From Anne Applebaum. It's not pretty:

...it's a very important legacy: One of consistent scorn for the Anglo-American world in general and the English language in particular, of suspicion of Central Europe and profound disinterest in the wave of democratic transformation that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s, of preference for the Arab and African dictators who had been, and remained, clients of France. In his later years, Chirac constantly searched, in almost all international conflicts, for novel ways of opposing the United States. All along, he did his best to protect France from the rapidly changing global economy.

With the new president, let's hear it for Friendship Fries (even if they were invented in Belgium).

For all the Sturm und Drang over Donald Rumsfeld's photograph with Saddam, I consider Chirac's Osirak-sited photo with Saddam to be much the more relevant.

Not that the Rumsfeld bashers are likely to apply the same criteria to Chirac, dontcha know.

MG

This is but one lonely Chirac retrospective.

Just imagine the gallons of ink (or moles of electrons) that will be spilled in similar essays when Bush leaves office in 2009.

By "similar", I mean of course critical retrospectives -- unlike Applebaum's essay, however, they'll be sneering, petty, juvenile screeds with little analytical utility, if the current quality of Bush criticism is any indication.

I hope the following doesn't come across as a sneering, petty, juvenile screed... the Chirac part is meant as strangely humorous and not really an attack on Chirac who can't really be blamed for being himself. Enjoy your retirement Chirac, for all the unforgiveable mistakes in relation to the world you still played an important role within France (I will reveal exactly what that was towards the end).

To me Chirac is simply proof that one can educate a persons stupidity and absurdity (which we all have plenty of) into a strange sort of perfection. To my knowledge even in France he was widely known as the the master of saying nothing in particular while speaking for hours. In it's own right that's some kind of perverse triumph that should rightly be mentioned in Guiness' Book of World Records.

He was the perfect talking figurehead for the immense french bureaucracy, the political equivalent to a Miss Universe for them. They could continue doing just about anything they deemed appropriate while pointing to Chirac to explain the reasoning, something Chirac would be more than happy to do in a way so ultimately complete with all the little baroque twists and swirls of everything française done to such perfection that many would feel some kind of awe or bedazzlement... at least for the first hundred times.

The complete opposite of Sarko who dares call scum by its name.

The real victory of the election wasn't getting Sarko in charge (although it's more than welcome) but the fact that with a resounding turnout both the die-hard communists and the "front national" got relegated to "crazy aunt/uncle" status (which they deserve). For too long it seemd the french people, whom more often than not are amiable and pleasant, for some reason decided to be either fascist or fascist when it came to elections - no more of that nonsense at least (and for all the ills of Chirac he was a superior alternative to those). Now if the french left can start to clean out most of their "intellectual" baggage and modernize then the nation of France truly can change for the better; a somewhat sensible opposition is valuable to a democracy.

"One of consistent scorn for the Anglo-American world in general and the English language in particular"

True, but the same could be said of Bush.

"of suspicion of Central Europe"

I wonder why. It was, after all, only the source of two invasions of France in two decades, one of which Chirac personally experienced.

"and profound disinterest in the wave of democratic transformation that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s"

Chirac's attitude toward the world is typical of amoral conservative politics everywhere, and the sole factor accounting for all the bashing of his record is his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. In other words, it isn't his tolerance for and/or support of dictators that brought about these shrill denunciations, but his opposition to one in particular with a fanatical cult following in certain corners. The author doesn't appear to be part of that, but it has clearly contributed to her commentary's momentum in parts of the blogosphere.

Rand: "With the new president, let's hear it for Friendship Fries"

France never stopped being America's friend, regardless of Chirac, Bush, or idiotic propagandists trying to rename food. The question for Sarkozy is whether he will emulate the United States or the Bush regime--fostering entrepreneurship or corporate fascism, assertiveness or belligerence.

Hermit: "The complete opposite of Sarko who dares call scum by its name."

Why bother calling scum anything? Just put forward constructive policies.

"Now if the french left can start to clean out most of their "intellectual" baggage"

Sentiment, not intellectualism, is the problem of most ideological movements. The global left's single-minded devotion to the feeling of communalism at the expense of achieving anything produces stagnation and immobility, in contrast to the way right-wing amorality corrodes and undermines civilization.

