Waterloo: France victorious in defeat

The Times ^ | February 18, 2003 | Adam Sage

[MadIvan]

Happygal (who is on the phone to me) presumes that in terms of a French desire for Napoleonic figures, they mean someone that anyone larger than a leprechaun can look down on.

Apart from that, we can presume from this article that the French are totally crazy. Especially their government.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[Dog]

There is not a day that goes by without me inhaling the perfume of the discreet violet” — the flower that symbolised loyalty to Napoleon.

Get the rubber room ready.....this guy is a loon.

[RippleFire]

BUMP

[CFC__VRWC]

My God, Ivan, I think I fianlly understand why the French love Saddam Hussein so - they're just as insane as he is.

[Sir Gawain]

Happygal (who is on the phone to me)

Name dropper. :-)~

[jalisco555]

I've read that Napoleon's pursuit of glory led to the death of one million Europeans. Fitting that this fool celebrates him.

[jdege]

What we have called the "British tradition" was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson, seconded by their English contemporaries Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, and William Paley, and drawing largely on a tradition rooted in the jurisprudence of the common law. Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism: the Encyclopedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Condorcet, are the best-known representatives. [...]

Though these two groups are now commonly lumped together as the ancestors of modern liberalism, there is hardly a greater contrast imaginable than that between their respective conceptions of the evolution and functioning of a social order and the role played in it by liberty. The difference is directly traceable to the predominance of an essentially empiricist view of the world in England and a rationalist approach in France. The main contrast in the practical conclusions to which these approaches led has recently been well put, as follows: "One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose"; and "one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberateness; one for trial and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern." It is the second view, as J.L. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy.

The sweeping success of the political doctrines that stem from the French tradition is probably due to their great appeal to human pride and ambition. But we must not forget that the political conclusions of the two schools derive from different conceptions of how society works. In this respect the British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the rationalist school was simply and completely wrong.

- F.A. Hayek, "The Constitution of Liberty"

[Sofa King]

"I've read that Napoleon's pursuit of glory led to the death of one million Europeans. Fitting that this fool celebrates him."

You said it.

[Cookie123]

These people really ARE crazy! Gimme a break!

[LarryM]

That Napoleonic stuff is hilarious. But that is all the French have. The big elephant in the room is France's appeasement of Hitler and the French army's collapse in May 1940. If I had that level of shame in my history, I would go back to Moses for glorification!

[Paraclete]

Therefore, the EU will be impossible to maintain at its core?

[MinuteGal]

While smelling his violets, M. Villepin should remember Napoleon was of Italian (Corsican) descent, not French.

Perhaps this perfumed papillon should be sniffing garlic instead.

Leni

[Cicero]

[Dog]

LOL!!!!!

[vbmoneyspender]

Napoleon symbolizes everything that is wrong with the French. Although he was certainly one of the great military geniuses of all time, Napoleon simply refused to train his subordinates so that they could operate independently of him. In effect, Napoleon believed absolutely in central command and control through one man -- him. As a result, in order for French troops to be victorious, Napoleon had to be on the scene. And this unwillingness to properly train subordinates so that they could general on their own eventually led to the defeat of the French because Napoleon simply wore out. Even he could not be at all places at all times.

After the Napoleonic Wars ended, the Germans saw how harmful it had been to the French that Napoleon had been unwilling to properly train his people and to then provide them with the support and authority they in order need to win. The German response was to create one of the most successful instititutions of the 19th century, which was the German General Staff. And the reason the German General Staff was so successful was the that its creators saw first hand how important it was to identify and then properly train officers who could carry out operations on their own.

[tictoc]

Wonderful excerpt from Hayek, thanks.

[tubebender]

I was watching Ollie North doing War Stories last night on Fox. When the allies invaded North Africa our first opposition was the French Navy at Casa Blanca. They scuttled their ships and surrendered within hours and have been blaming the American citizen Humphry Bogart ever since.

[tictoc]

Happygal (who is on the phone to me)

[John Farson]

Get your daily dose of France-bashing here.