Letter From FrenchnAmericanby Russell DesmondnFrancophobia on the RightnSeveral years ago in Paris I was surprisednto find young pamphleteers outsidenthe Hotel de Ville (or “ChateaunChirac” as an acquaintance would say)nshouting out, “Down with the bearded,nsold-out socialists!” When I toldnfi’iends at home, they seemed incredulous.nAfter Reagan bombed Libya Inremember that the people of Englandnand West Germany, our supposed allies,ndemonstrated in the streets againstnus. The French people—despite thencomplaints of Mitterrand’s government—didnnot. After the first revelahonsnof Reagan’s dealing with Iran,ntwo young Frenchwomen, otherwiseninclining typically to the left, told me,n”We were not surprised; nor were wendisappointed.” So many times I seenevidence of French aflEnities withnAmerican policies go unnoticed,nunreported—I often wonder, for instance,nwhy there is not more talknamong American conservatives aboutnRaymond Aron’s subtie attacks on thenAnnales school of historians, or aboutnEtienne Mantoux’s denunciation ofnKeynes.nPart of the problem lies in fundamentalndifferences in temperament.nWe “Anglo-Saxons” (in De Gaulle’snendearing phrase) who are shocked atnthe proliferation of nudity on the Cotend’Azur probably cannot imagine hownhorrified the French are at our tolerancenof episodes of public drunkenness!nFrench political thought is inextricablynentwined around theirnintensely factional politics—a territorynparticularly forbidding to outsiders. Itnis a volatile, intricate kind of chessngame entirely lacking the relative stabilitynof our two-party system. I do notnenvy the student of history who seeksnto disentangle the eight Wars of thenCORRESPONDENCEnFrench Reformation, the 13 or so differentnFrench regimes which have followedn1789, or the more than 100nchanges of cabinet of their Third Republic.nYet beneath this hotheadednsurface rest continuities which are perhapsndeeper than those we claim. Thisnsystem provokes strange incongruities:nMany Americans might be surprised tonlearn that J.J. Rousseau was adamantlynagainst violent revolution or that thenatheist Diderot admonished Bouchernfor the lack of morals in his paintings.nIronically, the “enemy of thenChurch,” Ernest Renan, agreed withnthe positivist Taine and the socialistnJaures that religion was a very importantnbase of politics. The specific politicalnaffiliations which rendered suchnseemingly like-minded classical liber­nSwJ^nals as Sainte-Beuve, Constant, Thiers,nGuizot, and Tocqueville political antagonistsnare almost indecipherable tonus. Yet a consequence is paid. I, forninstance, am convinced that Tocqueville’snhostility to the July Monarchynhas brought undue prejudice againstnhis former professor, Frangois Guizot,na man who virtually dominated half ancentury of French political thought.nGuizot, the Protestant Prime Ministernto King Louis Philippe, is still largelynunknown to the English-speakingnworld.nAnother difficulty is that Frenchnconservative thought—anti-Enlightenmentnand counterrevolutionary—isninvariably allied with two institutionsnalien to the mainstream of the Anglo-nAmerican tradition: Roman Catholi-nArnold Findly DiscovGrgd A FoodnWiikoul Ariificial PreservalivesnnnOCTOBER 1987 I 39n