France the erzatz ally.

Yes, but I am boycotting the wines of California and Chile. I find the actions of their governments objectionable.

e brown,

Sales data suggest that many more are boycotting the wines of France.

Why not, the current administration has.

The American revolution predated the French version. Moreover it produced a lasting, if imperfect democracy. Its laws, customs, and rights were more based on English traditions than anything imported from France.

The French version, which followed ours, produced only the Terror and Napoleon. Thankfully we did not import any ideas concerning liberty or democracy from France.

You haven't read much 17th and 18th century political theory, have you George?

deleted

Actually I have. I also know the date of the French revolution and the details of what followed it. Do you?

Walter,

Fot the respective dates of the American and French revolutions you can consult any encyclopedia.

That our laws, customs, and rights are more based on British traditions than those of France can be established in any good history text.

You all are taking this discussion way too seriously....

I am going to keep enjoying French wine and cheese and toast and kisses. These political squabbles are silly and I am not going to let them affect my day to day life.


The US would do well to learn from the experience of France. They have already learned that it keeping an empire is too costly economically and morally.

Here is a interesting question (just popped into my mind): What are the parallels between Bush and Napolean?

Maybe France is just a few hundred years ahead of us...

e brown,

Too seriously ! You are the one boycotting California wines ! I still drink some of the French stuff (though I find the quality much more variable than that of a good Mondavi, Stags Leap, or Caymus.)


Here is an interesting 19th century American view of Napoleon --

AFTER VISITING THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON
by Robert G. Ingersoll


A little while ago I stood by the grave of Napoleon, a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity, and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble where rests at last the ashes of the restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide; I saw him at Toulon; I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris; I saw him at the head of the army of Italy; I saw him crossing the bridge at Lodi with the tricolor in his hand; I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids; I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagle of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster, driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris, clutched like a wild beast, banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an Empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, when chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.
I thought of the orphans and widows he had made; of the tears that had been shed for his glory and of the only woman who had ever loved him pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition.
And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children upon my knee and their arms about me. I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great.
And so I would ten thousand times.

NOTE
Robert G. Ingersoll was one of many courageous intellectual giants produced by The United States of America about whom U.S. students are taught little or nothing due to their "politically incorrect" or "controversial" ideas.

Allow me to repeat a thought I shared earlier:

If more countries would show some spine and stand up to the United States when we allow ourselves to be lead by miscreants like the group now in power -- as France has done -- rather than toady up to us like some countries are doing...

...the world would be a safer and better place in which to live.

My comments about boycotting wine from California and French soldiers rolling in their graves were meant as ironic humor. They were not meant to be taken in this (far too) serious manner.

I apologize that I forgot to use the appropriate smiley for the humor impaired

Oddly, I took it as intended, and almost remarked on the occasion. Hey, if you have to explain it was a joke, it isn't funny anymore, anyway.

Although most people, based upon a sound education, but no further reading on their own, would credit Locke and Rousseau for the political ideas which informed the men of the 18th century in America, those two men owe their philosophies to two others. In fact, Locke's ideas were a product of the profound political thinking of Thomas Hobbes; as well, the importance of Protestant Christianity in America can be traced to John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Church. One could wryly suggest that Calvin and Hobbes were the source for the political notions of the founders.

In seriousness, Locke's intellectual debt was to Hobbes, and Rousseau's was to Montaigne. In particular, Rousseau's essay Sur l'origine de l'inégalité (On the Origins of Inequality) was the ultimate expression of the themes begun by Montaigne, deriving from the European notion of the "noble savage" which developed after the colonization of the "new world." It would be reasonable to suggest, therefore, that the philosophical sources of the political thought of the founders was fundamentally dichotomous. The Montaigne/Rousseau view is one of "nobility" inherent in all peoples, but degraded by the inequality of traditional social systems. Hobbes, on the other hand found that: " . . . life in a state of nature is a 'war of all against all:' And in that state of nature, no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." On the one hand, the political theories prevalent in the "enlightenment" were informed by the idealistic portrayals of human nature of the French philosophes; on the other, the hardbitten pragmatism of the American colonist was in perfect harmony with the views of Hobbes and Locke.

In our revolution, the most significant aid we received from France was monetary--for example, the 1777 model Charleville musket was arguably superior to the 1714 India model "Brown Bess" used by the English, and France provided the Americans with more than 70,000 of them, along with powder, shot and uniforms. Some few officers were of use to us, but mostly we got La Fayette, and he was worth far more than what he was promised and never paid. Rochambeau showed the ability to set aside the prejudices of la noblesse, and work effectively with Washington, despite earlier mistrust and many missteps between the French and Americans. Finally, De Grasse took an uncharacteristic gamble, and sailed to the Virginia Capes to bottle up Cornwallis at Yorktown, and then defeated Graves in the most significant naval victory of the French in that war--and the French were never the seagoing nation that the English were.

