Of course, it's possible to change a society and to drag it into the global economic monoculture. Mrs. Thatcher showed how: Break up collectives and make people feel a little bit more alone in the world. Cut a few holes in the social safety net. Raise the status of money-making, and lower the status of every other activity. Stop giving knighthoods to artists and start giving them to department-store moguls. Stop listening to intellectuals and start listening to entrepreneurs and financiers.

Don't mind that artists and intellectuals hate you -- or even that, for a time, the entire society seems to hate you. Stick to the plan long enough and the people who are good at making money acquire huge sums and, along with them, power. In time, they become the culture's dominant voice. And they love you for it.

But the French are different.

For one, they enjoy feeling alone in the world. Their problem isn't an incapacity for selfishness, or for individual initiative. Anyone who has ever watched a middle-aged Parisian male muscle aside a pregnant lady with a baby and steal her taxi can see that the French have what it takes to succeed in the modern world. They just don't want to.

They want to take all those selfish impulses that might be directed into improving productivity and efficiency and wealth- accumulation and channel it into being ... French.