Tiberge on why American conservatives love Sarko
I sent Tiberge, the author of
Galliawatch, this
article and the following note:
Sarkozy Reaches Out to America, and to Its Jews
BY NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT
November 8, 2007
WASHINGTON—Reversing the anti-American stance of his many predecessors as president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy heralded a new and optimistic era of American-French relations yesterday on his first state visit here.
After a black-tie dinner Tuesday night at the White House, the French leader received an award yesterday morning from the American Jewish Committee before addressing a joint meeting of Congress at the House of Representatives, where he was greeted with a standing ovation. Mr. Sarkozy then traveled with President Bush to the Virginia estate of President Washington, Mount Vernon, for talks and a tour. [cont.]
LA to Tiberge:
Conservatives see Sarko as a conservative and as an ally. I think they’re fooling themselves, and the main reason they fool themselves is his praise of America. It’s so easy to win American conservatives over, all you have to do is praise America, thank America for fighting Hitler, talk about the American cemeteries in Normandy, and the conservatives go nuts. I was talking to a conservative today who was so enthusiastic about Sarkozy: “Isn’t it great, Sarkozy is a conservative, he likes us!”
Maybe I’ve become prejudiced anti-Sarko. Maybe we need to deal with that aspect of him that makes conservatives like him, and see if there’s anything to it.
Tiberge replies:
It’s not that you’re prejudiced against him. There’s no question that he must seem like a breath of fresh air to American conservatives. But if they’re fooling themselves, it’s in the same way they fool themselves about Bush.
Sarko and Bush SEEM conservative compared to Segolene Royal or Hillary Clinton. I’ve said before that most people cannot take that necessary leap into a more nuanced understanding of what these people really stand for. A man says he’s conservative, runs on the conservative ticket, makes a few mild gestures to conservatives and voila! He’s a conservative for all time.
But Sarkozy feels guilty for being even ten percent conservative! Otherwise why would he hire so many socialists, and grovel before Islam, and date (I think) a Muslim woman, and rush into the EU treaty despite his campaign promises, and cleverly help Turkey into the EU, and all the rest? He makes small gestures, band-aid solutions, to look conservative but he’s not. However, he’s not a socialist either. He likes America—sincerely. He likes our history and our culture and he recognizes the need at least to have some kind of working relationship. Possibly he’s like Tony Blair—a modified socialist, with some desire not to break with America.
As for his meeting with the Jews, some French nationalists are acerbic about that because they see him as a lackey of the Washington-Israel axis, or whatever name they give it. This is what is so infuriating about certain French nationalists, whom I quote frequently. Their general ideas and values are fine and good, but there’s this flaw—they hate America and Israel. So they hate Sarkozy doubly for his reaching out to us. And soon he will visit Israel! This will be seen as another act of betrayal by the nationalists. (Note: there are different types of nationalists—not all are anti-US/Israel.) And in this respect I’m on Sarkozy’s side. He’s a head of state, he’s supposed to visit different countries. To mock him for coming here or going to Jerusalem is ridiculous, and endangers the whole patriotic cause in France.
But at the same time he is aggressively pro-Islam. He has created several government institutions that give Islamic leaders great power, thus endangering the country he claims to be protecting. Will he say that to the Israelis? No. He will tell them, as he told us, that he wants to mend the rift. And they too may be fooled by him.
I think he is a weak man with strong contradictory convictions. Part of him wishes he could be a true traditionalist. But the other part is afraid of the left and of Islam. He cannot admit his fear, and he just keeps making promises and band-aid solutions that can never make a dent in the French crises.
LA replies:
“Most people cannot take that necessary leap into a more nuanced understanding of what these people really stand for.”
That’s not something that could be said of you.:-) This is really insightful.
Tiberge replies:
Thank you. But reading VFR has been a big help. I can’t imagine I would have seen so clearly without your analyses. Or, it would have taken much longer. It’s one thing to sense something is wrong. It’s something else to know what is wrong. Reading VFR often brings me new information, but more often than not, it confirms things that I feel amorphously but don’t bother to give precise form to, out of indifference or laziness. You force the laziness out of a person.
LA replies:
Giving precise form to things we otherwise feel amorphously: What a good way of describing what Voegelin would call the activity of reason in articulating the intelligible structure of reality.
Mark E. writes:
There is nothing foolish about liking a French President who is so enthusiastically pro-American, and not just in foreign policy but in spirit. Sarkozy’s recent “60 Minutes” interview, and his recent address to the Congress, showed many good reasons why conservatives should at least feel supportive of him. He seems like someone who could as easily—or more easily—have become American than French. VFR can and should disagree with his policies towards Islam, but although that is important, it cannot determine who is and is not worthy of American conservatives’ support generally. Liking a country’s leader because he is a strong ally and likes and respects our country in its distinctiveness is nothing foolish and is plenty “conservative” enough for me in assessing a world leader.
PS- Here is link to Sarkozy speech to Congress, published in the New York Sun.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 10, 2007 09:03 AM | Send