Freedom / Liberté
Vincent - 08:19am Oct 12, 2004
En étudiant la liste des mots associés pour liberté / freedom, je trouve que très peu de personnes outre atlantique ont répondu en citant America ou USA, or je croyais que tous les américains était très fiers de leurs pays, voire même trop nationalistes. En effet, il y a même plus de personnes françaises qui ont répondu en citant leur pays. En effet, de trop nombreux films d'origine outre atlantique se terminent avec une phrase telle God bless America et une image de la bannière étoilée. Même si les USA, cela reste indéniable, est la nation qui réussit à imposer au reste du monde (ou presque) sa façon de penser, cela a tendance à nous irriter. En effet, la solution du plus fort n'est pas forcément la meilleure.
Alejandro - 08:53pm Oct 14, 2004
Haha! I completely agree with you, Vincent. I did notice Americans tend to associate American symbols with the word freedom, like the Bill of Rights, the Statue of Liberty, the American Flag, and even the Operation Iraqi Freedom. I do think this is nonsense.
My theory after analyzing this list and synthetizing it with the rest of the America that I know, I reached the conclusion that Americans believe they reinvented the word freedom. They think it belongs to them now, and I have observed that they tend to believe that they are one of the very few countries in the world who are free. Maybe this is why they truly believe they need to rescue the world, when in fact the world needs to be rescued from the United States.
In contrast, France believes, like most of the world, that freedom is something "normal," common to at least most of the world. I think it is rather interesting considering that the French did reinvent the word freedom with their Revolution, and most of modern American ideologies on freedom are based on the ideas from the French Revolution. The Statue of Liberty itself was a gift from the French!
Brian - 11:30pm Oct 17, 2004
I think it's interesting, your comments, Vincent. I often wonder why Europeans have a dual mentality with respect to the efforts of Americans overseas. Only one French student so far made mention to the efforts of America, Canada, and Britain during the second world war. Some may look at America's involvement and realize that we actually didn't have much of a good reason to go to Europe except trying to impose our view of Liberty on Western Europe...
Angela - 04:17am Oct 18, 2004
There is a great source of national identity and pride in the words freedom and liberty - these were the words that the country was founded on. There is a strong libertarian ideal in all we do in our legal system - we always protect our liberties first, and often social concerns come second. This is in direct contrast to the idea of society that is found in Europe - one prominent American libertarian, Robert Nozick, says that any taxation at all is tantamount to "forced labor." Thus, in France you see social protection because it makes society better, but we are ready to accept a worse society so long as the amount of personal freedom impinged on is minimal (hence our abysmal healthcare system). At some point in our history the word freedom had a true and pure meaning associated with the ideas I described above. However, although I am not in total agreement with this attitude (I believe strongly in social protections and social goods), I think it is a shame that we have managed to spoil our own meaning of freedom and liberty by our betrayal of it throughout the world, from Latin America in the early part of this century to Africa and the Middle East in the Cold War to the disaster we find ourselves in today. However the founding fathers defined freedom, and whether you agree with them or not, Bush's actions today are not in accord with it.
I disagree that Americans believe that we invented the word freedom - that would be like saying that the French believe that they invented the words liberty, equality, and fraternity, because they associate with these words. It is just a word imbedded in the national psyche, especially today with all the assaults on our own freedoms, and our country's assaults on freedom throughout the world.
(Deleted - 01:10am Oct 19, 2004
I'd like to warn our french colleagues to take our responses as only partially representative of us mentality, since about half of the class is not from the US (a fact that speaks well of the US). I would agree with Angela's analysis. As to Brians comments, it would seem like preventing Germany from becoming a militaristic superpower controlling Europe would be a good reason to intervene, never mind other people's freedoms. But who knows? In any case, it doesn't justify or reflect current policies.
Brian - 09:12pm Oct 20, 2004
Lookin out for the common good - you're an upstanding gentleman, Juan. The fact of the matter is that there are several giant militaristic superpowers that are much larger than Europe as a whole. Did we go to war with Russia simply because they were militaristic and large? What about China? How about what's going on in the Sudan right now? Shouldn't we go in there and try to fix some things, Juan? I mean 70,000 people have died in Darfur since March, and 10,000 people die per month even today. That's on par with the holocaust, don't you think?
