AN American who teaches philosophy at Paris University is disturbed to find that the French openly display negative attitudes toward nonwhite immigrants. Justin Smith, writing in The New York Times, tries to make sense of the “rising xenophobia in France:”

In the past year I have witnessed incessant stop-and-frisk of young black men in the Gare du Nord; in contrast with New York, here in Paris this practice is scarcely debated. I was told by a taxi driver as we passed through a black neighborhood: “I hope you got your shots. You don’t need to go to Africa anymore to get a tropical disease.” On numerous occasions, French strangers have offered up the observation to me, in reference to ethnic minorities going about their lives in the capital: “This is no longer France. France is over.” There is a constant, droning presupposition in virtually all social interactions that a clear and meaningful division can be made between the people who make up the real France and the impostors.

French cultural pride is far too extreme because immigrants are not changing the character of France, Smith says. Besides, the idea that “European nations are entirely constituted from within, that their cultures grow up from the soil and belong to a fixed parcel of land as if from time immemorial” is myth. France has always had close ties with non-European nations — in commerce and its colonial past. It has profited from these ties and thus owes Africans opportunities in France:

Europe has never been self-contained, and its role in the world has both made it rich and left it with a unique legacy of responsibility to the great bulk of the world from which this wealth came.

One wonders, at what point might France’s cultural debt be paid? When all of Africa has the same standard of living as France? We can infer that the French will never be entitled to their own nation.

— Comments —

Diana writes:

My favorite part of the article was “I became a philosopher, like many others, in large part because I imagined that doing so would enable me to rise above the murky swamp of local attachment, of ethnic and provincial loyalty, and to embrace the world as a whole, to be a true cosmopolitan.”

Like “many others”? What others? Silly me, I always thought that philosophers were wise men, who understood that loyalty to one’s own enlightens and sensitizes. It’s simply false that loyalty blinds us to others’ needs: quite the opposite. Loyalty to one’s own isn’t the end-all and be-all, but it’s the start of any rational world view.

He is blind.

 Laura writes:

That quote is the key to his entire worldview. He believes a rational, enlightened man sees human beings as disembodied minds. A nation is an abstraction.

Karl writes:

I won’t even touch upon this man’s opinions or the equally stupid and naive comments following his story from New York Times readers. One can tell a lot of things about a person just by a photograph. This smug chap with his hipster glasses and backpack has what my old pals back in Queens would call a punchable face. Many liberals seem to have this look about them — not through mere birth, but from years of deep liberal thought and philosophy. Like a sculptor with clay, these thoughts give form to the “Punchable face.”

 In a related story, it seems that a Chinese mogul is making a serious attempt at buying the New York Times. How is that for irony? An uber wealthy man from a Communist country is trying to purchase an American Socialistic paper (This, according to a Chinese Communist linked newspaper) and seems to be of the opinion that the Times is very flawed and not fair in its reporting. Welcome to Bizarro World.

Roger G. writes:

If I’m off topic, pardon me, but when I think of the Napoleonic War, the American Civil War, and World Wars I and II, I want to bash my head against the wall. Killing of whole productive, lawabiding, and churchgoing generations, and especially the breeding male subset, has been complete insanity.

Alex writes:

You ask at what point might France’s debt for its colonialist past be paid. I’ll just paste the gist of my comment Lawrence Auster published in this entry discussing President Hollande’s response to the Manif pour Tous, when his adviser said that the massive anti-homomarriage protest didn’t matter because it was “essentially white Catholic France in the street”:

“What the Hollande adviser is implicitly saying here is that no demands of white Catholic France can be valid, because white Catholic France is responsible for all the crimes of the racist, colonialist, gay-discriminating hell on earth, i.e. all French history before noon today. White Catholic France has no right to demand anything. Its only proper role is to atone for its crimes against non-discrimination, which are now judged not just the most grievous crimes of all but the only crimes that matter.”

The most grievous crimes require the ultimate atonement. France and all other white Christian nations must die. Nothing less will do.

Diana writes:

I shouldn’t have used the word “rational.” I’m not sure why, but I felt abashed at using a warmer word, such as humane, or decent, or moral.

