Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Spring cleaning for the French attitude
I guess I had pushed this whole story from the dusty archives of French history, begun slightly before my birth but carried out almost my entire life, under a mental carpet. This BBC story does an admirable job of characterizing it, putting it into perspective, and allowing American thoughts to engulf what enormity it has in the form of a hold on the lives of almost all French citizens living today. Some may know and escape from the lie, but there must be many, many who haven't or don't want to do so. Their current president may make holding back almost impossible. Time will tell.
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DeGaulle was a very complex person. Since childhood he had an almost religious belief in the greatness of France and the French people. His perspective was mainly historical. The French people also have similar beliefs. If you are interested in the man I recommend De Gaulle, A Biography by Aidan Crawley (Jan 1, 1969), a tedious read.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. I think the writer of the article was caught up with DeGaulle's move to pull France out of NATO. Maybe most of the rest of the material in the piece grew from the British author riffing on his dissatisfaction with that action? (I'm surely NOT an expert here.)
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