Equality is a French word. Liberty and fraternity too.
The three ‘republican values’ are all revered in France. Every French person knows which country it was that invented the culture of rights – to ‘liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression’, specifically, according to the 1789 Déclaration des droits de l’homme. 215 years of law-making later and the values of the French revolution are more deeply embedded in French culture than ever.
The doctrine of citizens’ equality in particular has reached the proportions of a fetish. There is a furore whenever a politician suggests changing the universal system of teachers’ pay, and a proposal to ban the Muslim headscarf in public buildings is not seen as in the least bit politically incorrect. Equality is an imperative, and if necessary it must be enforced. Fraternity clips neatly on to equality, and it would be hard to accuse the French state of lacking compassion. Social insurance is generous and the government continues to intervene, with much approval, to ensure that people enjoy long holidays and work short weeks. In France the public sphere is still very much legitimate.
As a kind of icing on the cake, the French have enjoyed relative liberty for the best part of 200 years, and – as even Americans would be compelled to admit – they were pioneers of democracy too.
Yet the French have much more in common with Americans than either people likes to think. Both countries see the rest of the world as essentially their own hinterland. Americans are famously and shamelessly ignorant of the cultures and values of other peoples; in France foreigners are expected to speak good French, and Hollywood films are routinely and slickly dubbed as if in pretence that Americans themselves are merely French people who inconveniently cannot speak French.
For in reality France and America are united by a thoroughly universalist view of the world, and one underpinned by the same progressive creed. The idealistic patriotism of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ has its American equivalent in ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ (from the Declaration of Independence). The French revolutionary Déclaration of 26 August 1789 was followed exactly 30 days later by the first draft of the US Bill of Rights; the two documents are the original shopping lists of liberalism.
In practice it is clearly true that Americans have placed more emphasis on liberty and the French more on fraternity, but the fact remains: in a global sense, America shares France’s republican values. These values are by definition universal; they are founded on reason and are clearly intended to be applied to every human being. So which country has been more successful at thus applying them?
The French effort to export the republican ideal began with Napoleon, who took it as far as Moscow before succumbing to corruption and military defeat. To an extent clearly a simple war of conquest, Napoleon’s adventure also represented liberation to the peoples of a number of oppressively ruled countries. His progressive Civil Code was widely introduced across central and eastern Europe, and in many places endured.
The 19th century French empire was similarly a standard-bearer for liberty and equality, but this time the fact was more theoretical. Compared to the unidealistic British, France was slow to invest in the infrastructure of its colonies and slow to leave when the time came. Having lost its empires, French foreign policy in the twentieth century was necessarily confined to diplomacy. But things didn’t get better. This was a country that failed to prepare for war with fascism and whose government was the sole in western Europe to capitulate wholesale. In the post-war world France has unhesitatingly sold arms to just about every tinpot dictator at one point or another, has rarely complained about the human rights abuses of its trading partners, and indeed doesn’t even take its European Union partners seriously, insisting on expensive farming subsidies which hurt developing countries. France’s track record at spreading its own unquestionably positive message to the world is not – as of 2004 – altogether impressive.
The USA’s claim to represent a beacon to the world is likewise compromised. Within its own borders, to start with. A relatively large proportion of Americans live in poverty, enjoying liberty and equality which are more legal than anything else (and occasionally not even that). Harsh justice, gun violence and the slavery legacy are other often-cited American failures. Abroad, the US has spent two hundred years building an economic and political empire to rival all others in history; on numerous occasions it has supported or even installed decidedly illiberal regimes in order to further American foreign policy. Today it follows a strategy of ignoring international law to the point of flouting agreements designed to save life on earth.
However, let’s be original. Let’s take the long view, leaving aside the slippery red-herring of imperialism and instead applying as criteria the spread of those shared, supposedly universal, republican values. Looked at through this prism, the facts are clear. At each of the really important junctures in modern world history, the USA has been there, applying its values, practising what it preaches. I refer particularly of course to the ideological experiments and world wars of the twentieth century, which remain the defining events of our time. Every epoque has its tendency to historical shortsightedness, but the current anti-globalisation movement’s obsession with recent American sins is particularly myopic. Historically, the main threat to the world posed by this great, flawed nation obsessed with individual liberty has been precisely the danger that it might not seek to impose its ideals on the rest of us. It is true that poverty still exists, and not enough is being done about it. Quite a lot of people still live under the thumb of more or less authoritarian regimes, and there are even a good few wars going on as you read this. But taking that long view, the horrible fact remains that we’ve never had it so good. Most of the world’s poorest people are getting richer, slowly. Wars are isolated and overwhelmingly unbloody by the standards of just a few decades ago. Political totalitarianism has its back to the wall, now confined to one or two well-known rogue states.
And for this long-term, slow, steady advance of liberty, equality and fraternity, let’s be honest – who do we have to thank?
Perhaps France, the land of philosophers and intellectuals, was never really going to be able to export its values to the world. A preoccupation with ideas has rarely been a good qualification for cultural domination. It is more likely to lead to cultural relativism, which is intellectually charming but not much use at freeing foreigners from tyranny.
It is a shame, in any case.
► Travelog from Central Europe
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— aline 2007-01-01 00:34 #hihihihi