Robert Zaretsky (Continuación)

EuropaUnión Europea

The traditional July 14 military extravaganza along the Champs-Élysées, orchestrated to project a united and confident nation on France’s national day, arrives not a moment too soon for France. For one day, the nation can forget its economic and political woes, kick back and watch the passing parade.

Of course, that the pride of place is given not to huge balloons shaped like Mickey and SpongeBob, but instead missile carriers and tanks, reminds us that here, too, the so-called French exception is truly exceptional.

It so happens that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the thinker some still hold responsible for the Revolution, loved parades.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaEuropaUnión Europea,

In 1645, the young Louis XIV laid the cornerstone to the church of Val-de-Grâce, built to celebrate his birth seven years earlier. A century and a half later, the French Revolution transformed the church into a military hospital. But as its current patient, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, reminds us, Val-de-Grâce’s ties to monarchic power and empire continue to the present day.

From the moment Bouteflika arrived in Paris nearly a month ago after suffering a minor stroke, Algerians have suffered a news blackout. The Algerian government has treated the event rather like its military operation during the hostage crisis at a gas facility in the Sahara earlier this year: with intense secrecy and overwhelming force.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión Europea, ,

Life has been quiet in Paris — Paris, Texas, that is.

Earlier this year, two bills for the legalization of gay marriage were submitted in the Texas legislature. While the odds for their passage are long, the passions they have aroused are slight. No boisterous anti-gay marriage demonstrations have wound past the local (65-foot-tall) Eiffel Tower, and the only red meat tossed around has been on backyard grills. In fact, all that our gun-toting governor, Rick Perry, could muster on the subject was a tepid: “In Texas, it is fairly clear about where this state stands on that issue.”

Where Texans stand is not just further to the left than Perry believes — polls reveal that a majority of young Republicans support gay marriage — but also to the left of residents of the other Paris — the one in France.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

In everything but name, France’s Parliament system is in the throes of a filibuster.

Since Feb. 2, when the Socialist majority in the National Assembly voted to redefine marriage as an agreement between two people of the same or opposite sex, the conservative opposition has filed more than 5,000 amendments, none of which they expect to pass into law, in order to drag out the nation’s seemingly ineluctable march to legal recognition of gay marriage.

Many of the proposed amendments are meant to outrage: A member of the U.M.P., the neo-Gaullist party leading the resistance, demanded that incestuous and polygamous marriages also be legalized in the name of equal rights.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Returning home from a visit to Russia in 1774, the philosophe Denis Diderot wrote that in France, he could not “help but think that I’ve the soul of a slave in a country where men are called free,” whereas in Russia he “had the soul of a free man in a country where men are called slaves.”

Has Gérard Depardieu had similar thoughts of late?

On Sunday, President Vladimir V. Putin welcomed the French actor to Russia with a newly issued Russian passport. Mr. Depardieu, outraged by the French Socialist government’s proposed 75 percent wealth tax, had walked out on his country.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

François Hollande described Tuesday night’s press conference, his first since becoming France’s president, as a “teaching moment” to explain his controversial economic program. One of the lessons, it appears, is that the French must learn to eat their crêpes sans Nutella. While we should not make too much of the popular hazelnut and chocolate spread, it is possible that its fate has become oddly entwined with that of French socialism.

French socialism has long tended to be less doctrinal than inspirational. In part, this resulted from its ancestry: Several different streams — some purer, others deeper, but all of them flowing from the French Revolution — converged in 1905, forming the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

With the start of the school year, the nation has quite suddenly been pulled into a debate over the role and responsibilities of the public schools. Should they limit themselves to teaching skills and broadcasting knowledge? Or must they also furnish the foundations of morality — the ethical groundwork that will allow students to make sense of the world?

Oddly, the debate has sprung up not in the United States, but in France. Even odder, just as they would be in the United States, the opponents in France are secular humanists and religious conservatives. Oddest of all, it is the secularists who are pushing for the old time religion of moral instruction, while the faithful are more than a bit dubious.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión Europea, ,

France will celebrate Bastille Day on Saturday. Like its sister republic on this side of the Atlantic, the French Republic will mark its liberation from the yoke of monarchical rule. But despite the shower of fireworks, parades and speeches in praise of liberty, don't be deceived. Just as America's red, white and blue is the mirror image of France's blue, white and red, liberté isn't quite the same as liberty, especially in the 21st century.

We have long known that France is, well, a foreign country. Take the bidet — which most Americans do, as a cooler for Coke, not a spritz for their private parts.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

The 300th birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau falls next week, and it is only proper to wish him a happy one. He had a few choice words to offer on the theme of happiness — the sort associated not with fleeting social pleasures but with “nothing external to ourselves, nothing if not ourselves and our own existence.”

