The French - Bug Splats On The Grill Of History

Earlier this week, the lower half of the hair styling hall of fame presidential ticket announced that, after winning the election in November, he and his French looking co-star would restore respect for America on the world stage. Gaining international respect is John Kerry-speak for seeking French approval. The Democratic cliché is that going into Iraq without French approval cost us the international community’s respect. Had we only shown France the deference she deserves, the whole Iraq business would have gone swimmingly well. But this nonsense defies history and logic.
First of all, there is no reason to believe that any amount of groveling would have enticed the French into alliance. And, there’s certainly no historical precedent for the French making the world a better place. When one looks around the world, the most squalid and despairing places on Earth are almost all former French colonies.
And, the French didn’t need the Iraq war to hate us. The French hated us in the summer of 1944 when we permitted Charles de Gaulle to lead his impotent Free Frenchman to march into Paris after we and the British had just cleared out the Champs Elysees of Nazis for them. All that showing them that undeserved respect has gained for us has been sixty years of gratuitous insults and an occasional fart in our general direction.
The French don’t’ hate us for our so-called unilateralism. The French hate us because we are Americans. They hate our unique culture. The American culture is driven by a need to excel that forces the French out of their comfort zone. That uniquely American culture was on display most vividly in this last week’s Tour de France. The Lance Armstrong-led United States Postal Service team absolutely crushed the rest of the world in the team time trials in a manner that was uniquely American. The Posties just simply outworked and out prepared the rest of the field.
One did not need a stopwatch to apprehend early on that the Posties’ were going to win big that Wednesday. The organization and discipline of the Postal team was so obviously superior to the European teams that the only question was the margin of victory. Detractors will cry that the Postal Service team simply buys the best riders in the world, much as the New York Yankees hoard all the best baseball players. But the team time trials showed that Americans also train harder than other teams. They emphasize discipline more than other teams. The Posties made their victory official on Wednesday, but they won that race in the months leading up to it.
The only team that came close was another American led team of Phonak. Although the team is European, its leader is an American, Tyler Hamilton, who was once Lance Armstrong’s understudy. Were it not for a series of equipment problems, Hamilton’s team might have challenged Armstrong’s.
While the European riders spend their off-seasons drinking, dancing, debauching and getting fat, the Americans spend their winters training and perfecting equipment.
Anticipating American excellence in the team time trials, the French instituted a new rule this year that essentially subsidized the predictably poor performances of the Europeans. The result was that the Posties were deprived of much of what they had earned. And, isn’t that just what one would predict from the French? Steal by subterfuge what you are unwilling to earn with hard work.
It is this uniquely American drive for excellence that has made us the most productive and prosperous nation on earth. It has also made us the most envied people on Earth.
To understand how pointless it is to engage the French as equals, or even as adults, we need only look at their behavior in the horn of Africa. The greatest ongoing humanitarian disaster in the world today is unfolding in the Sudan. The Muslim Arab north is engaged in the full-scale slaughter of the black Christian south. When the United States attempted to involve the United Nations in stemming this genocide, it was the French who obstructed international solidarity. Clearly the French are less interested in justice, peace, or international cooperation than they are in poking a thumb into America’s eye.