One of my favorite French blogs is "
Le Blog de Lisa," or Lisa's Blog. That's her on the right. She wrote a great post that I have translated into English. It is posted below.
Blue, White but Most Especially, RedNearly twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of communist dictatorship, the French mentality continues to be suffused in Marxist and communist ideology.The red flags of the CGT [
Confederation Generale de Travail, or General Confederation of Labor] and other labor unions regularly invade our streets. With cries of "It is the struggle," we are again plunged into class warfare; the poor enslaved proletarians confront the bastard shopowners with multiple strikes. The unions, clearly aligned with the left, regularly hold the country hostage. The Internationale floats in the air. The country is paralyzed.
Besancenot, spokesman for the
Communist Revolutionary League, attends each strike to encourage the working class. Invited on the popular
Michel Drucker TV show "Vivement Dimanche" [loosely, "Looking Forward to Sunday"], he has inflamed the audience. Drucker's red sentiments make those of the French public seem pale by comparison. On many a Sunday afternoon viewers are treated to an insane furor that is anticapitalistic, anti-american, anti-business, but pro Marx and pro Che Guevara. Besancenot has described the latter as "a source of inexhaustible inspiration."
France is Red. Slowly, the French public has been subverted to Marxist thought. In weekend TV variety shows, during prime time, people dance to and applaud the voice of Natalie Cardonne, who sings [in Spanish] "
Here rests the bright light of your dear presence, Commandant Che Guevara..." In the street, young people display a tee shirt with the likeness of the revolutionary who massacred thousands in the name of his ideology.
Yes, France is Red, but not only that. It is also cowardly and arrogant. The French are dense and cowardly, starting with Jaques Chirac and Dominique de Villipin. Two individuals who planted a knife in the backs of the Americans, our allies of yesterday. In 2003, Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, opposed the war in Iraq and placed France in principal opposition to the United States. The America of George Bush needed us, and we shut the door in their faces, with a minister of foreign affairs (De Villipin) who used his veto in opposition before the Security Council of the U.N. Except for a few brave people like Bernard Kouchner and Andre Glucksman, no one in France dared to criticize the French opposition.
The fact that points to our cowardice is that we never took the time to listen, to give them the attention they deserved. We didn't even have the intelligence to question them on the reasons for the war, or the general reasons why America would ever go to war. They fight for liberty and democracy against all dictators. On a certain June 6, 1944, baptized "D-Day," we were quite happy that they came to liberate us from German troops.
During the Cold War, they fought and vanquished a despotism that ravaged the nations of the East: Communism. Today they fight against a murderous tyranny, one of religious fanaticism, (and especially, of power and blood), which menaces freedom and democracy in the 21st century. And it is a cowardice of the worst sort that renounces they who fight those who want to impose their will on the world through violence and death. France is opposed to the war, but has never proposed any alternative. We had a president for twelve years who was a mere puppet, who did nothing in his years at Elysee [the French presidential palace] but puff on his cigars in his armchair while lecturing others.
Anti-american, the French have, for sport, preferred to view the United States with deep contempt and prejudice. People with the strongest opinions tend to be those who never set foot there. The French anti-americans disparage Americans for their petroleum politics. But what hypocrisy! Because we have no need of gasoline in our daily live, perhaps? This petroleum, our access to which is secured by the United States? Unemployment, marginalization, poverty, all the maladies of the earth are attributed solely to the United States by the French. It is easy to forget that we have the same problems, sometimes in worse proportions (an example is unemployment, which is 8% in France, compared with 4% on the other side of the Atlantic.) But the French are only content to preach to others, while never sweeping the dirt in front of their own door.
This cowardice and anti-americanism become most outrageous when, each day, young American soldiers are dying. Even while people call the United States names and attribute to them all earthly defects and after having cowardly abandoned them, fathers of American families are risking their lives, far from their wives and children, to defend our freedom for us, and allow us to continue living in a free world. I saw, on the beach of Santa Monica, near Los Angeles, a memorial dedicated to all the soldiers who died for liberty. I saw on this beach dozens of crosses planted in the sand, and dozens of coffins covered with the American flag, to remind us that America is a country at war. I saw a little girl of 5 or 6 years of age, who placed a little note saying "I love U Dad" on a white cross, where a photo was attached, of her papa who died in combat.
During my time there, the only worry for a young French woman was to know who was going to win the
Star Academy, while United States citizens were praying every day for their father or their brother in combat. I felt shame before this memorial, which reminded me that France pukes on the United States, turn their backs on it, but without ever having to endure a day like September 11. It's so easy that way.
The French have thus caused France to become a country off course. Awash in Marxist thought, they are egotistical cowards in meditation upon their navels. As long as they can have their LDA ("Lay Down Always!!), take five week vacations and watch Besancenot on Drucker's show, the rest of the world does not interest them, they are quite able to do without it.
According to 
A French friend of ours has published a tribute to U.S. Armed Forces Day (which is today, May 17, 2008). To show our appreciation, we have reprinted it here in English. 
