For every man, everything happens as if all mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were guiding itself by what he does.

Interesting how intellectuals who most strongly boast "Non serviam!" are the most abject slaves and encourage the most monsterous slavery.

Sartre was a toaddy to the tyrants that came by. During WWII, he sucked up to the Germans. Thereafter Stalin and Mao. He treated his friends and lovers abysmally. Why anybody should be interested in what he had to say, except by way of pathography, is beyond me.

The whole onanistic mess is derivative of the Franco-Prussian War and the fate of the Paris Zoo.

Echoing Robert Schwartz:

Paul Johnson wrote an infamous tome Intellectuals, discussed somewhere on the pages of Brothers Judd I believe. It detailed the perfidy of Sartre to his friends, lovers, and just about everyone else. It really was an eye-opener to me, and the overarching theme was a malignant narcissism ("Hell is other people").

Peter - French perfidy began long before Dreyfus. France's elites have been uniformly atheist since at least the 1600's; and France was never liberal.

Bruce:

One of the seminal works of Modern Times, if you know what I mean.

PJ:

The whole issue is very complex, but although I'm no Francophile, we have to admit that much of 19th century France was democratic, tolerant and a refuge for dissent from the Austrian-Prussian-Russian authoritarianisms. Even today, they get full points for racial tolerance at a personal level. But they are suckers for "the big idea", and they won't learn.

While Sartre is pretty much completely worthless(tough for me to say about a fellow Alsatian), I don't quite understand what your point is. Are you saying that Dreyfus is guilty? Are you saying that the Catholic landed aristocracy wasn't behind railroading Dreyfus? What exactly are you trying to say?

"His masterpiece, L’Etre et le neant, published in 1943 at the height of the second world war, is one of the great works of contemporary philosophy."

Which just shows that contemporary philosphy, indeed everything written after Hume, is a an exercise in sado-masochitic self-abuse, and is just twaddle.

This is the first time anybody anywhere has called Christian France 'liberal.'

"old liberal, Christian France"

Existed, if at all, briefly in the 19th century. Liberalism (in the sense of believing in life, liberty and property, not Howard Dean) was a minority position in the 19th century and by the 20th had been wiped out. At the beginning of the 20th Century, France was divided into two parties one conservative, Catholic and rural, the other radical, atheistic and Parisian.

The first half of the 20th Century was disaster for the conservatives. First the Dreyfuss affair delegitimated them intellectually. World War I devastated rural France. The collapse of the French army and mass collaboration with the Nazis destroyed the remainder of conservative credibility. The disasterous losses in the colonial wars of the 1950s really finished them off.

Only the inability of the radicals to stop infighting and produce a stable government gave the Conservatives any opening, which De Gaulle seized when he pulled off his coup d'etat and established the 5th republic, with him as generalissimo.

The De Gaulle settlement has endured to this day. The radicals got to keep control of the bureaucracy, which really runs the Country, but all action towards a revolution or new Paris commune was set aside. I have assumed that De Gaulle's abandonment of NATO was pursuant to part of this settlement and an explicit agreement with the Soviet Union. De Gaulle got the CGT to act like a labor union instead of a political party, and complete control over France's internal affairs in exchange for pulling out of NATO and abandoning Israel (something he was all too happy to do, as the only people he hated more than the Jews were the Anglo-Saxons).

De Gaulle's settlement has endured. Its shortcomings are beginning to manifest themselves, but things will have to get a lot worse before the log jam is broken and they can get better.

On his blog, Tim Blair highlights this priceless quote from an article about Sartre:

"I have no recollection,” 22-year-old Jean-Francois Vergnoux admitted to the Associated Press. “It’s terrible – it’s total emptiness when I think about him."

bart:

I was trying to say pretty much what Robert said so well. Perhaps "Christian, which I meant in the sense of "informed by (Judeo) Christian values" rather than observant, was misleading, but there was a tradition, minority or not, that wasn't too far removed from modern American conservative principles. It's pretty hard to imagine the Statue of Liberty as a gift from the people of Germany.

