Francophilia

...I have never given that lecture in France, but I bet you wouldn’t catch a French audience reacting that way (except, perhaps, for an audience of intellectuals...

...I say “Oui,” lying, fi guring at least I know how to get started...

...True—and it is a kind of pride that is rare in today’s Europe...

...Brady scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of the forthcoming Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality...

...Those stuck-up French...

...Like us...

...est le bistro La Fourchette, s’il vous pla?t...

...Describe the French, and you’re usually describing Americans...

...When I lectured on the book before European audiences, I discovered that my listeners did not enjoy hearing me recite their story...

...But after reading non-French accounts saying that French counterterrorism units are the best in the world, and seeing the scarily kick-ass troops who patrol the grounds of the Louvre, I am no longer laughing at jokes about French fecklessness in the war on terror...

...Some were merely pleasant and effi cient...

...The French think that the French language is special and helps defi ne who they are, and want to hear French spoken in their own country...

...Parisians are not like that...

...We’re talking about the French here, those people who pretend they can’t understand foreigners who fracture their language and who make no effort to be nice to tourists...

...The lady there hasn’t heard of La Fourchette, so she gets out a phone directory, fi nds the address, and draws me a map so I can fi nish my journey...

...others seemed to fi nd clueless Americans kind of cute...

...And as the stereotype of Americans has us...

...Remind you of anyone we know...

...During the fi ve days my wife and I were in Paris, we encountered one surly young waiter...

...The proprietor patiently helped us through our order (lots more fractured French), mimed what he couldn’t get us to understand otherwise, and was charmingly funny...

...The night before, I had been in Lyon with my wife and friends having dinner at a local bouchon...

...They had bought into the notion that Western civilization—i.e., European civilization—has been a source of evil rather than a font of the greatest achievements in human history...

...We were the only non-French people in the place...

...Otherwise, we met a parade of helpful Parisians of several ethnicities...

...We complain that, in foreign affairs, the French go their own way, ignoring the interests of everyone else when it suits their purposes...

...We complain that the French are Charles Murray, the W.H...

...Several blocks on, I go into a shoe store to get a new set of instructions...

...Well, yes...

...Take the notorious French attachment to their own language...

...It was the same everywhere...

...But it’s not as if I’ve fallen in love with some exotic foreign culture...

...The French are stubbornly independent, think theirs is the world’s greatest culture, do the things they do best better than anyone else, are irritatingly proud as a people but warm and helpful as individuals...

...but were embarrassed...

...As time went on, something struck me (besides realizing what a good time I was having...

...The French are just as chauvinistically proud of their artists, scientists, and inventors as the stereotype has it...

...infuriatingly certain of the superiority of things French...

...I probably shouldn’t have mentioned geopolitics, because I’m talking about French people and American people, not about the policies of de Gaulle or Chirac...

...I have loved Europe everywhere I’ve been, but there was something oddly different about the French, and I fi nally fi gured it out: The French are Europe’s Americans...

...Do you...

...So, much to my surprise—for I did laugh at those jokes before—I’ve become a Francophile...

...A few years ago I published a book called Human Accomplishment that was largely a paean to the brilliance of the European legacy...

...in my best Iowa accent...

...We were in the provinces, you say...

...The woman behind the counter comes out onto the sidewalk and gives me instructions, pointing and speaking slowly, asking solicitously at intervals whether I understand...

...The French aren’t like the Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians, whose English is often so perfect that their corporate executives can (and sometimes do) conduct their work in English even among themselves...

...And after seeing a few of the World War I cenotaphs that may be found in almost any French town, and having counted the names of the dead and estimated just what proportion of the town’s male population they must have represented, I am no longer laughing at jokes about French courage...

...As an American who goes silently berserk whenever I hear “Press one for English,” I have no problem with that...