▲ 119 points
back
115 comments
This was mentioned in "The Brothers" about Allan and John Foster Dulles who directed the CIA to collude with right-wing French officers hoping to overthrow Charles de Gaulle.
> “Honor, common sense and the interests of the country require that all free Frenchmen, wherever they be, should continue the fight as best they may,”
Honor ... when was the last time you heard a modern politician use that word in a speech, I wonder.
I was sad to read a document by the US military defining “honor.” It was an extremely narrow and technical definition. Not the sort of thing that you’d die over.
Like defining “crown” as “an head-worn ornament associated with royalty” and “country” as “an established political unit”. Makes “For Crown and Country” seem like something a crazy person would say.
You can do the same with “Duty, Honor, Country.”
> Makes “For Crown and Country” seem like something a crazy person would say.
The "for Crown" part definitely sounds crazy even with context.
Interesting does anyone know where to find the American definition?
When I was serving in the German armed forces they taught us, that “Inner honour is the ones subjective sense of dignity and value” and that if those values would not align to what military service demands we should not take our pledge and leave.
“Personal honour” is a legally protected entity under German law, so the definition is more or less universally agreed on.
The US Navy has detailed specifications and tables on honors. Like the number of sideboys present for visiting dignitaries, ruffles and flourishes, guns on arrival/departure, and boat "gongs".
I was reading the US Manual of the Law of War by the Department of Defense. It is based off Prussian legal theory.
I’m having trouble finding the definition, but the only available online PDF is a new version. The new version talks about honor, but never defines it.
As it’s generally used, the phrase “honor” is transnational. A soldier who does a good job, in the eyes of both friend and foe, has honor.
So in their German context, there is debate over which solders in WWII were honorable.
Certainly not those involved in the holocaust, but probably most of those who served on U-Boats.
The honor should be recognized by American soldiers as well.
But you see how this becomes circular. To steal from Euthyphro, is something honorable because it is honored, or is it honored because it is honorable?
In practice, it limits what harm can be inflicted, and requires assuming enemy soldiers are good and decent humans until proven otherwise.
The definition I found disturbing treated honor like it was a presumption of technical competency for foreign soldiers.
This sounds pretty different from what you’re describing, which seems more similar to the English word “conscience.”
Do you recall that definition or have a link to the doc?
Or consider Józef Beck’s famous speech responding to Hitler’s threats, with the famous lines:
“Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but a measurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honor.”
Given that politicians cater rhetorically to the populace and are themselves products of the prevailing culture, we can look at how speeches have changed over time to assess the progression of our societies, and this progression tracks closely the decadence described in Plato’s Republic. Honor, in this case, aligns with the spirited part of the soul and therefore timocratic rule. We have since passed from the timocratic stage to oligarchy in which honor is replaced with love of money. Democracy follows in which the base appetites are put front and center and all desires, no matter how base or deranged, are treated equally. (Tyranny is the last stage, characterized by total depravity and brutality.)
Reading de Gaulle's book makes you wonder how politicians became what they are today, it's as if they lost 50iq points and became business owners instead of world leaders
De Gaulle was a cool guy. He was afraid of no one.
"After Washington rebuffed his proposal to overhaul the Western alliance and once he ended the war in Algeria, de Gaulle launched a forceful attack on what he called the "American protectorate." The West's nuclear strategy, the structure of NATO, and West German dependence on Washington were only some of the issues that fell subject to Gaullist revisionism"
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4w10...
Yeah it was so cool when he oversaw the torture and arbitrary detainment of Algerian civilians in a desperate attempt to crush the revolutionary movement.
To be fair, most of the politicians of his time were inept too. Look at the story of the fourth republic. Full of private interest lobbyists and party machinist.
Look at the story of how De Gaulle became prominent in the first place. France, with a huge army, fell to the German army in weeks, while politicians argued, resigned, sacked Generals etc.
Or look at how they ignored the occupation of the Rhineland, when even the German army felt they would be crushed if France attacked.
