I can understand why so many people might think that my brief against the French is their cowardice. After all, the phrase is “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” not “clove-smoking real-politickers.” But if you actually read what I’ve written about the French recently, you’ll see that my real brief isn’t cowardice. It’s hypocrisy. Yes, the French are being bold and brash. Yes, they are ambitious. But they are doing it under the guise of “enlightened opposition” to the United States. As Rich and so many others have pointed out, this is just rhetoric to coceal their real aims. But what galls me (no pun intended) is that their rhetoric is simultaneously dishonest and anti-American. We do not try to justify our foreign policy as a “check” on French influence. We do not claim that France is up to no good in the world (I do, but “we” don’t). The French claim to champion human rights and peace, often suggesting that the United States does not. They claim they are injecting morality into foreign policy checking America’s amoral or immoral foreign policies. And, frankly, (another pun!) they are lying. There’s almost no nasty charge you can make about American foreign policy which does not better describe French foreign policy. For example, when it comes to imperialism, we are pikers compared to them.

I have no problem with the assertion tha the French are “boldly” acting on their self-interests. Indeed, I have no problem with self-interestedness in general. But I am appalled at those who look to the French including, of course, the French themselves, as a moral authority or arbiter of America’s foreign policy. America has done more for human rights, more to relieve man’s estate, and much more to preserve and foster liberty and prosperity in the world than the French ever dreamed. France can claim to be or aspire to be a check on America in the world. Bully for them. But that makes them a problem in my book. They’re not enemies and they’re not evil. But they’re not part of the solution either.