Of course Dreyfus wasn't guilty. The sin of the establishment was not in calling that wrong, but in deciding it really didn't matter whether he was or not. National glory and the honour of the army trumped justice and demanded he be sacrificed. Big mistake. In WW 11, the aristocracy put class above nation and collaborated, unlike the British aristocracy which rallied to the cause despite expecting to be destroyed by the socialists after the war. (Yes, I know about the exceptions).

The underlying point, and the modern history of France, is that when elites blow it and choose a corrupted self-interest or self-preservation over principle, they sow the seeds of catastrophic extremism. It blows my mind that this vile little guy was able to wreck such intellectual havoc virtually unopposed in his heyday. Sins of the father, etc.

Robert,

Liberalism, in its JS Mill sense, was the predominant philosophy of France from the Orleanist monarchy of Louis-Phillipe until the DeGaulle period, certainly of the political class. It takes an extremely broad roller to paint Clemenceau, Ferry and Combes with the same color as the socialist, Jaures. France did not have an income tax until DeGaulle.

The death of small-government, anti-clerical hard-line nationalism, i.e. Clemenceau and the Liberal Empire, is one of the great mysteries of French history. The current French leader with the closest position to this formerly significant French thought pattern is Giscard, which shows how far it has devolved. The hardest line nationalist French have always been of the center left, probably an explanantion of why people like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and yours truly tend to treat them with such seemingly irrational indulgence.

I think perhaps WWI, and the huge toll in men and materiel it took on the French, destroyed it. By the Depression, it is fair to say that France was divided into your two camps, certainly the rapid French collapse in WWII was the result of societal splits, 'Mieux Hitler que Blum' and all that. The French military has essentially been destroyed since Dreyfus. The leadership had proven its disloyalty to the Republic during the trial, and an ideological purge of the general staff resulted. Unfortunately, the people who got elevated by the time of WWI, were, as hard as it is to believe, even more inept than the British generals of WWI, people like Joffre and Nivelle. The few French victories in the war were headed by bigoted Catholic generals like Foch and Petain. They took over the military again and the military as an institution was at complete loggerheads with the elected officialdom. By WWII, neither trusted the other.

DeGaulle is correctly seen as a compromise between the liberal nationalists and the Catholics in the military. He was noteworthy as the sole important French Catholic general or admiral to not go over to Hitler. His abandonment of NATO as his abandonment of Algeria were part of a strategy, perhaps inspired by the papacy at the time, to break off from the West. It really is only with JPII that the Papacy had any belief in the sustainability of the Western liberal democratic model, as exemplified by the US, and the bureaucrats of the Curia are still dedicated to America's downfall, as we have seen during Gulf War II. DeGaulle believed that he could ingratiate himself with the Third World and set France up as an alternative both to the US and the Soviets. I will not try to explain how huge an ego and an ignorance of world affairs he needed in order to have that belief. Chirac still believes this, except he is motivated by a desire to enrich himself at public expense that would shame Mobutu.

DeGaulle was an anti-semite, but no worse than any other French, or, for that matter, British aristocrat, and saw Israel as something he could betray. He betrayed the million or so French living in Algeria and its 250,000 Jews, so why would he not betray the Israelis? He hated the 'Anglo-Saxons' almost as much as he hated the Germans, whom he hated more because after all he was Lorrainais nobility. If his family had not lost property to the Germans, he would have been similar to Adm. Darlan, a collaborator who was not particularly fascistic but was fanatically Anglophobic.

The problem with the 5th Republic is that the President is a monarch, he is above the law. If you are a more-or-less honorable man like DeGaulle or Pompidou or even Giscard, it can work but if you are a crook, a self-dealer and a slimeball like Chirac it is doomed to failure like any other form of caudillismo. Just imagine how Bill Clinton would behave knowing he could not be removed from office or tried under any circumstances. And Chirac is far less intelligent, honorable, patriotic or decent than Clinton.

Peter,

I think you are giving the British aristocracy too much of a free pass. Had Lord Halifax been named PM instead of Churchill, Britain would have been instantly transformed into a regime every bit as butt-licking as Petain's Vichy France. Was there a bigger toady to Hitler than Edward VIII in the entire world, except for maybe Old Joe Kennedy? In America, the Cliveden Set would have been hanged.