In 2010, two Harvard psychologists, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, performed a study that used an iPhone app to ask volunteers, at random moments, what they were doing and how happy they were. They discovered that we spend most of our lives not thinking about what we are doing at that moment, whether it’s shopping, eating or, in particular, working.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.” Were he viewing the political scene in France, all that Marshall McLuhan, the prophet of the irresistible rise of image, would add to this prescient remark is: “Or she could ever be.”

Marine Le Pen is the latest victim, or beneficiary, in a French firefight over images. During a recent concert in Tel Aviv, as Madonna launched into her song “Nobody Knows Me, ” a series of images flashed across the huge screen behind her, including shots of Hu Jintao and Sarah Palin.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimoniosEuropaUnión Europea, ,

When asked who was France’s greatest writer, André Gide — no slouch himself, of course — replied: “Hugo, alas.”

As France heads into the first round of the presidential elections, President Nicolas Sarkozy shares Gide’s ambivalence. Suddenly, Victor Hugo has become his principal opponent. Whether it is the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, or the candidate of the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, citing from or identifying with this hulking literary figure — the 19th century’s greatest poet, novelist and bard of the Revolution — has become de rigueur.

To add that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the riotous work that channeled Hugo’s republican and revolutionary sentiments, “Les Misérables,” is, well, the sort of coincidence that would hardly faze the man who contrived to have his hero, Jean Valjean, following his epic trek through the muck and mire of the sewers of Paris, emerge and bump up into the man who had been hunting him for nearly two decades, Inspector Javert.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

With Rick Santorum's decision to end his campaign, the outcome of the Republican primaries is decided. But a different republican primary is just now heating up. The French Fifth Republic is 10 days away from the first round of its presidential elections.

The latest polls show the two front-runners, the Gaullist (and current president) Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Francois Hollande, have each captured slightly less than 30% of the electorate. But the real news is in the pack that follows: Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the extreme Left Party, has barreled into third place with 15%, leading by a neck Marine Le Pen of the extreme right-wing National Front.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

The French empire is back — this time, though, rather than coming to you, you will need to go to it.

Earlier this month, Yves Jégo, the mayor of a small town southeast of Paris, officially announced his plans for the Bivouac de Montereau, better known as Napoleonland — an amusement park commemorating French history, with an emphasis on the emperor’s achievements, that will rival nearby EuroDisney.

The attractions will include the Egyptian campaign that helped begin Napoleon’s career and the brutal Battle of Berezina outside Moscow that helped end it. The reenactment of the taking of the Bastille — the start of a revolution that, depending on your point of view, Napoleon either channeled or strangled — could be the equal of Universal Orlando’s “Harry Potter”-themed Wizarding World.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

“We’ll always have Paris”: Bogie got it right, at least when it comes to this year’s Oscar nominations. While many critics note the nostalgia evinced in “Hugo” and “The Artist” for the innocence of early cinema, they overlook how these films, along with two other nominees, “Midnight in Paris” and “A Cat in Paris,” also evoke nostalgia for a certain idea of Paris.

That this particular Paris is so fashionable in an age of political unrest and economic upheaval would not have surprised the man who, more or less single-handedly, created the stage setting for the Paris we will always have.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

How absurd.

What better response to the news that, a half-century after Albert Camus’s death, an Italian scholar claims that the car accident that took his life was not an accident at all, but instead the work of the K.G.B.? According to the account, a well-known Czech poet confided to his diary that he had learned that Camus, a consistent and courageous critic of Communism, died after Soviet spies punctured a tire of the car he was traveling in, which then swerved off the road and wrapped itself around a tree.

It may be surprising that no such rumors existed at the time.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

Saturday is the 300th birthday of David Hume, the most important philosopher ever to write in English according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Scot, who prided himself on his command of written English but blushed over his stubborn burr, might have mischievously added that the conferences being held in Austria, the Czech Republic, Russia, Finland and Brazil suggest that the encyclopedia’s claim is perhaps too modest.

Why the hullabaloo? Panelists will cite Hume’s seismic impact on epistemology, political theory, economics, historiography, aesthetics and religion, and his deep skepticism of the powers of reason. But chances are panelists won’t have much to say about Hume the man.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

Many commentators and activists have reacted with fury to the French government’s expulsion of hundreds of Roma, or Gypsies, to Bulgaria and Romania. Many critics liken these expulsions to the deportations of Jews organized by France’s Vichy regime during World War II. It’s hard to know what is more outrageous: the policies practiced by President Nicolas Sarkozy or the analogies proffered by his critics.

Yet in the history of modern France, the wartime Vichy regime has no monopoly on xenophobic reflexes and exclusionary policies. Over the course of the 20th century, it was French republican governments that laid the administrative and legal foundations for official discrimination against Gypsies.…  Seguir leyendo »