Both universal ? "..... If there is a distinctive edge to French-American relations, it derives not from antipathy, but rather from rivalry. ..... The American Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen were both drafted and promulgated in 1789 and -despite their formal differences and objectives- they are strikingly close in tone and purpose. .... American and France are the only countries in the world today ... that share a universal ambition. Both are prozelytizing nations, and what they are selling is their model of the good society, teh well-lived life. ..... When American politicians speak, as they have done over the centuries, of bringing liberty, democracy and opportunity to the rest of humanity, they touch a deep chord in the American people...... But France, too, has a project. It is not of course an individualistic, Protestant ambition to construct a godly community, much less facilitate "the pursuit of happiness" (a distinctively American twist on the 18th century design for human improvement, and one that never much appealed to the world-weary French). What France has lon been selling is civilization. French colonialism was promoted by its defenders and practitioners as a "civilizing mission". France cultural protectionism - l'exception culturelle, as it is presented to the skeptical free-traders in Brussels- is not just about subsidizing obscure art-house films ; it is the only way to preserve the national "patrimoine" for the benfit of mankind as a whole. ... Many French writers (and their readers) still understand themselves as offering a cultivated, civilized alternativeto what they see as the American capitalist model ; a way of life in which the state is not afraid to intervene on behalf of the collective interest, in which progressive taxation redistributes national wealth to everyone's benefit, in which the depredations of the market are mitigated by considerations of social justice. France has long been a capitalist economy, of course, but of a different sort. As in 1789, it is proposing its own distinctive path. ... Meanwhile, it can only be hoped that the current level of calculated Francophobia in Washington and in the American media will give way to a shame-faced silence. In France, Anti-Americanism is an old story and largely irrelevant to French policymaking. .... When Americans disparage and alienate France, they do America itself a disservice. Paris may no longer be "the burning lens of Western civilization", as Koestler called it half a century ago, but it has contrived today -for the first time in many decades and largely by good fortune- to position itself as the representative of a large, if loose, coalition of nations and peoples. When Americans pursue a vendetta against France, the world is looking on. And in the eyes of the world it is America, not France that looks foolish. ..." writes Tony Judt, from New York University, in Newsweek October 6, 2003.
Both universal ? "..... If there is a distinctive edge to French-American relations, it derives not from antipathy, but rather from rivalry. ..... The American Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen were both drafted and promulgated in 1789 and -despite their formal differences and objectives- they are strikingly close in tone and purpose. .... American and France are the only countries in the world today ... that share a universal ambition. Both are prozelytizing nations, and what they are selling is their model of the good society, teh well-lived life. ..... When American politicians speak, as they have done over the centuries, of bringing liberty, democracy and opportunity to the rest of humanity, they touch a deep chord in the American people......
But France, too, has a project. It is not of course an individualistic, Protestant ambition to construct a godly community, much less facilitate "the pursuit of happiness" (a distinctively American twist on the 18th century design for human improvement, and one that never much appealed to the world-weary French). What France has lon been selling is civilization. French colonialism was promoted by its defenders and practitioners as a "civilizing mission". France cultural protectionism - l'exception culturelle, as it is presented to the skeptical free-traders in Brussels- is not just about subsidizing obscure art-house films ; it is the only way to preserve the national "patrimoine" for the benfit of mankind as a whole. ... Many French writers (and their readers) still understand themselves as offering a cultivated, civilized alternativeto what they see as the American capitalist model ; a way of life in which the state is not afraid to intervene on behalf of the collective interest, in which progressive taxation redistributes national wealth to everyone's benefit, in which the depredations of the market are mitigated by considerations of social justice. France has long been a capitalist economy, of course, but of a different sort. As in 1789, it is proposing its own distinctive path. ...
Meanwhile, it can only be hoped that the current level of calculated Francophobia in Washington and in the American media will give way to a shame-faced silence. In France, Anti-Americanism is an old story and largely irrelevant to French policymaking. .... When Americans disparage and alienate France, they do America itself a disservice. Paris may no longer be "the burning lens of Western civilization", as Koestler called it half a century ago, but it has contrived today -for the first time in many decades and largely by good fortune- to position itself as the representative of a large, if loose, coalition of nations and peoples. When Americans pursue a vendetta against France, the world is looking on. And in the eyes of the world it is America, not France that looks foolish. ..."
writes Tony Judt, from New York University, in Newsweek October 6, 2003.
Tony Judt was born in London in 1948. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge, and the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, and has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, and New York University, where he is currently the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies and Director of the Remarque Institute, which is dedicated to the study of Europe and that he founded in 1995. The author or editor of eleven books, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many other journals in Europe and the United States.