Etc etc
Oh yes sure, but you had at least some of them who were both successful and caring for the long term state of their country. Today wherever you look, at least in France, you see the same self serving behaviours
Ironically they all call themselves "Gaullists", even though none of them are, but since it is the benchmark of what a leader should be they all defaults to that term. I think de Gaulle's legacy explains why France hasn't completely collapsed yet (only country in EU with the atom bomb, country with the highest % of nuclear in its energy mix, a decent army), all of it is slowly crumbling away of course
De gaule was part of the exception, most politicians have always been cowards but some were also resistant and got jailed during ww2 by Vichy or joined de gaule.
You still see politicians step up today, especially in times of war. I also wonder how much a modern media environment manufacturs or amplifies flaws of politicians, I once met someone in person who was convinced that Obama hated veterans.
Did Giuliani actually step up after 9/11, or did he just read Churchill bedside (as was reported at the time) and imitated what he didn't have?
I used to give him the benefit of the doubt on the above question, but based on the last decade of his actions reported in the press, I'm less clear. There is stepping up, and then appearing to step up. Which would a politician be best at? Or is it the press as you say... the press ignoring things in situations that require unity, and reporting bad things in comfortable times when people are jockeying and its time to get clicks/views...
24/7 news certainly plays a role, as well as independent media, it's much easier to control your image when you have a few newspapers and a few tv stations that are public or owned by friends.
I still believe people like Macron, Scholz, Trump or Biden look like absolute buffoons, for different reasons, compared to the average leaders of the last 50 years
Wouldn’t it be the fact that he lived through a couple World Wars and had his country invaded by Nazis?
Hardships build strong men etc.
Yes for sure, but thats not enough. Otherwise we would see a lot of similar moral leaders ie in Africa or South America and reality is very different, isn't it.
Plato has the answer in the Republic. Since de Gaulle (or before de Gaulle), we’ve passed from timocracy, in which honor is the highest motivating value, to oligarchy, in which love of money and avarice replace honor. We’re now passing into democracy in which all desires are given equal importance, and a preoccupation with base and even depraved appetites dominates.
It's the media and common populace that (1) has a lower IQ (democracy more widely accessible) encouraging talking down; and (2) demands that muppets have equal opportunity to enter politics as the well-educated élite.
We could give multiples higher salary to MPs, stack the commons with the best Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, LSE, etc. have to offer ... but you can't do that, because matey earning a living wage or whatever already thinks they're grossly overpaid and that extra income besides their MP salary should be illegal - when a software engineer could earn more. So woman of the people who left school at sixteen to work retail gets his vote, that's who we need in power, not these educated toffs.
This felt like an actual "this belongs in a museum" moment, in particular when it comes to notes from a former president.
Granted the benefit partly goes to an officially recognized well meaning fund:
> A portion of the auction’s proceeds will be donated to the Anne de Gaulle Foundation. Named for de Gaulle’s daughter, who had Down syndrome, the foundation provides housing and support to people with disabilities.
The "portion" part is still intriguing, I assume most of the proceeds will go elsewhere ?
A museum may acquire them. French law also gives museums the right to preempt auction sales, so wait and see how this one goes.
The documents were found in a safe owned by de Gaulle's son. I'd imagine his heirs have something to say about the matter.
The family has been relatively selective in sharing his personal notes, mainly because some of his ideas are now out-of-fashion (for example, it’s rumoured that he decided to let Algeria become independent after a bloody independence war, not because of the cost of the war but because demographers pointed out most French people would be Muslim by the year 2000) but it’s very likely the contents of the notebooks that are historically significant will be public.
Auction houses typically make a decent cut of the proceeds (in the US it's rarely lower than 10%, and usually closer to 20-25%) and the costs of authentication, chain of custody, etc probably eats up another smaller slice. Beyond that, I'm sure a few others will be making some retirement fund francs for it.