The results for France, which someone has correctly pointed out was seeking its own agenda (as though any nation, ourselves included, ever does otherwise), were not what one would have hoped for. The next significant naval engagement was the Battle of the Saints, and France lost some very lucrative real estate in the West Indies. She had not actually risked that much militarily in America, the two principle military establishments which Rochambeau brought to America were the Irish and the Welsh-Irish regiments of the Royal Army. What she risked, perhaps unwittingly, and lost, was stable finance. When the wheat crop was nearly destoyed in hail storms in the late summer of 1788, the peasants rattled their chains loudly at the hoarding speculators, and the inept fiscal policies of Louis XVI's government lead to the calling of the Estates. That, of course, combined with the simmering anger of the Paris mob, lead to the revolution. In securing American independence from a Monarch, for what some might characterize as cynical motives and a grudge against England, the French Monarchy doomed itself. As for the Terror, bloody though it was, it did not necessarily alienate all Americans of the day. Jefferson was almost servile in his praise of Revolutionary France. In our own Revolution, especially in the South, it was not uncommon for bands of Tories and Rebels to roam the countryside, hanging those whom they considered their political enemies. The Tory "diaspora" was a miserable experience indeed. Many of those who fled to Halifax or escaped after Yorktown were from the mercantile or small craftsman classes. When they were eventually dumped off in New Brunswick, then still a howling wilderness, they suffered mightily, and many died. Those who ended up in Upper Canada (modern Ontario) found themselves on land no different than the American frontier, and without pioneer skills and knowledge. Perhaps someone will dispute the degree between the unacknowledged dark side of our revolution and the Terror, although i'd doubt the provenance of any statistics produced.

Someone earlier commented that the French and Americans are very much alike. I agree completely. I've a great deal of experience of the French, and of people from all across the francophone world. I think that that antipathy between the French and Americans often arises precisely because they are so much alike.

When all is said and done, down the long roll of the centuries, the current brouhaha is a teapot tempest. An American colonel who had spent much time in Paris before the First World War, marched his troops, in 1917, to La Fayette's tomb, and said, simply: "La Fayette, we are here." The headlines, La Fayette, Nous Sommes Arrivés!, sprouted all over France, the French were delighted and heartened, and a ray of sunshine descended on a nation sunk in its own unsought misery. We have both been there for each other when it counted--it is rather sad that this silly rancor persists.

Setanta,

I believe you have got the history, details and meaning, quite right. It was I who opined that in many ways the French are more like Americans than any other Europeans. However I do believe that a divergence of our respective worldviews and self interests has been building, both in the popular mind and in the view of the governing groups, for at least 60 years. I doubt they will be easily or quickly reconciled.

It is also worth noting that the help France rendered us during the revolution was more an inexpensive way (as they perceived it) to spite and hurt their English rivals than it was out of a natural sympathy (at least among Louis XVI's ministers) for us and our revolution. Lafayette was different, to a degree an early representative of the coming revolution - although when it came he found himself at odds with its worst excesses.

Poor La Fayette--he had hoped for a constitutional monarcy, and, as commander of the "national guard," had hoped that the excesses of the mob could be smothered by a reasonable middle class. It is too bad that he was so justifiably fearful of his fate that he defected to the Austrians (and spent years in prison nonetheless, because he would not take up arms against the revolution). When the reactionary counter-revolution set in, the era of the Directory before Napoleon, the nation lacked the sort of moderating influence men like La Fayette might have provided. Absent that balance, France swung as far to the right as it had previously swayed to the left. Eventually, after Napoleon's bumbling coup, the French were willing to accept an emperor because the moderating effect of his superb organizing skills freed them from the extremes between which they had swung for a generation.

I, for one, don't like California wines, which I refer to as "scratch and sniff wines" because the flavors are far too, for want of a better word, engineered.

After watching the PBS program on the Kennedy clan for the last two days (interesting, the show did not shy from criticizing them and there was no liberal bruhaha over it as there was the conservative dust up over the Reagan movie which said things everyone already knows), I was struck by how strong the influence of French enlightment philosopher Rousseau is in the US still.

As a young woman, I was a friend of Nelson Algren (totally innocent then of any knowledge of his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir) and Nelson told me -- after my husband had angered him by insulting the French -- how brave the French were as resistance fighters during WWII. I've been studying the Resistance because it says so much about the human condition. Believe me, there were brave people in France then, just as there were snivelly cowards who allowed Hitler in the back door, but, by and large, they did not appease Hitler.

Appeasement, you must remember, was seen as gentlemanly conduct and was more in line with the philosophy of Locke.

I have no doubt that Frenchmen can be, have been and are brave and steadfast. However, perhaps something was taken out of it during the destruction and slaughter of WWI, which was largely fought on French soil. Today, as a nation, the French are inward looking complacent, vain, and hypocritical. More importantly a good deal of their self identity and world view places them very much at odds with the United States. That is not likely to change easily. The French Ambassador here likes to describe the French opposition to us lately as merely a disagreement within a family over fairly specific and well defined issues. That is a lie. The French government has attempted to discredit us at every turn and has worked hard to undermine U.S. political initiatives for several decades.

I have spent some considerable time there (the best was a summer in St Paul du Vence in Provence), and mean it when I suggest (as you do) the French have many characteristics in common with Americans. A very pleasant place to vacation and live - but no friend of our country.

Modern winemaking, both in France and in California is a bit engineered. The product, in both places, is less variable and generally better now than just a few decades ago. The best California wines are every bit as good as the best of France.

Why should any nation be expected to "go along with" the US? We are not the most noble, most holy, most whatever nation in the world. We are often venal, small minded and parochial. Any nation that goes along with this stupid "war on terror" is well deserving of any backlash it receives.

Some people just enjoy hating other people -- and look for any reason to justify their baseness.

Hating the French is a dream come true for them.

I guess the most charitable thing to do is to allow them to enjoy thier hatred. My guess is that for many of them, its all they've got.