Editorials/French Opposition/D-Day Bosh
Tyrrellr, R. Emmett Jr.
E D I T O R I A L S FRENCH OPPOSITION by R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . Paris--Jacques Chirac works in a building that is monumental: gilded ceilings, marbled interiors, doors tall enough to dwarf an...
...They are inclined to think that America would be fine if only it were more like Europe...
...Montand speaks animatedly of the need to "save democracy even with its D-DAY BOSH We reflect on the past much more easily than we reflect on the present, for when the past is returned to us its anxieties merely edify or amuse...
...No, I do not think that the nation that conspired with Hitler can shame us for not having invaded Normandy sooner...
...Stupidity is even more prevalent than in the 1930s...
...He is now the Jimmy Carter of his country, a man whom the gods in their ribaldry brought to power though his beliefs were from another age...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S WHAT IMMIGRATION CRISIS...
...Had Hitler not gratuitously declared war on us after Pearl Harbor FDR would have had an even more difficult time getting our troops'to Normandy, and as it was, 1930s isolationism forced him to corruptions...
...As I write the new immigration bill has passed the House of Representatives by a five-vote margin, but still has to go to conference committee and then return to be voted on once again by both houses...
...In 1932 he wrote, " I f those who make use of the force of France lose heart, not only will our country be menaced, but the very harmony of the general order of things will be shattered...
...E D I T O R I A L S FRENCH OPPOSITION by R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . Paris--Jacques Chirac works in a building that is monumental: gilded ceilings, marbled interiors, doors tall enough to dwarf an NBA center, carpets and tapestries of Lucullan splendor...
...Montand is a large likable man, a French movie star and singer of international repute...
...No one seems to have asked this question...
...There was, of course, a lesson to be learned from the great war against Nazism, a lesson that makes World War II strikingly relevant to our times...
...The country wishes to reflect on the lessons of the event...
...Then, too, though they are certain that we were menaced by militaristic totalitarians wearing swastikas, they are not so sure that we are menaced by militaristic totalitarians wearing red stars...
...The new immigration bill is unpredictable in its effects, but just might go down in the history books as one of the worst pieces of legislation in postwar American history, and I think that we should therefore bear in mind the names of its sponsors very much as we remember Smoot-Hawley, the supporters of the high-tariff legislation that launched the Great Depression...
...A wide range of interests wanted to keep us free of European entanglements throughout the 1930s, and even in the 1940s millions of Americans doubted the need for a large American war machine or for American involvement abroad...
...Few U.S...
...The Russians hooted at our corn8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 memorations last month, reiterating their wartime charge that we should have invaded Europe two years earlier...
...It was, as one commentator said, "a consensus war," which is an inaccurate statement but a statement that dovetails nicely with the present moment's fatuous notion that only after Americans have arrived at a consensus can they fight a War...
...This the yahoo Left did not recognize as they rolled in from the provinces...
...Many Americans, often in influential positions, are not so certain of the goodness of our history and our values...
...Many of them Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Some Republicans (and conservatives) think of the United States as a country which should be primarily European in composition, and all these Mexicans and Orientals worry them, frankly...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...the latter a Democratic congressman from Kentucky...
...This, of course, is what Winston Churchill had in mind when he lamented at war's end that "there never was a war more easy to stop," but first you need wise men and not too many madmen...
...The entertainers who brought it all back to us brought it back in such a way as to edify and to amuse and to reinforce the fatuities of the present moment...
...Then too we heard people speak o f war as futile...
...In Congress the extension of the draft passed by only one vote in 1941, the opposition being supported by no less renowned a figure than Robert A. Taft...
...Time and again we heard repeated the line "never again...
...Communism is democracy's mortal enemy...
...In by Tom Bethell this, they could not be more wrong...
...Consider the Republicans...
...The reason of course is that the liberals and the Hispanics were not about to countenance any such measure...
...This is his Paris office...
...To a capital where Marxism had already lost the intellectual struggle--a development that I have been noting in this column since the late 1970s--and where capitalism was full of vitality came Socialists lost in antique Marxist abstractions and applying their ruinous nostrums come what may...
...Occupation...
...The idea here was to appease the newspaper editorial writers (about the only visible backers of the legislation) by supporting the bill, but to maintain, by the tepidity of one's support, the affection of Hispanics, at an earlier moment targeted by the White House as potential Republicans...
...He is not for paring down military budgets...
...supported the measure ostensibly on the grounds that a "country has the right to control its borders...
...Chirac favors less regulation, lower taxes, more individual freedom, Pershing II and cruise missiles...
...Once a proud fellow traveler he now speaks out tirelessly and eloquently against his erstwhile friends in the Kremlin...
...West Europeans are increasingly turning out to be a cowardly, spoilt, and effete bunch...
...Actually a sizable body of opinion opposed American entry into what became World War II...
...After the signing of that pact the Nazis invaded helpless Poland from the west, and Russia gluttonously gobbled up Poland from the east...
