Why America Has Won Its War of Words with France
Why America Has Won Its War of Words with France
Yascha Mounk: Why America Has Won Its War of Words with France
Perhaps the most captivating fallout from Dominique Strauss-Kahn?s rape trial has been the glaring culture clash between the United States and France. The opening salvo in this war of words was fired by the New York Daily News when, on the day after Strauss-Kahn?s arrest, it adorned its front page with the simple words, ?Le Perv.? The implication was clear: the French are all oversexed deviants. Strauss-Kahn?s Frenchness is not incidental to his alleged crime?on the contrary, his being French is what accounts for his misdeeds.
The French media immediately rose to the bait. They railed against New York?s sensationalist tabloids and America?s bloodthirsty justice system. On their telling, the last days demonstrate not the sexism of the French, but the puritanism and general lack of sophistication of all Americans.
A lot of this is just plain silly. America?s image of the average Frenchman as an uninhibited pervert is as much of a self-glorifying projection as is France?s image of the average American as an enthusiastic participant in a lynch mob. But beyond these clichés, the current debate actually raises real differences of outlook that are worth taking seriously.
The first, and more widely discussed, of these differences is about the role of sex in contemporary democracies: should we care about the private lives of our leaders? The other, less obvious but equally important, question is about the role of past achievements: to what extent should a person?s lifelong contributions to society offset his or her current misdeeds?
THE FRENCH have a point when they make fun of America’s obsession with the sex lives of its politicians. Why should voters care whether Bill Clinton is a womanizer, or, for that matter, whether Newt Gingrich has been married more than once? To impose standards of sexual morality on politicians that only a small minority of Americans actually adhere to in their own lives has no discernible benefits for public policy?but it does encourage politicians to lie to their voters when, inevitably, they make a misstep. To this extent, the French criticism of America is justified.
But France?s reaction to Strauss-Kahn?s trial shows that the French attitude toward sex and politics is even more perverse. By blaming America?s treatment of Strauss-Kahn on the country?s supposed puritanism, French ?intellectuals? like Bernard-Henri Lévy show that they do not understand a simple and crucial distinction: that between seduction and rape. They treat the current trial as though Strauss-Kahn stood accused of being just another Clinton. But that, as we all know, is not the case. He stands accused not of having a dirty little affair with a hotel maid, but of forcibly sodomizing her.
The fact that so many French writers have lost track of this obvious difference betrays a medieval disregard for women: apparently, the only thing such writers care about is that powerful men should have a right to their little indiscretions?even when the objects of their lust may be helpless victims rather than willing participants.
ANOTHER COMMON defense of Strauss-Kahn is less obviously egregious but, on closer inspection, turns out to be even more antithetical to the professed self-understanding of the French Republic. Lévy, for example, lists Strauss-Kahn?s past achievements in great detail and then opines that ?nothing in the world??not even rape, apparently??can justify a man being thus thrown to the dogs.?
In a way, the idea that Lévy advocates is intuitive enough: somebody who has served the public for many decades should surely be allowed to call in some sort of brownie points when, after all those years, for a few short minutes, he goes off the rails. But that idea is also, as the republican tradition has emphasized since the times of ancient Rome, extremely dangerous to any form of political equality. The great advantage that republics enjoy over dictatorships is precisely that all citizens are equal before the law. The moment we grant ?great men? special exemptions, this equality has been sacrificed.
Machiavelli put this point eloquently some 500 years ago. If a citizen who is already powerful can also ?do wrong without fear of punishment, he will in a short time become so insolent as to put an end to all civil law.”
The cultural clash between the United States and France isn?t just about sex, then. It is also about the question of whether or not the most respected members of our society should enjoy special treatment. To any believer in the equality between the governed and their governors, the right answer must be clear: once we give politicians special treatment out of gratitude for their past achievements, they are no longer public servants: they have become our betters.
THE PRESUMPTION of innocence, despite what the French papers have been saying the last few days, is as important in America as it is in France. Strauss-Kahn is on trial for horrible crimes, but those crimes have not yet been proven. We should be careful about making personal judgments of him before all evidence is on the table and his defense has had a chance to make its case.
Nonetheless, the unflinching treatment of Strauss-Kahn by the American justice system already reaffirms two important political truths that many French writers have seemingly forgotten. First, women, even poor or powerless ones, are not the playthings of men. And second, in a state that aspires to the rule of law, it is both crucial and just that all defendants, no matter how prominent they are, should be treated equally.
