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# Posted 8:21 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

VIVE LA REPUBLIQUE! Happy Bastille Day to one and all. While it is hard to resist the temptation to make some sort of snide remark about the vanity and hypocrisy of modern-day France, there is already enough of that out there. In the post-Howell era, even the NYT has begun to publish condescending and cynical essays about the French.

In today's paper, Walter Isaacson writes that Benjamin Franklin long ago discovered how best to deal with the French:

"always play to their pride and vanity by constantly seeking their opinion and advice, and they will admire you for your judgment and wisdom."

With all due respect to Mr. Hundred-Dollar Bill, that is pure bullshit. No resilient alliance can rest on a foundation of cynical condescension. Instead, we must constantly remind both ourselves and the French that our nations are founded on shared ideals.

Both "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as well as "liberte, egalite, fraternite" are expressions of the same democratic ethos underlying both of our revolutions. (So what if the American revolution lasted for seven years while the French one lasted for eighty? What do you expect from a nation with a 35-hour work week?)

Anyhow, the better the United States is at living up to its ideals, the more persuasive it can sound when demanding that France live up to those same ideals as well. There will come a day, I hope, when the Tricolor, the Stars & Stripes and the Union Jack are recognized around the world as symbols of a single Enlightenment faith that has brought freedom and democracy to the four distant corners of the earth.

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