Learning to Love the French

It is perhaps inevitable that France and America should come into conflict: they are both arrogant nations: France because of her excellent and ancient culture and heritage from which she has fallen so far in the past century; and America because of her conviction that the God of the Calvinists in Whom she no longer believes has nevertheless blessed her above all other lands and set her “as a shining city upon the hill.” Two such colossal national egos, based upon such wildly differing premises, could hardly fail to come in conflict. To the average Frenchman, the United States are a band of uncultured striplings, whose sudden eruption upon the world scene, hamburgers, fries, and cokes in one hand, nukes in the other, determined to reduce the world to its own insufferable sterility. For the American, France is a nation of ungrateful whiners who not only have forgotten what was done for them in two world wars, they insist upon acting superior despite being political and military failures. Obviously, there is much truth in both views.

But it is a tad more complex than that . . . read the entire article here.