...Toward the Soviets "he must be firm...
...According to Lou Cannon's column in the Washington Post, the White House, which supported the bill, "did not expect it to pass," and when it did, "there was no rejoicing in the White House...
...The Allies waged war to destroy Nazism, and there are very few Nazis around to tell us that war was futile...
...disc jockey speaks English with finer diction...
...I assume that it will pass in one form or another...
...Thus last month when we reflected on D-Day we did so comfortably, and why not...
...Instead the bill contains an amnesty provision which will tend to increase the number of people coming across the borders...
...The French climate of opinion has swung far from the days of GauUist detente with the East...
...The Republicans who supported the bill for undisclosed nativist reasons seem not to have noticed that its effect may be the opposite of what they anticipated...
...In the America of 1984 these two goals are not as easily accomplished as in the past...
...The France they found themselves governing was not a country of abused and impoverished workers but one of the most prosperous and secure countries in the world...
...politicos and no U.S...
...Alas, this also is one of the confused ideas of the present...
...The precedent of rewarding with citizenship those who arrived ilTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 9...
...Universityeducated Europeans are now of dubious value, if you ask me...
...Nations commemorate events like D-Day with two goals in mind...
...What does this mean, that we shall never again come to the aid of democracies threatened by aggressive totalitarians...
...The past brought to us last month is a past strewn with the confused ideas of the present...
...To live," he laments with moving sincerity, "under occupation is terrible...
...Yves Montand is a dramatic example...
...Which is exactly what we don't want...
...Before the carnage began Charles de Gaulle anticipated it, though few listened...
...What America needs now is people from all over the world, low income and uneducated people especially, because they are the ones who will appreciate the country, will defend it and perpetuate it...
...This is true, but, as Patrick Buchanan pointed out in his excellent newspaper column, the unacknowledged reason for support was racialist and nativist sentiment about America...
...follow an unedifyingly devious course just to prepare us for the inevitable...
...They were lucky that we were there at all...
...Thus we heard that World War II was a war that pitted a united America against a common enemy...
...Chirac is tall and suave, immaculately attired but apologetic-though his English is as perfectly accented as Walter Cronkite's, his vocabulary is limited...
...Actually he has no need to apologize...
...I mean, if you really think your country should "regain control of its borders," then why not simply vote for the money for a greatly enlarged Border Patrol...
...Poor M. Mitterrand...
...Americans who believe that Ronald Reagan has exaggerated the danger presented to the West by the Soviet arms buildup of the 1970s will not find themselves very popular in France today...
...Seated midst the splendors of his office M. Chirac soberly points out that the French Socialists came to office promising too much...
...They do not sting as the anxieties of the present always do...
...He is the city's mayor, and the man most likely at this point to succeed Francois Mitterrand as president of France when that woebegone relic passes from the Gallic scene...
...The opposition is concerned about the economy, the government's leftist-inspired encroachments on personal freedom, and that large and unfriendly empire to the east, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
...The country honors those men who fought and occasionally died, for their sacrifice preserved its history and its values...
...Translation: The White House hoped the bill would fail despite its support...
...Many Americans who opposed FDR's interventionist policies based their opposition on America's idealistic disdain for European power politics, a case that was only strengthened by the Soviet Union's 1939 pact with the Nazis...
...Touchingly and futilely M. Mitterrand has applied his obsolete wisdom to France and now its sickly economy is at one with the Carter economy...
...World War II's relevance to our times was neatly kept from view...
...To the contrary he believes in the danger presented by Soviet SS-20s...
...World War II had begun...
...Or is it merely the confused reiteration of a noble goal, just as "nuclear disarmament" is a noble goal which some confuse today for a policy...
...Politicos both left and right are with Reagan...
...Ronald Reagan is "right" in Central America...
...After spending a couple of hours with him one comes away reminded once again of a truth that is very hard for American liberals to accept, to wit: The average Frenchman is profoundly anti-Communist, and for the best reasons...
...If wise men give up the use of power, what madmen will seize it, what fanatics...
...It is the system of "freedom and peace...
...Like so many other Frenchmen today Montand sounds like the antiCommunists of old, and then just as I depart his company I am tipped off as to why he and Chirac and so many others are so alarmed about the condition of their freedoms...
...The Smoot-Hawley of immigration are Alan Simpson and Romano Mazzoli, the former a Republican senator from Wyoming, and the winner of this year's "Strange New Respect" award from the Washington Association of Liberal Journalists...
...as for his limited vocabulary, neither he nor any other member of the growing faction opposing the government needs a plenitude of words to convey to the visiting gringo the French opposition's view of the world...
...Rarely has any legislation been supported and passed both Houses with such a lack of candor all 'round...
...When Chirac speaks of what his policies might be one is reminded of that genial fellow who works in a less ornate office on Washington, D.C.'s Pennsylvania Avenue...
Vol. 17 • August 1984 • No. 8
