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   From: email@BelowThe.Text   
      
   December 23, 2004, 9:38 a.m.   
   Down With the French!   
   Two great new books.   
   Jonah Goldberg,   
   NRO Editor-at-Large   
      
   Ah, Christmastime. Joy to the world. God bless us, everyone. Through   
   the rapturous din of carols and chimes, a stray condemnatory note can   
   be heard, chastising the yuletide revelers for being too   
   materialistic, too concerned with gifts that come wrapped in pretty   
   paper and shiny bows. Who can help but sympathize with such concerns   
   as the groaning hoards of shoppers appear like Huns outside the doors   
   of Wal-Mart? That is why I am so grateful for a special Christmas   
   present - holiday present if you must - for the whole world. No mere   
   thing or shiny bauble, this present is an idea, glowing with an   
   ecumenicism that fires the mind and illuminates the heart, uniting   
   nearly all mankind in fellowship. What idea is that? Why, the total   
   destruction of France, of course.   
      
   No, no, I don't mean - or want - to kill the French people and salt   
   the earth where they live. That would be wrong.   
      
   No, what I'm referring to is the destruction of France as an idea, as   
   a shining fromagerie on a hill, serving as a beacon of asininity to   
   left-wing radicals and a siren to kleptocratic third-world dictators   
   who, after a career of mass-murder, want decent medical care, a good   
   lawyer, and a fresh croissant. Two new books are out that attack the   
   cheese-eating surrender monkeys from two of France's three most   
   vulnerable sides: facts and logic (the third vulnerability, duh, is   
   its border with Germany).   
      
   For centuries France has claimed a monopoly on political virtue by   
   glomming all the credit for the Enlightenment and by pretending to be   
   its anointed protector throughout history. Gertrude Himmelfarb   
   demolishes the first part of this myth in her scintillating   
   intellectual history The Roads to Modernity: The British, French and   
   American Enlightenments. The Enlightenment was that moment when   
   mankind allegedly first threw off the shackles of superstition,   
   tribalism, and tyranny and embraced reason, universal human rights,   
   and democracy.   
      
   I say "allegedly" because there are still quite a few friends of mine   
   who resist the idea that the Enlightenment was a major step forward   
   intellectually. This is a more interesting debate than you might   
   think. But, since the Enlightenment is also tied to a level of   
   material progress that cannot be discounted to the point of a   
   triviality, I think these people are enjoying an academic fancy more   
   than a serious point of view. We can have this argument more another   
   day, but I think modern dentistry, the elimination of rickets, and the   
   light bulb are pretty serious accomplishments.   
      
   Anyway, my own view on debates over the Enlightenment can be   
   summarized by Mike Meyer's Scottish crank dad from So I Married an Axe   
   Murderer: "If it's not Scottish, it's crap."   
      
   Himmelfarb updates this ancient wisdom by persuasively placing the   
   Scottish Enlightenment under the rubric of the British Enlightenment   
   so as to join Edmund Burke and Adam Smith in a single tradition. She   
   also adds another enlightenment, the American, to the mix. The French   
   have long tried to claim that the American Revolution was merely an   
   offshoot of the French Enlightenment project. Himmelfarb disagrees.   
   She shows that the French took a different road to modernity than the   
   British and Americans, who took similar but slightly different routes   
   themselves. The British valued virtue more than liberty; the Americans   
   had it the other way around. But where the French differed is that   
   they sought to replace the religion of old Europe with a new cult of   
   reason. They even made the Notre Dame Cathedral into a "Temple of   
   Reason." The philosophes' Encyclopedie proclaimed, "Reason is to the   
   philosopher what grace is to the Christian. Grace moves the Christian   
   to act, reason moves the philosopher." By making a religion out of   
   politics, with the state at its center, the French never embraced   
   liberty the way Anglo-Americans did. It was this legacy that lent   
   intellectual heft to all the great dictators - Napoleon, Mussolini,   
   Hitler, and Stalin. (A similar impulse also transformed American   
   liberalism for the worse, but for that you'll just have to read my   
   book, whenever it comes out.)   
      
   Anyway, our friend and my colleague - or is that my friend and our   
   colleague? - John Miller picks up the story basically where Himmelfarb   
   leaves off. In Our Oldest Enemy he and co-author Mark Molesky debunk   
   the mythology that America and France were anything like sister   
   republics fighting side by side in Lady Liberty's defense. Yes, the   
   French throne - not the Enlightenment philosophes - helped us out   
   during the American Revolution, but that was a calculated attempt to   
   give Britain a wedgie. Before that - during the French-Indian wars -   
   and almost ever after the French have practiced a nasty realpolitik   
   towards America and the world. The French supported the Confederacy in   
   the Civil War and let's not count how many Frenchmen supported the   
   Germans - and the Holocaust. Suffice it to say, the Hollywood version   
   of French heroism leaves a lot to be desired. "Next to the weather,"   
   General Eisenhower lamented, "[the French] have caused me more trouble   
   in this war than any single factor."   
      
   And let's also not gloss over the fact that more than a few French   
   intellectuals have been known to look at dictators and mass-murderers   
   the way Michael Jackson gazes at posters of Macaulay Culkin. Michel   
   Foucault was like, "Oh my God, the Ayatollah is sooo cool."   
      
   Anyway, Eisenhower's lament was perfectly consistent with our entire   
   history with France, as Miller and Molesky relentlessly document.   
   During the Cold War, de Gaulle was always more of a hassle than a   
   help. France's opposition to the Iraq war had a soupcon of principle   
   in a kettle of cynicism burbling with Iraqi oil and blood. Indeed, we   
   forget that the phrase "millions for defense, not a penny for tribute"   
   stemmed from America's refusal to acquiesce to French shakedowns   
   during the XYZ affair. And we also forget, by the way, that the   
   phrase, "Herr Kommandant! The Jews are hiding in those woods right   
   over there!" was a wildly popular phrase in France in the early 1940s.   
      
   But the most annoying irony is that while they ribbit a big game about   
   bringing liberty and civilization to the world, France's record is one   
   of sowing the seeds of tyranny and corruption almost everywhere   
   they've planted their flag. Meanwhile, Britain's former colonies are   
   mostly moving in freedom's direction. The political scientist Myron   
   Weiner has observed that since 1983, "Every single country in the   
   Third World that emerged from colonial rule since the Second World War   
   with a population of at least one million (and almost all the smaller   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)