Nutty
Patriotism
September 25, 2003
America is still a great country, and it would be
cruel to judge it by its patriots. I mean the sort of patriots
who think the way to express your love for this country is to insult other
countries.
The events of 9/11 have brought
the nastiest jingoists out of the woodwork, and their most toxic venom
has been directed against France for opposing war on Iraq. Now that the
war has failed in its express aims, the French are hated worse than ever.
After all, they have committed the extremely annoying faux pas of being
proved right by events. And as the French proverb says, its only the
truth that really hurts.
Nowhere has Francophobia been
more relentlessly childish than in the pseudopatriotic New York
Post, where the columnist Ralph Peters has just published his
latest tantrum. After a few swipes at the Democrats, he rails against
those, from Paris to Palestine, who hate our freedom, our values,
and our success. He names Frances president, Jacques
Chirac, first among morally bankrupt leaders. He lumps the
French among Eurotrash who are the most notorious
sexual predators in the developing world.
According to Peters, France is
one of Americas ugliest enemies and Chirac is
a moral pygmy whose lack of scruples is, fortunately, balanced by
a lack of courage and power. As for Chiracs call for a
multilateral policy on Iraq,
Stick it where the bum hid his
money, Jackie-boy. It was you and your frog princes who ruthlessly
destroyed the possibility of a multilateral approach to dealing with
Saddam Hussein by refusing to cooperate in any serious efforts to call the
regime in Baghdad to account. It was you and your political pimps who
split the Security Council in two, with France nobly defending the rights
of dictators to die of old age on the Riviera.
It gets even more rabid. The
French are the parasites in Paris. They have never
stood for human freedom. In World War II they didnt
even fight to free themselves. Their opposition to the American
war on Iraq was reflexive and irrational. They hate us because
were us.
So what should we do now? We
should make an example of France for the benefit of those
countries that actively strive to frustrate our efforts to spread human
rights and freedom. Far from seeking reconciliation with Paris, we should
miss no opportunity anywhere, in any sphere, to rub French faces in the
merde.
![[Breaker quote: Another anti-French tantrum]](2003breakers/030925.gif) Peters isnt through yet.
France should be made to suffer,
strategically and financially. The French stabbed us in the back. In
response, we should skin them alive.
If todays America is the
new Rome, France is a garbage-dump Carthage. And Carthage needs to be
broken....
And we should pursue every
possible avenue to reduce American purchase of any goods produced by the
French.
Perfidy must be punished. The
French, who would be eating sauerkraut for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if
we hadnt liberated them, need to have their treachery shoved down
their throats.
First Baghdad, then
Paris, Peters concludes.
Treachery? Perfidy? Stabbing us
in the back? The French were quite open about opposing the war
and about resisting the imperial arrogance shown by the Bush
administration, an attitude displayed by Peters himself.
Makes you proud to be an
American, doesnt it? No wonder this country is now feared and
loathed around the world. And no wonder more and more Americans are
looking for an alternative to George W. Bush.
Not only liberals but
conservatives are feeling qualms about the reckless militarism that has
passed, far too long, for conservatism. An older and truer breed of
conservatism had deep reservations about trying to spread human
rights and freedom by raw force.
Conservatism is where you find
it. When Teddy Kennedy, the archliberal, charged that we were taken to
war in Iraq by fraud, he was expressing the kind of
skepticism about the uses of power we should be hearing from more
conservatives. Liberals are also doing the work of conservatives when
they denounce the staggering price of this ill-conceived war.
Granted, its incongruous
(and funny) to see liberal Democrats in green eyeshades fretting about
budget deficits like yesterdays Republicans, but thats
two-party politics for you. When one party goes nuts, youre stuck with
the other one. And if Ralph Peters is any indication, the Republicans have
gone nuts.
Joseph Sobran
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