The behavior of the population of the Channel Islands, which the Nazis occupied, was if anything far more craven than that of the French which is regularly, and deservedly, the butt of cheesy jokes here.

Bart:

History is complicated enough without dwelling on the "what ifs". I didn't say the Brits were all going straight to Heaven. The point is that Britain got its act together and France didn't. To point fingers at the Channel Islanders is a little desperate, no? Not unlike holding up St Pierre and Miquelon as proof of courageous French anti-Nazi resolve.

I don't know how long you are going to be able to maintain this schizophrenic notion that America is the greatest country ever and the Brits are all scum. That's a little like holding up Argentina as the light of all nations while condemning all things Spanish. Even DeGaulle figured out that if you are going to really hate and fear one, you can't exactly embrace the other.

America is not Anglophone English Canada. We are far from solely the product of Old Blighty. Instead, we are an amalgam. In fact, much of our society is far more German than it is English. Our focus on scientific and technical excellence, as well as our more mundane expectation of punctuality, is not an English characteristic. Our most important city, New York, is a big Amsterdam and has always been. It is no more London than it is Paris. The successful assimilation of America's Jewish population is paradoxically almost entirely due to America's Germanness. Ashkenazi culture is essentially the German Mittelstand culture on steroids. Americans who visit Germany are almost always shocked by how 'American' it seems, right down to the bad color combinations in clothing.

The frontier culture had a transforming effect on us, essentially de-Anglicizing Americans. We are not concerned with breeding or accents or any of that nonsense, but are instead focused on what each individual brings to the table. The American West is the classic melting pot, with immigrants from all manner of nations making significant contributions. The Union Pacific towns of Wyoming are predominantly populated by descendants of Italian railroad workers and the first non-Mormon mayor of Salt Lake City was Jewish, and that was in the 1890s.

There is certainly an English influence in our culture, most notably the importance of the common law, but even our most basic impulses like a desire for limited government are products of the Celtic fringe, not England.

Bart: I do not buy your version of early 20th century France. Liberalism in France was killed by the Paris Commune of 1871. After that it was radical atheist Paris vs the conservative catholic countryside.

Robert,

Take a look at Theodore Zeldin's 5 volume work on France from 1848-1945. It goes into great detail about French voting patterns in the period which do not remotely approach your sense of things.

Liberalism's ascendancy in France was during the Belle Epoque.

"There is certainly an English influence in our culture, most notably the importance of the common law, but even our most basic impulses like a desire for limited government are products of the Celtic fringe, not England."

Cato's Letters.

"he successful assimilation of America's Jewish population is paradoxically almost entirely due to America's Germanness. Ashkenazi culture is essentially the German Mittelstand culture on steroids."

Would that be the same Germany that turned its' Jewish population into bathing products? Not to mention Jews were integrated into English life fairly easily.

America's Germanness? Wow, Bart, are you going to start pushing the Teutonosphere?

Americans who visit Germany are almost always shocked by how 'American' it seems, right down to the bad color combinations in clothing.

Americans who've been stationed in developed countries, including Germany, get used to the fact that they all seem rather American, at least in those aspects of commercial culture that catch the eye. That doesn't really prove anything, Bart. You are right about color combinations though: in Kaiserslautern they just couldn't lay off the mustard greens and yellows, which look nice on an African-American, not so much on a blotchy pink Teuton.

Peter:

Visit Texas sometime.

Ali,

Most Americans when they think of Cato, think of the Green Hornet. The center of American independent spirit has always been the mountain folk of the Appalachians, who are almost entirely of Scotch-Irish descent.

There is a fascinating essay by Gordon Craig of Stanford, a prominent scholar of German history, focusing on the similarities between Germans and Jews and how it was precisely that similarity, as when Poe's character meets his double, that created the German reaction.

As a Jew working for a German multinational, it is pretty funny how minor the cultural difficulties are. My immediate superior, also Ashkenazi Jewish, has made the same observation about his experiences.