In a way, leftism is a highly conservative movement, advocating slow, rigid, and controlled progress like the rings on a tree, while fascism is overadaptive, forcing people into tiny niches they can't escape like an ultra-efficient insect species. Where global polities fail is in finding the Golden Medium and distinguishing it from muddled centrism--challenging enough to stimulate creativity, but not so brutal as to limit hope and ambition.

Squiddie says: amoral conservative politics everywhere

He then follows up with: Sentiment, not intellectualism, is the problem of most ideological movements.

Believing that all conservative politics are amoral is your sentiment. Morality is in the eye of the beholder. So, by your definition, your sentiment has derailed your intellectualism you claim to have, a problem for your ideological movement.

"Believing that all conservative politics are amoral is your sentiment."

On the contrary, it's definitive. The "morals" of the right are in fact secondary to an overarching value that is inherently amoral, namely the pursuit of and/or expedient submission to power. The foundational trinity of all right-wing politics--consisting of religion, military, and rapacious corporate machinery--clearly reflects this.

Where leftism goes wrong is in sentimentalizing this nature into storybook villainy instead of thinking about how to productively deflect and exploit it. They take a mechanistic view of economics that ignores its organic nature and unnecessarily limits potential, leading to my conclusion that leftism is actually quite conservative. For example, leftism doesn't believe in accepting risk, or tolerating the costs of repeated failure in order to achieve that one breakthrough that gives birth to the future. It's a static vision leading to stagnation and slow, grinding progress if any, and is attractive only in contrast to right-wing suicidalism. Fortunately, the choice is a false dilemma, and the realm of possibilities is vastly broader than those two and their one-dimensional median.

"Morality is in the eye of the beholder."

Specific moral judgments are in the eye of the beholder, but morality has very clear underpinnings that aren't reflected by power-based decisionmaking. To say or act as though power is morality is paradoxical nonsense--one is either guided by power or morality. The reason the former is so persistent in human affairs is that it's far easier to recognize and judge by than abstract, multivariable judgments involving numerous people and ideas. It is a more orderly, emotionally secure and gratifying state to simply say "I have the power" rather than worrying how one's actions affect others, or to say "I do not have the power" rather than accepting the consequences of standing up to a superior. This is the fundamental thesis of fascism.

"So, by your definition, your sentiment has derailed your intellectualism you claim to have, a problem for your ideological movement."

I'm a liberal, not a leftist.

Brian says: On the contrary, it's definitive.

Morality or amorality of any given political ideal is judged by the perceptions of the beholder. YOU judge all conservative politics amoral. Define all you want, but those definitions are based on what you believe, and what I believe is that you're perceptions are incorrect.

I'm a liberal, not a leftist.

Then you should be calling yourself a moderate. That's what all the latter-day mainstream liberals call themselves these days, thanks to all the far-out leftist proggs calling themselves liberals.

"Morality or amorality of any given political ideal is judged by the perceptions of the beholder."

This is Nietzschean doublespeak. Two moralities can differ, but the meaning of morality is clear--a set of internal principles by which one's actions are guided and restrained from instinct, and which cannot by definition include acting entirely in service to impulse or unmitigated selfishness. To proclaim the "morality of power" is nonsensical gibberish, and agreed to only by people who believe morality = whatever they find desirable; i.e., people whose reasoning ability has still not transcended their basic impulses.

Morality can require that one value the group over the individual, value it equally, or value it less, but insisting that others not be valued at all except in service to the self doesn't require anything--it's the mentality of an infant. When you disassemble right-wing ideologies, there is always that little kernel of "me want" spiraling outward into cascades of desperate rationalization and tortured logic. A typical human mind is a complex system, and morality is one of many layers through which decisions are formulated, but a right-wing mind tends to be robotically simple. In its purest manifestation, such a mentality is psychopathic, lacking any trace of empathy or ability to recognize value in anything beyond its own desires. Such monsters, human only in the abstract, are universally condemned by all moralities everywhere.

