Equal but Separate, Part Two

Here, beloved readers, is part two of my manifesto (be sure to read my last post if this is going to make even a fragment of sense). Stay tuned next week for something more in line with the light-hearted drivel you expect from me.

FREE SPEECH
Both France and the US hold liberty dear, and no liberty is more central than the freedom of expression. But once again, the two countries part ways on how they allow this right to play out, or the limits to its exercise. The US again pushes this freedom to the limit, banning only expressions like the famous “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” where speech directly creates danger or harm to others.

France honors the same principal, and includes the same limit, but defines harm quite differently. In France, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust happened. It was within the past couple of months made illegal to deny the Armenian Holocaust happened. You could either face steep fines, or literally go to jail, for either. In the aftermath of the Danish/Mohammed cartoon scandal last year, a French satirical paper re-ran the same cartoons out of solidarity, and currently the newspaper is facing charges. Perhaps the French mood is changing—at the trial for the newspaper, several presidential candidates showed up to testify in support of the newspaper.

When the French see American neo-Nazi or Ku Klux Klan marches covered in the media, they take it as additional evidence that our culture is more anti-Semitic and racist than theirs is. The difference is similar to the equality question above (maybe our country has too many shrinks) — we thrive on tearing the scab off our problems, admitting them, wearing them on our sleeve, letting it all hang out, perhaps bordering on a sick obsession. The French, on the other hand, take a more ostrich-like perspective—if they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. My opposition to the French model is on two levels—first, what if the speech (even if it’s something as hateful as Holocaust denial) is the canary in the coal mine? What if it the hate speech allows the nation to see that it’s profoundly failing on a basic public policy basis, and inter-group resentment (think this summer’s French suburban riots) is brewing. I think it’s better to find that out. I also believe very strongly in the idea of the marketplace of ideas. Sure, let the neo-Nazis or Ku Klux Klan march, because they’ll turn out a few dozen people, whereas the protest will draw hundreds or thousands, and an impressionable young child watching the events will take away the correct lesson on who to emulate.

A pending counter-example to the general American openness is the long-term effort to ban flag burning. I think it’s another case where you let the moron do whatever s/he wants, and you trust your compatriots (and perhaps yourself) enough to let the transgressor know that this kind of behavior is problematic. But the idea of flag burning leads us to our next subject, that of patriotism.

PATRIOTISM
People in both France and the US clearly love their countries. But in France, strong declarations of patriotism are considered to be dangerous potential rightist tendencies. Whenever French people visit America, they are shocked by the number of American flags they see. In France, you only see French flags that are flown at government offices, and perhaps those for sale in tourist shops. The 2002 soccer World Cup was a rare exception to this tendency, with French fans painting their faces red, white, and blue and their team’s ultimate victory triggering celebrations by millions in the street. But, even in the aftermath of this good fortune, the French examined their patriotic response, wondering how fragile the distinction was between a stadium full of patriotic soccer fans, and an excessively whipped-up rally of pre-fascists.

Perhaps, with patriotism as with Holocaust denial, the much more immediate historical relevance and/or complicity of the French during World War II, leads them to better understand what’s really at risk if things go too far. They would rather bring things to a stop too soon than too late, risking a small preemptive loss of freedom to prevent its wholesale loss (such as what they directly experienced just 60 years ago.)

GUNS
Speaking of war, both countries love their guns. Both nations have their interest groups that fight tooth and nail to maintain their rights on this front. In 2002, Jean Saint-Josse, the leader of the French Hunt, Fish, Nature, Traditions (Chasse, pêche, nature, traditions) Party received 1,204,863 votes, or 4.23%, of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. The French presidential election consists of two rounds, the first which involves all possible candidates running in one field and the two highest-scoring candidates advancing to a winner-takes-it-all second round thereafter. The popular saying among the French is that they vote with their hearts in the first round and with their heads in the second round. All this to say that at least 4.23% of the French thought hunting an important enough issue that they put their vote where their heart was and voted for a presidential candidate uniquely on this front. This party would seem to be the group that the National Rifle Association in America once was, or in times of criticism, still claims to be.

Yet, French opposition to handguns, automatic weapons, and the like is nearly universal. They just don’t understand the American fascination with these kinds of weapons, and they constantly wonder when we’ll decide that their impact on our society is too tragic to be allowed to continue. Most French people don’t know about our Second Amendment, and trace our gun obsession instead back to our cowboy history (?!?). But just because they try to contextualize it doesn’t mean they understand it.

Sadly, in the aftermath of the shootings in Utah and Pennsylvania last week, the French all-news radio network led with the story, and editorialized that the two shootings should reignite the debate in our country about the impact of guns on our society. Sadly, later that same day I checked the Washington Post website, and the Utah story was listed as a minor, headline-only link, and the Pennsylvania story never made it into the website headlines at all. For the American debate to be reignited, it would have to be taking place, I suppose.


The conclusion—I don’t really have one. I just find it fascinating that two countries with intertwined democratic histories and overlapping core beliefs can exercise those principals in such different ways. I love to collect anecdotes and examples of how each countries’ freedoms play out. So, let me know what you think, and stay tuned for updates as the year continues.