The Wacky World of French Intellectuals

Middle East Quarterly ^ | Spring 2000 | Laurent Murawiec

[dennisw]

ping

[Commander8]

French Intellectuals? What an oxymoron. I thought the think with their....oops I forgot, this is a family friendly website.

[rdb3]

The Wacky World of French Intellectuals

Ummm... That's kinda redundant, isn't it?

[Selara]

More hate filled words by full of themselves French pseudo intellectuals.

[lavaroise]

"unbearable America," a country dead-set on "moral and mercantile hegemony," obsessed with its own "hegemonic design."2

Oh, boy, what is so bad? Are they yearning for America's enemies? Saddam Husseing policing the Middle EAst? Suicide bombers? The TAlebans? All muslim women without effective jurisdictions? Communist gulags? German Nazies? Fascist Mussolini? Hitler?

These are those who felt America was unbearable. French intellectuals are in fact worshiping idols, and since they cannot come to terms with idolising a foreign success that is against idolatry like America, they will tend to worship themselves, much like nationalist hitlerian Germany seeking international agreement with colaborating nationalist nations, such as France. Today this colaboration misnamed cooperation is in the form of the EU.

[swarthyguy]

Richard Labévière wrote a book called Dollars and Islam that i got from the public library.

It's worth reading for its detail in describing globalistation, the modern banking system, BCCI, the Saudis, the USA and the Jihad.

[aculeus]

Thanks for that summary. I understand that the marxists who gave us the Ethiopian famine studied in Marsailles.

[NeoCaveman]

No wonder these people are on their 5th Republic in 200 years. Watch us Continental Europe you just may learn something.

[vbmoneyspender]

I like this guy, Murawiec. Not only does he have the Saudis pegged, but he also has the French elite pegged. I guess that explains why, as a Frenchie, he lives in the United States and not in France.

[chudogg]

The United States is defintitly an Empire and the Worst kind of Empire for the the rest of the world to deal with. This is the reason why European Intellectuals and the various third world despots have so much animosity towards us. You see, our kind of empire is based solely on the dollar. A monetary empire.

Our Empire is based on the the strong work ethic of American families that increases wealth and pioneers inovation and further enhances ingenuity. Our Empire cannot be defeated on the battlefield like traditional empires. Only in the factories, and scientific labratories.

This causes resentment from the classes of idleness. Those who are not contributer's to society, but the incompetents. Those who wish to create their fortunes not by achievement, but by the barrel of a gun. To take away the properties of those who achieved it and earned it, and use it for themselves.

This further agitates the gluttons. They realize they cannot defeat us on the battlefield. For our prospering wealth we achieved built us a state of the art military to protect our achievements. This creates a daunting realization to the people who call themselves progressives. Since they cannot achieve their wealth through their traditional means (force and enslavement), they come to the acknolwedgement that they might have to EARN their wealth. Since that is completely out of that question, they denounce the U.S. as an Empire and continue their ideology of organized theft. And seek alternative measures to erode the soveriegnty of the U.S. by means of the U.N., World Court, Etc. For that is the only path left for them totake.

[dennisw]

I like this guy, Murawiec. Not only does he have the Saudis pegged, but he also has the French elite pegged. I guess that explains why, as a Frenchie, he lives in the United States and not in France.
___________________

How true. Plus there are plenty of French restaurants here if he gets a bit homesick. Somehow I don't think he orders the froglegs. He's a biftek et pommes frites kinda guy!

[valkyrieanne]

Hey - isn't this the same dude from the Rand Corporation who caused such a firestorm over his testimony to the Defense Policy Committee about how "the Saudis aren't our friends?"

[LaBelleDameSansMerci]

What a great contribution to Free Republic---and to the ongoing controversy over the Clash of Civilizations. Thanks for taking the trouble to post the article.

France and the USA--the two revolutionary children (bastard???) of the Enlightenment--one of the "right", the other of the "left", ALWAYS view each other through the wrong end of the telescope. It results in a mutual ability to tell profound truths about each other--savagely ripped from the context of reality-- without ever grasping the slightest idea of the "Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth"---so help us Whomever.

Every fracophobe comment posted on Free Republic is true--but completely false. Exactly as every French idea about the United States--since those poor, benighted aristocrats romantically embraced our Revolution and tried to import it lock, stock and barrel back to their Homeland--is true-but-false. (catastrophically so for the outcome of their revolution. But they had their revenge when, finally, after WWI we imported THEIR revolution, lock, stock and barrel.)

From the "right" or the" left", every isolated bon mot about America from a Frenchman is always true---but completely false when implanted in an entire paragraph.

This pathological transatlantic mis-interpretation!!! It's almost comic---in a sort of horrific way.

There is also a profound--I don't know if it is willful or not--unwillingness to analyse Islam---to read the Hadith--and to understand that radical Islamis normal Islam. When moslems are rich they fight and kill. When they are poor they sing small. Perhaps there is a bit of unconscious Western racism and bigotry in the desire to infantilize Islamics (the last of the "noble savages" perhaps?) and in the insistence that Evil can only emanate from the West---children cannot commit Evil, as we all know.

I also realize that the author of the article has isolated certain ideas from these various sources and used them to create an effect---he is a polemicist, after all. I would hope that conservatives would be able to recognise when an argument is being presented by its enemies; not in its own words. I was suprised that the "wacky" in the title was an actual transcription. He's pretty confindent that he doesn't have to take these boys too seriously, isn't he? He shouldn't be. Almost every "wacky" idea presented in the article has an unsettling resonanace, The attempt to undermine native American opposition to the Empire by using the bane of "French Intellectualism" is clever, but brittle. It won't survive the long haul. The Empire-mongers had better start working on something more resilient---before right-wing Americans start becoming "French intellectuals".

...Laurent Murawiec is a senior policy analyst with the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C...

You see what I mean?---a Last Remaining Superpower pangyrist--a clever one, no doubt, but an obvious one.

There's so much more to be said about this article--line by line if one had the energy. But I'll let everybody else pick it apart.

[JimSEA]

Excellent!! I was thinking about that. The muder of 2 mil cambodians had its origin in the left bank and owed nothing to the Khmer Buddhist tradition which Pal Pot worked feverishly to destroy. Thank you France.

[LaBelleDameSansMerci]

#6---exactly!

There must be some metaphor to convey the devasting effect that French "intellectualism" has when it escapes the safety of it's own geographical borders.

Something about sex being a wonderful thing and AIDS being caused by sex....Or something like that......

[independentmind]

LOL! I saw this article a little while ago and was wondering if you would show up on this thread!

[catpuppy]

America will ... be unable to manage such ... problems as ... unemployment.

This from France that thought it could solve its unemployment problem by cutting the number of hours in the work week.