France is currently struggling with how to adapt to the twenty-first century, a century of greater diversity and diminishing returns. As I opined on this blog in 2005, American liberals have long regarded France as an earthly paradise for both its cultural and intellectual life, as evidenced by the many Americans (not me, alas) who have traveled to Paris for inspiration. Jim Morrison was one, of course, as were Ernest Hemingway and many of his contemporaries. How far back do I have to go? Thomas Jefferson absorbed France's cultural influence as the American minister to that country. But two other qualities many American liberals have longingly admired about France are its commitment to liberty, equality and fraternity and its generous social services. And the commitment in France to both have taken rather interesting turns of late.
Yesterday the French Senate overwhelmingly voted to ban Islamic women from wearing burqas, clothes that completely cover their features, in public. Many liberals in the United States have assailed the vote as being bigoted toward followers of a specific religion - in this case, Islam - and that this should be seen as unacceptable in France as burning Korans is here. Some feminists have even opposed the new French law, suggesting that a religion having women cover themselves is really no worse than a consumer culture bombarding them with images of idealized beauty to dictate to them what they should look like.
One can sympathize with the French as they strive to create a society that values secular public life even as it protects private religious freedom. After all, the French government isn't asking Muslim women to start dolling themselves up to look like Emmanuelle Béart or anything like that. But it seems contradictory to tell them they have freedom of religion and then tell them to go against it by adopting government-approved dress code. Some French Muslim women who hate the burqa will no doubt rejoice over this law, while many of them will regard it as an attack on their identity.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, took to attacking the retirement pension issue, voting to raise the retirement age in France from 60 to 62. Most pensioners are against the proposal, but the government deems it necessary to raise the retirement age - which would still be lower than it is in the United States - to keep the pension fund from going under. President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to preserve it for future generations.
As France tries to redefine itself for the present and beyond, it has taken one step ahead of America and one step behind it. It may be bad enough that Americans have fewer social programs than the French, but we can't even figure out how to preserve the entitlements we have, such as Social Security and Medicare - even as the Tea Partiers suggest abolishing them altogether. The French are at least looking to do the right thing, no matter how unpopular it may be, to keep their social welfare system going in perpetuity. Paradoxically, French distrust of Islam - based on a fear of religion bred from the days of an official alliance of church and state from the days of the monarchy - reveals the discomfort the French feel in deciding what religious expression should be allowed. We Americans, who have never had an official religion, have allowed religious freedom to flourish, the result being that Americans enjoy more religious liberty than anyone else. We would never pass laws banning burqas in public. Not even Koran-burning can change that.
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