By the way, I’m from Queens too, so let me give a shout-out to Karl. I think of the old place fondly a lot. It’s gone forever. Queens is now the most diverse place in the country, or the world, I forget which although I’ve been lectured on it a lot.

The last time I went there and friend and I walked from Astoria to Flushing. There were mosques, temples, Korean churches, McMansions, pink houses, curlicued white fencing everywhere.

Outside one home we saw a strange creeping tree. We stopped to ask the home-owner, who was outside, where it was from. Korea, her father had smuggled it in. She admitted this with no shame.

When I came home I cried.

Laura writes:

I would like to read a book about the transformation of Queens.

As for your use of the word “rational,” Justin Smith is irrational. He denies that some of the most obvious forms of human connection exist.

Jacques writes:

“I became a philosopher, like many others, in large part because I imagined that doing so would enable me to rise above the murky swamp of local attachment, of ethnic and provincial loyalty, and to embrace the world as a whole, to be a true cosmopolitan.”

A “philosopher” who has apparently never given any serious thought to the moronic slogans and platitudes of the popular culture.  Ethnic or provincial or “local” attachment is a “murky swamp”?  Okay, but then why isn’t attachment to one’s own parents or children, lovers or friends, even more swampy and murky and just plain gross?  For Dr. Smith, it’s just obvious that being attached to five or seven or seventeen individual human beings is perfectly fine and good, and that being attached to humanity as a whole is also very noble and fine.  But any attachments falling somewhere between those extremes are just deplorable.  It has probably never occurred to him to consider what principle is supposed to explain or justify this deeply weird, inhuman set of beliefs.  (Just as he surely has no real understanding of what it could mean in real practical terms to “embrace the world as a whole.”)  The main function of academic philosophy seems to be to weed out any genuinely critical thinkers or free spirits, leaving only a collection of emasculated fools and liars to provide “higher education” to the young.

Laura writes:

Very good.

Dr. Smith’s reference to the “droning presupposition[s]” of the French is encouraging. Everywhere he goes he is confronted by people who openly lament the loss of French culture.

There is nothing like that in America. At least not in intellectual circles.

Diana writes:

I don’t think Smith denies these forms of human connection. He despises them and thinks they are primitive and atavistic, but he doesn’t deny they exist. He bemoans them.

I’ve found that using only logic on such people fails. Therefore my use of the phrase “rational worldview” wasn’t quite on the mark. Perhaps “rational and moral worldview” would have been better.

Speaking of bemoaning things, Smith is faced with intellectuals intensely regretful over the loss of Frenchness. Even a half-Jewish atheist Frenchman protests.

This must be very shocking to Smith. His little jaunt to France, which he thought was going to take him away from philistine America, has been a terrible disappointment. All I can say is, great!

Meanwhile, here in the supposed land of the free, our intellectual life is dominated by cowards who are terrified of the consequences of speaking straight on immigration.  Land of the brave indeed.

Laura writes:

Finkielkraut, whom Smith discusses, is not representative of the academic elite in France but still Smith finds it reprehensible that he is given a public platform. This attention is due to “economic uncertainty.” In other words, envy and selfishness motivate French patriotism.

Grateful Reader writes:

I mixed up your nearby articles and thought that this was from a Chestertonian satire, said by one of his nullifidian characters who rejects the still, small voice of his little place for the din of the great world:

“I became a philosopher, like many others, in large part because I imagined that doing so would enable me to rise above the murky swamp of local attachment, of ethnic and provincial loyalty, and to embrace the world as a whole, to be a true cosmopolitan.”

Chesterton would then end his satire, as usual, with the discovery of a great truth, a revelation, the revelation:

“Philosophy also, like mythology, had very much the air of a search. It is the realization of this truth that gives its traditional majesty and mystery to the figures of the Three Kings; the discovery that religion is broader than philosophy and that this is the broadest of religions, contained within this narrow space.”

Alex writes:

Jacques wrote regarding “local” attachment being a “murky swamp”:

Okay, but then why isn’t attachment to one’s own parents or children, lovers or friends, even more swampy and murky and just plain gross?

It is.

Jacques wrote:

For Dr. Smith, it’s just obvious that being attached to five or seven or seventeen individual human beings is perfectly fine and good, and that being attached to humanity as a whole is also very noble and fine. But any attachments falling somewhere between those extremes are just deplorable.

It’s much worse than that. Ultimately, the State wants all its subjects to have only one attachment, sole allegiance — to the State. It sees identification with any other entity as dual allegiance, as an alternative to allegiance to the State, a route of escape from the State, and thus as anti-State. The strongest of such allegiances competing with the State is the family, therefore the family must be destroyed. So must racial identity, hence the denial of the existence of race and the drive to interbreed all people into a homogeneous tan mix. So must normal sexual identity, hence the gender revolution aimed at making the average person a genderqueer bisexual. So must religious identity, hence the war on Christianity and the promotion of atheism. So must national identity, hence globalization, open borders within Europe and between the West and the Third World, and the replacement of national cultures with the dehumanizing American pop culture. So must the sense of belonging to a smaller unit within the State, one’s “local Motherland” as they call it in Russia, hence the destruction of states’ rights and local self-government, and even of the distinctive character of local communities with Wal-Marts and McDonald’s replacing traditional local businesses.

There must be no group, no entity, no community left with which people could possibly identify, but the State.

Alex adds:

And that is “the world as a whole” the philosopher with the punchable face wants everyone to “embrace” — a sole global State as everyone’s sole allegiance, the only possible allegiance, run by enlightened, benevolent people such as himself.

Alex continues:

I wouldn’t believe everything Smith says about the observations about immigrants that French strangers supposedly offered up to him. His ilk is known for lying a lot to convince people there is “rising xenophobia,” rising racism, rising anti-Semitism, etc. “There is a constant, droning presupposition in virtually all social interactions that a clear and meaningful division can be made between the people who make up the real France and the impostors,” yet they keep importing these impostors by the millions? Okay. If the NYT says so, it must be true.

Domagoj writes:

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

—- William F. Buckley, Jr.

Mary writes:

This man is a perfect product of modern education, as can be seen in his desire to be, through an education in philosophy of all things, a “true cosmopolitan” (“a person who is free from local, provincial, or national bias or attachment; citizen of the world”). He follows this embarrassing revelation, in the NYT no less, with this lament, of which he fails to see the irony: “Yet history shows that many philosophers only grow more attached to their national or ethnic identity as a result of their philosophical education.” He is confident that he will not make the mistake of his past fellows, for he is truly enlightened.

And yet in his attempts to in turn enlighten us, he reveals the careful indoctrination to which he has been subjected in that education. There are so many examples that it’s hard to narrow it down but a few points: there is much white guilt on display, which causes him to poo-poo the very real concerns of French citizens that Paris will eventually be French no more. In his focus on across-the-board equality and making immigrants “first class citizens” he ignores the tensions caused by the Islamic presence in Paris. Notre Dame a mosque a la the Hagia Sophia? No matter. He is convinced that all cultures are equal, as can be seen by his preoccupation with colonialism and his ignorance of the fact that Europe, as the birthplace of Christendom, generated the highest levels of intellectual and cultural achievement in history. No, he is merely bitter about the advantages such achievements have generated. France should adjust to the immigrants, not the other way around. That is what they owe and the suppression, or even negation, of their culture is the price they must pay.

I see him as a secret agent of sorts, an innocuous-seeming American professor riding around in taxis, patiently bearing the cris de coeur of French citizens and then wearily correcting them, advancing his cause there and among his students, of course. He feels his cause is a noble one and therefore can bear all the tiresome complaints. Later over wine he shares his woes with like-minded members of the academic elite, French or otherwise, and gets an opinion piece published in the NYT.

This bland, cosmopolitan philosopher has been sent, by the unspoken mandate of his elite American education, after the low-hanging fruit in Europe first. Of course France has made the assailing of their culture easier by in large part abandoning the Church and clinging to only the trappings. But the essence is missing. A Catholic France which spent part of every day on its knees and produced large families to fill beautiful Paris and beyond would be no easy target for bland cosmopolitans of this sort.

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