There has been quite a bit of comment on VFR about what one might call the United States’ “Proposition Nation” problem: the idea that America is not a real nation springing from a distinct people on a distinct land, but rather a place where anyone who subscribes to a set of abstract poli-sci principles, no matter where he is from or who his ancestors are, has just as much right to be here as the natives (indeed more, if the natives do not genuflect to the Proposition).

Thanks to the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, France has the same problem, although (until now) demographics have made it less acute. The revolutionaries and their heirs on the Left, among artists and intellectuals as much as among politicians, have deliberately held up France as a model for all the world to emulate, an embodiment of universal principles. The French have even vaunted their acceptance of people who are not “français de souche” (French by blood), boasting about how Alexandre Dumas was part-black, Léon Blum was Jewish, etc., yet fully French. While the Dreyfus affair showed its limits, this modest diversity fetish has been part of the French scene longer than multiculturalism and diversity-mongering have been part of the American. Even Charles de Gaulle played the game, although he had the sense to insist that racial and religious minorities must remain minorities if France were to remain French. Veneration of non-white “Others” and refugees (even when bogus) has become a Left-wing totem with mainstream acceptance. This “droits-de-l’hommisme,” as Philippe de Villiers calls it, is one reason why almost no one in the French establishment is balking at the possibility of Turkey’s joining the EU, thereby removing any remaining restraint on the flooding of Europe by Asians and Africans.

An unsurprising consequence of this is that when elements in France whose roots in the country are not deep, to put it mildly, start agitating for changes that make France no longer French, it is harder than it should be to call for national self-preservation because there is something inherently worthy about France the land and the French as a people, as do such as Jean-Marie Le Pen and de Villiers. The whole thrust of Republican education is to indoctrinate Frenchmen with the idea that France is a nation with a universal vocation, an inclusive and tolerant bastion of liberty. (Sound familiar?) Many good Republican Frenchmen are genuinely horrified by some of the things Le Pen says, mild though they actually are. Just like liberalized Americans, liberalized Frenchmen would rather commit national suicide than be thought intolerant.

Exacerbating the French crisis is the way that Roman Catholicism, which should be a primary unifying factor in France, was ruthlessly forced to the sidelines of national life in the early 20th century by parliamentary Radicals and Socialists. (Of course, the Holy See of our Koran-kissing incumbent is not likely to be much help in this struggle.) There is no effective Catholic counterweight to the Islamisation of France, even though the vast majority of Frenchmen are (at least nominally) Catholic.

France’s national question is as acute as America’s, and surprisingly similar. HRS

In your list of French politicians I couldn’t believe you left out the very great Jean Marie le Pen. Shame on you.

I don’t get Alci’s point. In any case, I used the names that happened to appear in Caldwell’s article.

Correction: Le Pen was mentioned in the article.

Le Pen’s name is actually Breton in origin, so the great nationalist may actually incarnate a Gaulish Celtic strain present on French soil before the arrival of the Germanic Franks who have given their name to France.

PC is everywhere, and not least in Christopher Caldwell’s article, which is better than The Weekly Standard’s standard. Caldwell discusses the attack on French rabbi Michel Serfaty last October, but contents himself with blithely describing his attackers as “anti-Semitic youths,” leaving the ignorant with a vague impression that Serfaty was set upon by French thugs (neo-Vichyards?). Le Monde, a newspaper almost as PC as The New York Times, was more forthcoming in its coverage: Serfaty’s attackers yelled “yahoud” (“Jew” in Arabic) and “Palestine, Palestine, we’re going to smash your face in” at him before attempting to do so. French thugs would presumably shout their anti-Semitic imprecations in French. Serfaty later identified one Azou Gagh (français de souche?) as one of the assailants. If we cannot name our problems, we will never solve them.

Ironically, Serfaty is a fine example of a clueless multiculturalist. A Jewish spokesman of sorts in France, he has called for greater Israeli-Palestinian understanding and has co-written a book with an imam and a Benedictine. Le Monde characterizes him approvingly as someone “unanimously considered a man of open-ness and dialogue” and notes that he is fluent in Arabic. If France continues on her current course, at least he’ll speak his new masters’ language. HRS

Mr Auster, a minor correction: Baverez and Bové are actually french names, while Fabius is obviously not .Fabius is most probably a german-jewish name,as Mr. Fabius is jewish.

