Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

The anti-American obsession

Jean-Francois Revel has a lengthy article in The New Criterion on this theme. Although long, it is thoughtful in considering globalism, French exceptionalism, French government subsidy for the arts, the spread of the English language, and so on. "Contrary to what Jacques Chirac maintained, globalization is not a ’cultural steamroller.’ It is and always has been an engine of enrichment. Think, for example, how the French artistic sensibility was revitalized by the discovery—or rather fuller knowledge—of Japanese painting afforded at the end of the nineteenth century, or by the arrival in France of African art ten or twenty years later. There are plenty of similar cases. Unless one has been brainwashed by the brawlers of Seattle and Porto Alegre, the age-old lesson of the history of civilizations cannot be erased: barriers are what diminish and sterilize cultures; commingling is what fructifies and inspires them."

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