Seeker Blog

Tigerhawk invested a good bit of effort to type out key paragraphs from the campaign book “Testimony” of French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy. Thanks, mate!

France’s friendship with the United States is an important and lasting part of its history. I stand by this friendship, I’m proud of it, and I have no intention of apologizing for feeling an affinity with the greatest democracy in the world. It goes without saying that this friendship does not prevent either side from making its own assessments and taking independent action. And since this goes without saying, I don’t feel it necessary to run around chanting it every chance I get. It often seems to me that the more you assert your independence with words, the less independent you are in reality.

France and America are bound together by unbreakable historical links. People often forget that the Revolutionary War, which led to the creation of the United States, was long and difficult, and that its outcome was uncertain for some time. But France was right there at America’s side for the decisive battle of Yorktown in 1781, and it was a young Frenchman, Lafayette, who led the final attack on the English camp. [The French navy’s victory over the British off the Virginia coast represented the only victory of the French over the British during the entire 18th century. - ed.] Without French support, history might well have followed a different path, one that would have been less favorable for the development of human freedom. [”Sarko” conveniently omits Napoleon III’s invasion of Mexico in 1863, which was calculated to gain leverage on the United States while it was divided by civil war. The victory of the Mexicans on Cinco de Mayo may have saved us from intervening French perfidy. But let’s cut Mr. Sarkozy some slack — all politicians take liberties with history to make their point, and his point is ultimately gratifying. - ed.]

In the twentieth century, it was America’s turn to protect France’s freedom on several occasions. In 1917 and again in 1944 hundreds of thousands of young Americans crossed the Atlantic to pull Europe back from the verge of collective suicide. The French cannot forget that it was the Americans who liberated them from Nazi barbarity and who put an end to the bloodletting that this regime inflicted on the whole of Europe. For the forty years that followed the war, during which another kind of totalitarianism — communism — engulfed Eastern Europe, it was the military alliance with the United States that enable France and Western Europe to preserve their freedom. After centuries of hatred, after the Holocaust, European nations embarked upon one of the most ambitious projects of their common history: to create a zone of peace, unity, and solidarity. The United States was always at the forefront of this project, supporting it politically and financing it with the Marshall Plan, which protected Europe from Communist imperialism.

I am particularly sensitive to this gift of liberty in several ways: as a Frenchman, as a political leader who has always worked to promote freedom, and finally as a son who wants to honor his father, who settled in France in 1948 after fleeing Communist Hungary.

France and America, then, stood side by side to defeat the two deadliest forms of totalitarianism in world history. And now at the start of the twenty-first century, the United States and France again stand together in the same camp against a serious threat to global freedom. It was the United States that was attacked by Islamist terrorists on September 11, 2001, but it could just as easily have been France. Indeed, many French citizens died that day in the Twin Towers. Terrorists do not distinguish among free societies. They want to destroy or subjugate them all, without distinction.

Every time that terrorism strikes — whether in New York, Madrid, Beslan, Tel Aviv, Casablanca, Amman, or London — it is freedom that is the target. Facing such a threat, free countries have no choice but to pool their forces and work together….

This book presents my analysis of the difficulties France faces. It outlines my proposals for putting France back on the path toward economic growth, social justice, and modernity. [What, exactly, is “modernity” code for, in this context? - ed.] And it addresses many of the common domestic, international, economic, and social challenges that advances democracies like France and the United States must confront.

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Read the whole thing at Tigerhawk. You’ll find that Sarkozy may just rescue France from it’s death spiral.