Peter,

It has nothing to do with any putative 'Teutonoshere' but instead has to do with the fact that there is more to the American ethos than a mere carbon copy of England. You can readily see it in the American Midwest, and I would recommend Samuel Lubell's writings on Germano-America to describe the concept.

Jeff,

I don't know a whole lot about Texas but I find Tejano music with its German melodies and Texican Spanish lyrics to be a real hoot. Spaniards don't use accordions.

Joe,

France is pretty different, as is Singapore. The best way to describe German taste in clothing is to imagine an entire country that looks as if it is about to go bowling.

Bart:

You have seen the signs. Huge chunks of Texas, particularly the hill country, were stettled almost exclusively by Germans.

New Braunfels is a town just northeast of San Antonio. Schertz another.

Proving your point above very well.

bart

Do you have a link to the Gordon Craig article?

Wow.

That part of France that was Liberal was never Christian, and that part of France that was Christian was never Liberal, broadly speaking.

Individual exceptions were there, or course, but the Church was resolutely antiliberal.

I read the posts with interest but will limit my comment to just one -- the alleged independence of the Scotch-Irish of the Appalachians (about one-quarter of my ancestry) never extended to intellectual independence.

They were and mostly still as abjectly superstitious and priest-ridden as anybody anywhere.

Fredericksburg, in the heart of the Hill Country, was named after Frederick the Great. The inscription on the arch at the entrance of the town cemetery is "Der Stadt Friedhof." Hometown of Admiral Nimitz, Fredericksburg is the site of the National Museum of the Pacific War.

Even today probably more Americans can trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other nation. Perhaps this explains their almost complete assimilation over the last 150 years and the absence of a strong ethnic consciousness (e.g., there is not and never will be any German equivalent of St Patricks Day, Cinque de Mayo, or Columbus Day). Their sheer numbers have served to eliminate the need for any celebrations of their origins. Of course Germany's role in two world wars is also a factor, but probably a secondary one.

Robert,

It was pre-Internet but was part of his book, The Germans.

Harry,

I hardly think the divide was that stark, it was more sliding. Most French bourgeois families of the period, even if the patriarch was firmly anti-clerical, sent their daughters to convents where they were trained in the domestic arts. In further response to Robert Schwartz, after the Franco-Prussian war, the Republican government decided to take over much of Church property including rectories and turn them over to public education use. To this day, the prinicipal of a French school receives free housing, traditionally he got the rectory for personal use. Most Frenchmen welcomed this development(a fascinating contrast with the Mezzogiorno where a similar move by Cavour's Italian government was greeted with tremendous local hostility) and even in small, rural villages, the physician, the lawyer and the school principal were a Liberal triumvirate which fought the Church tooth and nail, mostly with great success.

Harry, I made no claim as to the intellectual independence of the American mountain country only to its prickly demands for small government, from the Whiskey Rebellion to its opposition to being dragooned into the military by Southern slaveowners during the Civil War to shooting at Federal ATF agents today who try to raid one's still. They don't want interference in their way of life from 'outsiders' and that usually means Government.

That's the kind of independence that Orrin stigmatizes as license and I call anarchy.

David Hackett Fischer traces it to the lawlessless of what he calls the Borderlands, where Irish, English and Scots preyed on each other and the king's writ didn't run.

Harry,

Like most traditional societies, it is hardly anarchy, having very strict folkways and mores which one violates at his peril.

What France (and indeed the rest of the world) did with Sartre after he got published and read is one thing and I can sympathise with Scrutton on that.

What they did not do is a whole different matter. And what most of the people have neglected to acknowledge in Sartre work is the allocating of responsibilities and accountability is in the self and not in other or outside circumstances. Most of the people I have encountered have assimilated the individualism bit of the existentialism but they were not brave enough to admit that only them are responsible for what happens to themselves. This said, which one of us is prepared to admit the following.

1- Yes, we are all individuals and all have our unique merits and qualities.
2- No, we are not the centre of the universe and we are really not significant.
3- Yes, it is our fault when things don't happen the way we would like them to