The French are very bizarre. There is this collective depiction: 'We're in decline, we're being assailed, we must protect ourselves.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We, the French, are viscerally attached to our laicite, our sovereignty, our independence, our values. The world knows that when France is attacked, it is liberty that is dealt a blow.
French are what they are without excusing themselves to be.
France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.
France is no longer herself when she is folded in on herself, tormented by ignorance and intolerance. The country would plunge into decline if it refused to be itself, if it was afraid of the future, afraid of the world.
After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.
The French consider themselves the guardians of the world's culture and do not bother to hide the fact, which is annoying, but Paris is still where good Americans want to go when they die - and Brits, Russians, and Chinese as well, these days.
The French complain of everything, and always.
All the evils of France have been produced less by the perversity of the wicked and the violence of fools than by the hesitation of the weak, the compromises of conscience, and the tardiness of patriotism. Let every deputy, every Frenchman show what he feels, what he thinks, and we are saved!
The French are simply incapable of telling the truth.
The French are very individualistic.