responsible conservatives and progressivernsocialists, as when he went to Canadarnand in a moment of enthusiasm, orrnvisionary transport, cried out, “Vivernle Quebec libre!” “Hurray for freernQuebec!” They said he was senile, butrnhe turned out to be right.rnAnd he will be right in the future.rn(The title of Debray’s book in French isrnA demain De Gaulle.) “It is not lunaticrnto bet on the self-determination of peoples,rnbut it is fanciful to attempt to makerna mobilizing project out of a phony subject:rnthe European Community, for example,rnwhich is being ‘constructed’ behindrnthe backs of the people, betweenrnthe lines of real life. A likable but artificialrncreation which (alas!) won’t last.”rn”The problem is that the legislator ofrnthe future should have been seen in hisrnlifetime as a ‘frozen mammoth,’ an albatross,rnan elderly bull in a china shop,rnwhile the mechanical model maker, thernMeccano enthusiast, passes for a greatrnhumanist.” (There was jean Monnet inrnde Gaulle’s time, and Jacques Delors today.)rn”Let’s speak clearly: de Gaulle sawrnand predicted what the Left neither sawrnnor predicted. . . . When a ‘reactionary’rnis always first aboard the train of the future,rnwhile a ‘progressive’ regularly turnsrnup panting as it steams away, there isrnsomething amiss with our categories.”rn”From 1945 to 1975 my guild professedrnas a scientific fact that class struggle wasrnthe motor of history, that the collapse ofrncapitalism was inevitable, that the eventualrnappearance of something resemblingrnsocialism . . . was inherent in thernstructure of things. On discovering theirrnerror, most of them responded by espousingrna new one with the same energy,rnapplication and trenchancy they had appliedrnto the first. . . individualism is thernpredominant force of our time. HumanrnRights the motor of history and the developmentrnof Democracy inevitable.rnThe lads are in for another disappointment.”rn(Don’t think that Debray reservesrnall his venom for his friends on thernleft. En passant he savagely attacks thernFrench neocons, like Jean-Frangois Revelrnand Andre Glucksman.)rnThe real divisions of our age are notrnbetween right and left but betweenrnnations and the globalist delusion, andrnalso between the rational word and thernirrational image. Debray’s appreciationrnof de Gaulle and the nation is, in fact, arnparergon in his work. His most importantrnrecent books make a brilliant trilogy.rnnot likely to be translated soon into English,rnwhich discusses how the centralizersrnand globalists use the irrational imagernto control people, to lead them intorndelusion and disaster and away from thernnation and from the word.rnDebray himself cannot always transcendrnthe old categories. He did breakrnranks with his old leader, Frangois Mitterand,rnwhom he served as advisor duringrnthe 1980’s, to become the “brains ofrnNO,” in opposition to the EuropeanrnLTnion and the Maastricht Trcatv. Hernstill believes in the left, however, and devotesrnthe last chapter of the book to waysrnof making it relevant again. He admits,rn”I do not shop at Le Figaro,” although itrnwas Figaros economies editor, Yves Messarovitch,rnwho got Sir James Goldsmithrnto put down his thoughts in The Trap,rnthe most accessible antiglobalist book inrnrecent years. Lie distinguishes carefully,rnbut not convincingly, between “DernGaulle’s nation and Lc Pen’s tribe.”rnSuch minor inconsistencies, which undoubtedlyrnhelped get the book translated,rncannot disguise the key to realityrnhe gives us. Try it yourself. The Serbianrnpeople are a lasting reality; Yugoslaviarnwas transitory, as are NATO and thernLIN., whose blue-helmeted “peacekeepers”rnare the catspaw of America’s interventionistrnelite. Quebec is a nation, anrnenduring reality held down by Canada,rnwhich is neither; Canada is, in the Germanrnphrase, an Unding. Peoples are real;rna people with a religion and a shared historyrnis a nation.rnIs there a lesson here for the UnitedrnStates? Docs our future belong to globalrninterventionism (“gunboat humanitarianism”),rnglobal free trade, and open immigration,rnor shall We the People reclaimrnour traditional religion and relcarnrnour history and our literature? In ThernEmpires versus Europe (1985), Debrayrnwrote prophetically that intellectualsrn”forget that nations hibernate, but empiresrngrow old . . . that the American nationrnwill outlast the Atlantic Empire asrnthe Russian nation will outlast the SovietrnEmpire. . . . Most of all they forget thernlaw of diminishing returns of hegemonyrnwhich has for 6,000 years progressivelyrnshrunk the longevity of empires, andrnbodes ill for their contemporary imitators.rnThese same good technocrats confusernpolitics with economics, values withrnmaterial goods, the autonomy of what isrnalive in a culture with the interdependencernof markets and currencies, in arnword, the primar’ with the secondary.”rnDebray’s views ha’C carried off this reviewrnand I have not mentioned that thernbook is beautifully and wittily written,rnwell translated by John Howe. A few sentences,rnout of context: “Let us start byrnsetting the facts aside and concentratingrnon serious matters—legends, for example.”rn”The hardest thing in politics, thernthing that distinguishes the statesmanrnfrom the politician, is to want the consequencesrnof what you want.” “De Gaullernon the subject of his lost referendum:rn’What else could we do, these days? Wernhad to choose democracy, so we had tornhave popular support.’ This relativizationrnof democracy resembles a scandalousrnshrug of the shoulders, on thernscale of the epoch we arc saddled with.rnSub specie historiae it is rigoroush’ logical:rnthe French people had g