Allan Bloom

"L'immense Allan Bloom faisait ces remarques il y a 30 ans (The Closing of the American Mind)... Depuis, on a porté atteinte à ce 'commun' qu'est le respect dû aux textes des Pères Fondateurs, et en France on a importé le paradigme américain - être Français c'est simplement respecter les valeurs de 1789 (lesquelles, elles, aussi, comme c'est le cas aux Etats-Unis, font l'objet d'attaques incessantes de la part des multuculturalistes.)

« Reciprocal recognition of rights needs little training, no philosophy, and abstracts from all differences of national character. Americans were, in effect, told that they could be whatever they wanted to be or happened to be as long as they recognized that the same applied to all other men and they were willing to support and defend the government that guaranteed that dispensation. It is possible to become an American in a day. (...) It is, however, impossible, or it was until only yesterday, to become a Frenchman, for a Frenchman is a complex harmony, or dissonance, of historic echoes, from birth on. The French language, which the French used to learn very well, did not exist for the sake of conveying information, for communicating men's common needs; it was indistinguishable from a historical consciousness. Frenchness is defined by participation in this language, its literature and the entire range of effects it produces. Somehow the legalistic arguments about rights do not touch the privilege conveyed by participation in it. »