Often there are national laws that enable preemption of the sale after the auction. Essentially the auction is used to determine fair market value to compensate the owner (who is then paid with taxpayer euros).
Would you expect to get nothing from selling your grandparent's letters?
If he was considered a founding father of my country's current political system, yes I wouldn't expect my interests to prime over the general interest. They wouldn't get nothing either, we're talking about not randomly selling them to the highest bidder.
I don't know if it matters if DeGaulle's child were/are pretty affluent and were always part of the high society in France. Their success and extremely recognizable pedigree was supported by their grandfather's shine, so I'd think they got enough from it to give up on hyper-monetizing historic papers.
[flagged]
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42442454.
What you are saying would make some sense if having Muslim beliefs or being Muslim or looking Muslim were some sort of disease which a nation must be "protected" from.
Unfortunately for you, this childish fantasy of ethnic and nationalist purity has never existed. No amount of ellipses will change that fact.
The modern state of France is founded on liberal values that go completely against the tenets of Islam. I don’t have any stakes in it myself but I could understand the hostility.
> Muslim were some sort of disease which a nation must be "protected" from
Your words but if we focus on the period after 1950 then yes that is a more or less broadly accurate conclusion.
> fantasy of
You mean of secularism and liberal democracy?
Or the rather the fantasy that the political beliefs of most practicing muslims in muslim majority countries are seemingly entirely compatible with those concepts? Must be a random coincidence…
Nation: a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language
The French culture will die if no one protects it. Without limits to cultural admixture, 'Frenchness' will be diluted into a sea of other cultures. It is a fundamental mistake to assume assimilation.
This is not a controversial take, even amongst liberals. In Canada for example, the disappearing cultures of First Nations (Indigenous Canadians) is protected with public funds through various programs. Yet for some reason, it's a bad thing to protect European culture?
“The French people” is not a bunch of people frozen in formaldehyde. It is changing, whether some people want it or not. Not that long ago, the dirty foreigners (the term “migrant” was not fashionable yet) included Italians (fleeing famine), Armenian (fleeing a genocide), Spaniards (fleeing Franco and the civil war), Portuguese (fleeing Salazar and dire economic prospects), etc. Now all their descendants are proper French people and some of them even stand for election for a right-wing nationalist party. The French people will have a future in any case, unless the whole country is carpet bombed with nuclear warhead. The problem is that some people don’t like what French people actually are.
If only it was just migrants. Famously, the Paris Commune was run by people who weren’t even French. But there is a difference between a highly mobile group of basically atheistic communards and traditional religious communities that would much rather transform France into something that looks a lot more like Taliban or ISIS controlled territory.
It is easier in America, because America has many minority religious communities that are able to keep to themselves; the way the French state is set up, everyone must be socially integrated, and that means conflict arises when one group of people has one set of values and they are forced to live among those with completely different values, often antithetical to their own and disruptive of the lives they wish to live.
Now, of course I would want this to be reformed (in France), but you must understand that would probably require the collapse of the French state as such.
Yes assimilation works if the groups are immigrating into the country, their number is rather limited and they are willing to assimilate.
However If France somehow managed to hold onto to Algeria and (eventually) granted the Muslim majority full civil (which is not far fetched, as far as we can tell only a tiny fraction of Algerians actively supported supported FLN until both sides started engaging in extreme violence; of course by de Gaulle’s time it was far too late..) what would have happened?
Would the vast majority of the Muslim Algerian population and their descendants embraced liberal secularism or would they have supported parties which represented their local interests? Why do you think that most of them would have suddenly turned into “French people” for no reason?
Calling them "a people," is basically the same as calling them a race. I wonder how this term came to be accepted. It frames your mind to think about the DNA of France rather than its culture or traditions.
Not to become part of the belt of chaos, the zone rouge, is not a crime. Some cultures can not form and keep up institutions, be they state or company. Not to have something working degrade down to that chaos is not racist. And the imperialism of the past is no excuse for 1.4 billion people stuck in permawar.
What makes a person 'French'?