor to support lavish excesses of a ruling class.

Had French forces not helped George Washington’s ragtag army, Americans might be drinking tea at 4 o’clock and singing “Rule, Britannia!� A year after the U.S. Constitution was signed, French revolutionaries declared their own democracy.

That first Assembly session incited peasants to storm the Bastille. Later, King Louis XVI’s head was lopped off for treason. But after Napoleon and assorted resurgent monarchs, France learned the hard way that democracy is no spectator pursuit.

Charles de Gaulle kept Free France alive during World War II then retired to write his memoirs. Political dysfunction brought him back power. After Algeria won a vicious war for independence, expelled military officers blamed him for not standing firm.

He survived repeated assassination attempts while laying foundations for the Fifth Republic. The new constitution established a president, “the spirit of the nation,� who picked a prime minister to govern with legislators’ advice and consent.

When a reporter asked De Gaulle if he might curb civil liberties, he replied, “Who honestly believes that, at age 67, I would start a career as a dictator?� In 1968, young protesters battled police and demanded that he step down. He did.

Today, the French still revolt against a president who exceeds authority. A million people protested when Macron raised the retirement age in 2023, mostly because he did it by executive order, Trump-style, without National Assembly debate.

European voters these days tend to rally behind fresh-faced new candidates, then quickly blame them for anything that goes wrong, ignoring external factors beyond a chief executive’s control.

When Macron’s popularity sank last year in a post-pandemic, increasingly belligerent world, he rolled the dice on a snap legislative election and came up snake eyes. With no majority, faced with parties from far left to far right, he was forced to dump François Bayou.

Opposing party leaders seem less interested in existential global crises than jockeying for a position to take power when Macron leaves office early in 2027. This ought to worry us all. Despite his troubles at home, in Europe, he is the consummate anti-Trump.

France’s nuclear force de frappe can counter tactical weapons Vladimir Putin threatens to use in Ukraine. Macron supports Israel but insists on a separate Palestine. He rails against Trump’s arbitrary tariffs and meddling in other countries’ internal affairs.

With a weakened centrist-right coalition, the Élysée Palace could end up occupied by Marine Le Pen’s ultraconservative, anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party.

Far-right movements backed by America’s oligarchs are gaining fast in Europe. Le Pen’s party blames the block-everything revolt on leftwing extremists and off-white migrants from the Middle East and Africa who, it says, endanger the national character.

The message resonates among many moderate Frenchmen who see their old ways of life change.

Signs last week played on the national motto: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The last word was substituted with Papiers — residence permits. New arrivals from ex-French colonies once blended in. Now, many from Islamic states, among others, do not.

France’s generous welfare system is easy to abuse. High taxes push workers and business owners to the limit. Many young people refuse jobs, living on state handouts while they protest reduced holidays and benefits.

Macron is caught in the middle. He wants to keep France open to foreign entrepreneurs, scientists and such. But he also needs to control immigration, a global challenge as conflict and climate collapse spur ever greater numbers to flee poor countries.

He condemns America’s sealed borders and harsh visa policies, which spurn the right of asylum enshrined in Geneva conventions that the United States championed after World War II. As a result, yet more desperate families head instead toward Europe.

Whatever his faults, Macron’s vision is rooted deep in earlier days, before serial wars between France and Germany beginning in the late 19th century and all that followed.

At an international peace conference in 1849, Victor Hugo laid out a vision that was beginning to take shape in recent times:

“A day will come when we shall see those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, stretching out their hands across the sea, exchanging their products, their arts, their works of genius...That day will not take another 400 years, for we are living in a fast-moving age.�

Yet today we are moving fast in a different direction.