Republicans Separated by an Ocean

If we play at asking what the French understand the least, we have too much to choose from. For my part, in view of the comments that the Obama-Romney duel elicits, I have the impression that the correct response could be what “Republican” means in the United States. This American reality seems to enter our thick heads with difficulty. As proof, the waves of misunderstandings and prejudices that direct, or rather misdirect, judgments everywhere.

Here is what has been put forward: A Republican — almost always a simpleton, goofball, moron or ignoramus — forgets that within the Republican movement appear some real thinkers, whose importance we should recognize whether or not we agree with their analyses. For example, there’s the libertarian Robert Nozick (1938-2002) and the neoconservatives Irving Kristol (1920-2009) and Norman Podhoretz. The Republican standard is also assumed to be racist and misogynist, even if the party was founded in 1854 against the maintenance of slavery. Also the first Republican president was … Abraham Lincoln. True, today the Republican Party is crossed by multiple currents, from the religious right to moderates. It remains more conservative than the Democrats and is always closer to the business community than to unions.

However, to content oneself with depicting the Republican type as a white, male, wealthy, obscurantist and bigoted voter is to prevent oneself from understanding aspects of history. Republicans have largely dominated U.S. political life since 1968 by winning seven of the 11 presidential elections, controlling Congress for a long time and the present House of Representatives. Forgetting this weighty reality produces strange distortions: George W. Bush seemed so reviled that one couldn’t comprehend that he was re-elected; Obama seems so likeable that we can’t admit that his re-election remains uncertain.

These optical illusions are even more curious when they hit the French, who unanimously describe themselves as …”republicans” and claim to be representative of “republican” ideals and values. Should one then, using the same word, talk about a republican truth here on this side of the Atlantic and an error over there? It seems like this is the case. Indeed, from a first shared meaning — the preoccupation with the res publica, public matter and collective affairs in contrast to private affairs — the word effectively refers, on each side of the ocean, to opposing conceptions.

Thus, a French republican concept does not only put an emphasis on secularity, liberty, equality and fraternity. Established under the authority of the state, it guarantees the individual rights of citizens. With more of a state, we have more protection of the individuals. The idea of American Republicans is exactly the opposite: The federal state protects the borders, but the less it intervenes in the life of citizens, the better their rights are protected. From one republican vision to the other, what changes beyond recognition are our individual relations to central power.

This has profound consequences on the way of envisaging politics, the common good and money. But it also [affects] business, personal success, labor relations and leisure, without forgetting social protection and international relations, among other things. … In fact, these ways of seeing things show themselves to be so different that it seems almost inevitable that we French generally get a little lost. To confirm it, experiencing the reverse suffices by immersing oneself for a while in the perspectives of American Republicans. From the moment that we seize the major meanings and the internal logic, there is something that we will inevitably not understand very well anymore. The Frenchies [won’t], apparently.