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Entry: Learning to Love the French Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/learning_to_love_the_french#12370 Post contents: Very useful lecture on a very interestig subject. Merci Monsieur Coulombe. I am a French educated (Universite de Strasbourg) Balkan tribesman, brought up to appreciate French (and Russians) and to distrust Muslims ('Turks') and Catholics ('Latins'). A Slovene friend of mine (a devout Catholic) told me, after having lived in England for a while, that the best Catholics are those who lived in Protestant countries ('They are so stunned by the Protestant hypocrisy, they had no choice but to turn towards Christianism'). It took me a while to realize what he meant , and this only after I landed in America. The catholicism in France was rather tolerant (perhaps because it was on the defensive) and it came as a surprise to me to find Protestants so sectarian. My first (and last) friends were Irish Catholics with whom I could discuss any subject without animosity or bitterness. Some of them were Liberals, others very Conservative. Anti-Communism (to which I scarcely suscribe now) and Goldwater was the common meeting ground. The French-Americans whom I met very rarely, although very proud of their origin, were 'agringados' beyond recognition. I met some 'Acadians' in Louisiana who disappointed me completely by their parfect ignorance of a most rudimentary French (ditto, for those numerous Bretons I met later on, on the Virgin Islands)(made me wonder what they were proud of). These were the sixties when there was a raging jewish animosity against De Gaule for his disengagement from Israel's adventurous rampages. I learned then that opposing Israel's interests in the U.S. represented a 'rude epreuve' for anyone who dared do it (and this at the times when the burning of the Stars and Stripes didn't provoke any particular outrage). The last France I felt affection for was Jacque Chirac's ( and his magnificent foreign secretary Villespin). In the hands of Sarkosy it has sadly become a vulgar french poodle of the Anglo-Saxons. But, all is never lost with the French, who, unlike Americans, are a rebelious people. They will not tolerate for long anybody's tutelage- especially not from those they consider culturally inferior. My favourite French-American, or 'tout court' American is, without any doubt -Mike Gravel. Sent at: 2008 11 23