| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Ken [NY" |
| Date: |
06 Nov 2003 07:37:36 AM |
| Object: |
FRENCH BLAME GAME |
FRENCH BLAME GAME
By JONATHAN KAY
November 2, 2003 -- Anti-Americanism, by Jean-François Revel,
Encounter, 315 pages, $25.95
ON Sept. 12, 2001, the Parisian daily Le Monde announced: "We are all
Americans." But just for a little while.
Soon, France's newspapers and airwaves were full of pundits putting
the blame for the 9/11 attacks on U.S. foreign policy. When George W.
Bush denounced the evil of terrorism, café-dwellers chortled at his
"simplistic" world-view. Last year, a French author wrote a book
claiming 9/11 was a plot hatched by U.S. officials.
French anti-Americanism is not new. It just seems new because, until
9/11, Americans ignored it, reducing the phenomenon to a
vacation-story joke about snooty Paris waiters. As French author
Jean-François Revel laments in "Anti-Americanism," continental
intellectuals have been caricaturing the United States as a racist
dog-eat-dog dystopia for decades.
According to many of his peers, he writes, "Americans can do nothing
but speak idiocies, make blunders and commit crimes; and they are
answerable for all the . . . sufferings of the rest of humanity."
The United States is an odd target for the French. Who was it,
Americans might ask, who saved France (twice) from German aggression,
spent billions rebuilding Europe following World War II and protected
it for decades from Soviet hegemony? Yet anti-Americanism thrives
despite it all, Revel argues, because it fulfills a crucial
psychological need felt among continental socialists: By discrediting
the United States, they discredit the principles of market freedom and
individual autonomy the nation embodies.
Already during the Nazi occupation, U.S. values were apparently a
cause for anxiety. In May, 1944, a month before GIs would land in
Normandy, Le Monde founder Hubert Beuve-Méry warned that "the
Americans constitute a real danger for France, [for] they can always
prevent us from making the necessary revolution . . . If they don't
feel the need to liberate themselves from the servitudes that their
capitalism entails."
No doubt France still contains a good many Marxists who agree with
this nonsense. But as regards the bulk of the country's intellectuals,
the more likely theory is that antipathy toward the United States is
simply the flip side of the country's famously inflated national
hubris.
During the 20th century, powerful historical forces caused European
powers to surrender economic, military and diplomatic supremacy to the
United States. It is no coincidence that anti-Americanism is most
virulent in the one country that performed this surrender with the
greatest reluctance and the least grace.
Even now, French pols continue to insist their model of governance - a
combination of socialism, cultural protectionism and obsessive
multilateralism - is the leading template for other nations.
The unmatched success of the United States on the battlefield and in
the international marketplace puts the lie to this pretense. Thus does
France stew.
Jonathan Kay is editorials editor of the National Post. E-mail:
jkay@nationalpost.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken (NY)
Chairman,
Department Of Redundancy Department
___________________________________
email:
http://www.geocities.com/bluesguy68/email.htm
"If you think health care is expensive now,
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- P.J. O'Rourke
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| User: "TheShitHitsTheFan" |
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| Title: Re: FRENCH BLAME GAME |
06 Nov 2003 11:04:56 AM |
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Ken [NY) wrote:
FRENCH BLAME GAME
=20
By JONATHAN KAY
=09
November 2, 2003 -- Anti-Americanism, by Jean-Fran=E7ois Revel,
Encounter, 315 pages, $25.95
Don't believe a word Revel wrote: just another Froggie liar.
;-)
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