A mania de falar mal da França

Por favor, mande este texto para algum amigo americano ou publique no seu blog em inglês caso você tenha um.

To be sure, France owed America a nice thank-you card for D-Day. But we owe them a more. Without France, the United States wouldn’t even exist–it would still be a British colony.

Every American schoolchild learns that a French naval blockade trapped Cornwallis’ forces at Yorktown, bringing the American revolution to its victorious conclusion. But fewer people are aware that King Louis XVI spent so much money on arms shipments to American rebels that he bankrupted the royal treasury, plunged his nation into depression and unleashed a political upheaval that ultimately resulted in the end of the monarchy. Franklin Roosevelt wrote some fat checks to save France; Louis gave up his and his wife’s heads.

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How many Americans remember that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from French schoolchildren?

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French-bashing is a nasty symptom of an underlying American predilection for anti-intellectualism: a society whose most popular TV show features smoky chatter between poets and novelists naturally threatens the land of football and Pabst.

Não que vá adiantar muito, é claro.