If you have the power to help people, it's your duty to do so. The problem occurs when you have to make a decision about who to help. In 1944, we decided to help France and Poland and other countries instead of helping Italy and Germany and Japan. We had to decide to help either South Koreans or North Koreans. Vietnamese or Vietcong. No, we've not always made the correct decisions, but what you're doing is looking at WWII in hindsight. Yeah, we did the right thing, yay. But it could have backfired like Korea did. And then you'd be singing another tune. And if we don't go into Sudan to help the refugees in Darfur, we will be making a dire mistake, whether or not we will succeed. But it's probably none of our business anyway.
Juan - 10:16pm Oct 24, 2004
I wouldn't want this to become a private discussion, but I guess it can be illustrative of our differences in opinion, so here we go again.
What you are saying is justifying the vigilante mentality by calling it "helping". The first Gulf War didn't generate opposition because it was arguably carried out to help a country that was being attacked. That is clearly not the case now, so a comparison with WW2 is not very valid. Helping the iraqui people was not the reason claimed for attacking iraq, it was the non-existent WMD.
But perhaps I find hard to believe that the US foreign policy is guided by helping others because of the appalling record that it has in South America: the only US interventions have been to support right wing dictators like Pinochet, who rather openly killed about 30000 civilians, or support right wing guerrillas like the nicaraguan contras, where after direct military action against the sandinista government, more pervasive "counter-terrorist" strategies were used which included attacks against "soft targets". Nicaragua appealed to the world court, which condemned the US for international terrorism ("the unlawful use of force"), ordering it to desist and pay substantial reparations, but the US vetoed the ruling and denied jurisdiction. Perhaps the only intervention that was not against a democratically elected government was the support of the failed Bahia Cochinos landing against Castro. The point is that US foreign policy (as any other country's) is guided by self interest, as is shown by the support of terrorists and dictators when they are usefull and their condemnation when they are not, even if they are the same people (Hussein, the kla-uck in Serbia and Noriega in Panama come to mind). So a much more useful discussion can be had regarding what best serves the interest of the people of the US when the moralist pretenses are set aside.
As you put it yourself, its easy to bask on the glory of a successfull intervention in hindsight, but that hardly justifies a policy of arbitrary ("unilateral") unprovoked ("pre-emptive") aggression ("action").
Vincent - 04:26am Oct 25, 2004
Je pense que la comparaison entre les deux conflits : Irak et Seconde Guerre Mondiale est complètement déplacée. Les deux guerres n'ont rien en commun : - En Irak les USA se sont engagés en vue d'une menace, alors que en Europe les USA avait effectivement été attaqués. - En Irak l'agresseur était les USA, même si l'Irak a refusé la présence des inspecteurs de l'ONU. - En Irak, il y avait clairement l'intérêt financier de l'or noir. ... Enfin bref, aujourd'hui les US utilisent des prétexes liés à la liberté pour faire la guerre dans le monde alors qu'en fait il s'agit d'intérêts financiers. De plus, les ennemis des US aujourd'hui étaient ses amis, voir ses élèves il y a 20 ans : Irak et Afghanistan.
William - 09:46am Nov 2, 2004
Vincent raises some interesting points, I think, although I do disagree. It seems like perhaps the US and France learned different lessons from WWII. The US learned that ignoring the rest of the world, as we did after WWI, is generally a bad policy because it allows the rise of militaristic powers like Nazi Germany. Remember that although Germany was a small state, it had a lot of power in the region and was able to roll over its neighboring countries without much difficulty.
With Iraq, it could look like a very similar situation: a country with an expansionistic history that is located in an important region of the world. From this view, it seems very reasonable that if we want to prevent a large war, we should preemptively disarm that nation. After WWII, many people criticized the US for not pre-emptively disarming Germany. If Iraq had indeed become agressive in the future, we would certainly face similar criticisms.
Also, Vincent, it is worth remembering that the USA actually was NOT attacked by Germany in WWII in any significant way that would cause our involvement in the war. Nor were we in WWI, for that matter. We participated in those wars to help our allies. What do the French think of allies? What lessons do you think the French learned from WWII?
Marie - Sophie Kurschat
En réponse à William, je voudrais dire que les français se souviennent des alliés de la Seconde Guerre, et biensur, qu'ils se souviennent de l'aide apportée par les américains... Comment oublier une telle chose!? Les enjeux n'étaient pas du tout les memes en 40 qu'en Irak! Il ne convient pas de parler de leçons à retenir sur ce point...