Since when is “José” a French name? And “Baverez” looks like a Spanish name as well. As for “Laurent Fabius,” it certainly doesn’t _look_ Jewish. :-)

Part of my point is, it’s not just where people come from, it’s the degree of their assimilation. When the names of people in a country become more and more foreign, that’s one of the many factors that makes the country seem no longer its historical self, adding to the general anomie and alienation. So the adoption of names that fit with the host culture is important. Issur Demsky changed his name to Kirk Douglas. Izzy Beilin changed his name to Irving Berlin. And, coming back to France, Ivo Levi changed his name to … Yves Montand! Believe it or not, Montand was an Italian Jew. He moved to France when he was about 20, and became the archetypal 20th century Frenchman.

So there are several interrelated factors here: the immigration itself, the size of the immigration, the degree of cultural/ethnic difference involved in the immigration, the vitality and authority of the host culture, and the extent of assimilation; and I’m saying that the growth of completely non-French sounding names in France is an index of the loss of national identity that suggests both an excess of immigration and a failure by the host culture to maintain its own identity.

Howard Sutherland referred above to the United States’ “Proposition Nation” problem. Just as a matter of interest: G.K. Chesterton identified the problem as early as 1908, in his book Orthodoxy: “The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself…Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England”.

How about that. Chesterton saw the same phenemenon 100 years ago.

“The transcendent could be defined as that quality of an existent that is more than the sum of its parts. The whole—the essence—of a human being, or a sports team, or a nation, or a book, or a symphony, or anything, is more than its individual parts. The parts can be seen and experienced by the senses or by empirical reason based on the senses; the whole cannot be experienced directly by the senses; it is transcendent.” — Lawrence Auster

“The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason.” — Chesterton (as quoted by Paul)

Can everyone see that these two taken together come out exactly right, since the inability to enumerate, to cite, to define, all the reasons for one’s love — loving, in part, “without a reason” — amounts to loving (at least in part) transcendantly? And since transcendant love is the strongest, highest, and deepest, of COURSE a man is less likely to ruin the place he loves, if he love it in that fashion — if he love it in a way that partly defies analysis or precise definition, for example in terms of the sum of its parts.

Good point by Unadorned. To love your country as an “idea” is to reduce it to a simple rational formula that all can understand (see Michael Oakshott’s essay on Rationalism). The liberal rationalist has no grasp of the transcendent.

In fact, I drafted something along these lines the other day, and Unadorned’s comment has inspired me to post it as an article:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001973.html

L.A.: “Since when is “José” a French name? And “Baverez” looks like a Spanish name as well. As for “Laurent Fabius,” it certainly doesn’t _look_ Jewish. :-)”

Well, it is not uncommon for a frenchman called Joseph to shorten his name to José. In fact, it turns out that Mr. Bové´s father was from Luxemburg! Bové is certainly french or walloon:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%E9_Bov%E9

Baverez may look like a spanish name, but it´s simply not (take it from a Spaniard and philologist): you can look that up here:

http://noms.voila.fr/v2/welcome/default_voila.asp

As for Fabius, it is widely known that he´s jewish: see:

“on ne peut ignorer le rôle du courant monarchiste dans l’entretien, jusqu’à nos jours, de cet antisémitisme virulent agitant le débat politique et intellectuel français. On ne peut, en ce sens, sous-estimer la fonction ou les effets des violentes diatribes dont une Simone Veil ou un Laurent Fabius auront, par exemple, fait l’objet.”
http://www.lcr-rouge.org/livre113.html

The name Fabius comes from the jewish name Fabian (also gentile):
“FABIAN
1. English, French, Polish, Austrian, and Venetian: from a given name (Latin, “Fabianus”, a derivative of “Fabius”, a Roman family name perhaps derived from “faba” bean.) The given name achieved some popularity in the Middle Ages as having been borne by a 3rd century pope and saint.

2. Jewish adoption of the non-Jewish surname under the influence of the Yiddish male given name “Fayvish”. “
http://www.behindthename.com/wwwboardarc/messages/2835.html

It was latinized back to Fabius the same way Schneider was changed to Sartorius, etc…

This is informative, I suppose, but I don’t know what the point of it is, since I had already accepted the statement that Lauren Fabius is Jewish. Eufrenio should re-read my comment of December 1st, 6:50 PM.