I'm a firm believer in the usefulness of reductio ad absurdum to reveal a value system's nature, and it produces a very clear indictment of right-wing ideology that isn't remotely mirrored on the left. Stripped of their practical failings and crystallized into absolute perfection, what do you have on the two political extremes of left and right? The left's absurdity is an anesthetized world without pain or challenge, while the right's is a world where infinite suffering is heaped on all people but one.

Therefore, I repeat my thesis: The left's flaw is sentimentality, but the right is evil.

McGehee: "Then you should be calling yourself a moderate."

But I'm not a moderate, I'm a liberal. My values are the values of liberalism.

"That's what all the latter-day mainstream liberals call themselves these days, thanks to all the far-out leftist proggs calling themselves liberals."

A virtually nonexistent bugaboo invented by Republican propaganda, and completely irrelevant. Anyone spineless enough to have their language dictated by talk radio doublespeak is no liberal, and I don't care what some weak-minded centrist rabbit calls himself. Liberals laid the foundations of this country, led it through a Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and sowed the seeds of victory in the Cold War when the Gipper was still poncing around Hollywood, not to mention seeing the world safely through the Cuban Missile Crisis and committing to Apollo. The reason so few in *federal* elective office today call themselves liberals is because so few are.

I said: Morality or amorality of any given political ideal is judged by the perceptions of the beholder.

Squiddie replies: Morality can require that one value the group over the individual, value it equally, or value it less, but insisting that others not be valued at all except in service to the self doesn't require anything--it's the mentality of an infant.

One values more, equally, or less. And that depends on the individual and their perception of morality. Thank you for proving my point.

Squiddie says: but a right-wing mind tends to be robotically simple.

If asking for personal responsibility is simple, then I'm simple. I can assure you I am not evil, but again, that's MY perception since I feel that the morality displayed by my actions are well within the norm, by my perception of morality.

One values more, equally, or less.

One cannot place a value, even zero, on something that is inconceivable to one's self. The idea of otherness, of entities with an independent subjective existence, is difficult if not impossible for right-wing mentalities to understand.

If asking for personal responsibility is simple, then I'm simple.

It's not simple, and the right is the antithesis of personal responsibility. To a right-winger, yours is that which you have the power to steal and keep; your rights that which you have the power to get away with; and your responsibilities whatever more powerful people are able to impose. Any other approach marks you as an outsider, untrustworthy at best if not a mortal enemy. If you protect the rights of others and recognize long-term common cause even at the expense of your own short-term interests, you are a "collectivist" whom they see as worshipping the "false idol" of other people's existence.

Life in their estimation is supposed to be an absolute, ultra-violent melee for power, with every man for himself and God against all, and the end result is supposed to be one who proves his own existence superior to all others and recreates mankind in his own image through force and terror--the Ubermensch.

I can assure you I am not evil

Didn't say you were. There can be any number of degrees of separation between the gruesome heart of the right and how it plays in the actions of ordinary people associated with it, just like with any nightmare ideology.

Racism, religion, taxes, and other wedge and/or bribery tactics are beloved on the right precisely because they turn sovereign voters into predictable, reliable automatons who can be wielded and controlled like tools. No matter if the nation's infrastructure is falling apart around them, a juicy tax cut for a libertarian or conservative equals their vote with virtually absolute certainty. "The Path to Power is paved with such bricks as these, as Caesar well knew, gladhanding his way through the collegia and spreading the wealth of murdered nations among potential supporters." They were all just people looking for an edge, an opportunity, or a new direction--they were not evil. They were simply blind, selfish tools; utter mockeries of the personal responsibility you speak of.

About "Friendship Fries" being invented in Belgium... I was walking along the beach in Holland several years ago, and came across a fast-food stand selling the delicacy we know as French fries. What was interesting was that the sign on the stand featured artwork of a little boy taking a leak. Really stimulates the appetite, doesn't it?

[What the sign was doing, I hasten to add, was emphasizing the Belgian-ness of the fried spuds-- they're associated with Belgium and this brought it out. A symbol of the city of Brussels is the "Manneken Pis," a statue on a fountain showing a naked little boy, a stream of water originating from the obvious orifice. Even knowing that, it still seemed... odd... to this out of towner to advertise a tasty food treat with that image.]