Right now all eyes are on France. Can they rise above the electoral mistakes we’ve already made? The French often get a bad rap in American popular and political culture. Even though we seldom realize it, appreciate it, or even acknowledge it, France is a nation and a culture that has given us the foundation of some of our central ideals of citizenship, progress, social justice and of arts and culture.
It has respected rational thought and has even given us what’s now our obsession of left and right in politics.
Award-winning author and academic Sudhir Hazareesingh talks to me about How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People
, and the ideas behind France's political and cultural history. He tries to answer why this nation, which was once so globally influential, has lost that influence?My conversation with Sudhir Hazareesingh:
