{"id":63778,"date":"2015-02-18T18:21:08","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T02:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=63778"},"modified":"2023-09-15T04:16:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T12:16:53","slug":"to-be-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=63778","title":{"rendered":"To Be French"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above<\/a>, a reassuring video produced by Pol\u00e9mia that reminds Frenchmen of what makes them unique. The video stands in stark contrast to government propaganda that hammers away at their pride, reducing them to guilt-ridden eloi of a ruthless centralized State, bent on changing the nature of the white, European, Christian civilization praised by Charles de Gaulle. <\/p>\n

A reader was kind enough to work out an English translation.<\/p>\n

A cartoon appears at the beginning:<\/p>\n

Cartoon title: “Everyone is French”<\/p>\n

Martian 1:<\/p>\n

“And are we French too?”<\/p>\n

Martian 2:<\/p>\n

“But of course, everyone is French!”<\/p>\n

Narrator:<\/p>\n

No, no, dear Martian friends, everyone is not French!<\/p>\n

To be French implies a marvelous alchemy:<\/p>\n

To be French is to speak the French language,<\/p>\n

The French language which is our mother<\/p>\n

And the marvelous tool for the exercise of our intelligence<\/p>\n

And the discovery of the Humanities.<\/p>\n

A Frenchman is a European of French culture.<\/p>\n

To be French is to belong to a bloodline<\/p>\n

That comes from the depth of the Ages;<\/p>\n

The French people remain as the heirs of the Gallo-Romans.<\/p>\n

According to the great demographer Jacques Dup\u00e2quier,<\/p>\n

The ethnic composition of the national territory<\/p>\n

Stayed virtually unchanged until the beginning of the 1970’s.<\/p>\n

To be French is to belong to a civilization,<\/p>\n

The European and Christian civilization.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share the memory of the Homeric poems,<\/p>\n

Of the Celtic legends, of Roman heritage, of the medieval imagination, of courtly love.<\/p>\n

Whether one is Christian or not, the Christian values of the world<\/p>\n

Are an element of the French identity.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share a history, a memory.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share the pride of the great, national saga;<\/p>\n

Of the Monarchy, of the Empire, and of the Republic.<\/p>\n

The motherland is the land and the fallen.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share the love of a land, of its different regions,<\/p>\n

Of its varied landscapes, of its marvelous high terrains.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share music and sounds, from the lyre to the bagpipe,<\/p>\n

From the piano to the guitar, from the accordion to the symphony orchestra.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share flavors and scents;<\/p>\n

To be French is to share moments of happiness at the dinner table.<\/p>\n

To be French is to share the desire to live together,<\/p>\n

To have common glories of the past, a common will in the present,<\/p>\n

Having done great things together, and wanting to do new ones.<\/p>\n

Those are the essential conditions to be a people, according to Renan. (Ernest Renan)<\/p>\n

To be French is to join together strength with the Arts.<\/p>\n

Today it has succeeded in the synthesis between technical performance<\/p>\n

And a certain art of living that leaves room for the beautiful, the elegant, and the sensuous.<\/p>\n

It is that voice which today is being followed by French managers and engineers all over the world.<\/p>\n

To be French is a singular identity which gives sense amidst the great noise of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very well that there are yellow Frenchmen, black Frenchmen, brown Frenchmen \u2013 it shows<\/p>\n

that France is open to all races, and that she has a universal role, but only as long as they <\/p>\n

remain a small minority. Otherwise, France will no longer be France. We are after all, before <\/p>\n

anything else, a European people of white race, of Greek and Latin culture, and of Christian religion.\u201d – Charles De Gaulle.<\/p>\n

Let us also listen to Renan: \u201cThe Spartan Song – ‘We are what you were; we will be what you are’ – is, in its simplicity, the abridged hymn of every patrie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Above, a reassuring video produced by Pol\u00e9mia that reminds Frenchmen of what makes them unique. The video stands in stark contrast to government propaganda that hammers away at their pride, reducing them to guilt-ridden eloi of a ruthless centralized State, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63778"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151934,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63778\/revisions\/151934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}