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Jan. 8, 2009
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The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman CHANUKAH FORK-FINGER FOOD FEAST
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Craig Crossman : More gifts for geeks --- and those who love them
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Dion Nissenbaum: Israel kicks out outrageously biased UN official
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Caroline B. Glick: What a PM Netanyahu faces from Washington
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Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn: Groom admits he was caught "red handed"
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Dec. 8, 2008
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Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Truth --- The Key to Gratitude
Jeff Jacoby: UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
June 8, 2005
/ 30 Iyar, 5765
Time to make peace with France
By
Kathryn Lopez
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
With the recent French rejection of the European Union's odious
"constitution," I propose a very different radical idea: It's time for a
truce.
No, not a truce with the "cheese-eating, surrender monkey" government
that advocated Brussels' bureaucratic mess of ill-advised centralization.
With the French people: We shouldn't confuse the two.
In the French vote, which the Associated Press called "a knockout blow"
for the E.U. constitution you can see a clear split. A split between
the French people and French president Jacques Chirac. Between the
French people and the new French foreign minister, Dominique de
Villepin, who, for the heck of it, we'll call the enemy of the people.
(Surely you remember his role as the leading anti-Americanist stationed
at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war.)
Despite the French government's enthusiastic support for the so-called
constitution, 55 percent of the people voted against Chirac's indecent
proposal. Chirac, who has spent the time since apologizing to Europe
must rue the day the oft top-down government put the proposal to a vote.
Denis Boyles, the author of "Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and
Cheese" (Encounter, 2005) starts his book with a quote attributed to
former French president Francois Mitterrand: "France does not know it,
but we are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, a war
without death. Yes, they are very hard the Americans, they are
voracious, they want undivided power over the world." (Full disclosure:
Boyles writes a column for National Review Online that takes a caustic
view of European media.)
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That's the quasi-official French attitude toward us all, Joe and Jane
America. Philosopher Jean-Francois Revel has said we are "practically
the worst association of human beings that history has ever seen." But,
Boyles gives the love back with a little qualifier, arguing that the
France that Mitterrand says is at war with America is "an ongoing
invention of its snooty, elitist, self-satisfied, self-obsessed,
humorless, Paris-dwelling governing class." That's the same governing
class that wanted to leapfrog into the European Union's
identity-killing, secular black hole. And the same elite French voters
rejected. The same French voters Boyles has some affection for, having
lived in France until recently.
When we Americans make the froggy jokes which, let's face it, we're
not all above it's Chirac and company we're thinking of in between
sips of French Alps Evian. After all, "French Women Don't Get Fat," so
there's something Americans can love there.
As John J. Miller and Mark Molesky write in "Our Oldest Enemy,"
(Doubleday, 2004) there is a rich history for us having some legitimate
issues with the French, going back to the French and Indian Wars. The
French considered George Washington a villain. "Our Oldest Enemy" which is about to be published in French isn't kind in assessing the psychology of the relationship: "Time and again in the last two
centuries, France has refused to come to grips with its diminished
status as a country whose greatest general was a foreigner, whose
greatest warrior was a teenage girl, and whose last great military
victory came on the plains of Wagram in 1809." The French word
"chauvinism" reportedly stems from Nicolas Chauvin, a stubborn
Napoleonic officer who refused to admit defeat of the imperial cause.
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And yes, as "Our Oldest Enemy" points out, the French weren't exactly
helpful of late. Save us your Lafayette and Yorktown remembrances, the
authors say; the French have been nothing but "insufferable
obstructionists" throughout the Iraq war.
But for the moment, I'm a peacemaker: I'd rather not dwell on that past,
as rich as it is, and as recent as it may be.
In yet a third recent book on France, "The Arrogance of the French"
(Sentinel, 2005), journalist Richard Chesnoff, who has lived in France
for "fourteen self-flagellating years," swears by their "great wine,
wonderful cheese, and remarkably beautiful women." And the French may
whine about us, but, according to Chesnoff, the people can be won over.
They just don't want to be cast off as irrelevant by, let's face it, the
world's only superpower.
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Oh come on. We care after all the French don't speak German, do they?
On Sept. 12, 2001, "Le Monde," the must-read French paper ran the
front-page headline, "Nous Sommes Tous Americains." We Are All
Americans. Let's run with that spirit and embrace the French love of
democracy they exercised during the E.U. constitutional vote. We can
bond on this. Let's consider the French E.U. "non" of May as a
resounding confirmation: A mighty woman with a torch unites us!
So, go back to your Dom Perignon, branch out from the Wisconsin cheese
now and again, and support the non-ruling caste Frenchmen. And, French
friends, if you still feel like joiners, we don't have a 51st state ... yet.
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