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They necessarily are, considering the Republic and the Nation came much later and are killing these other things.
Not really. Why not add the soccer team to that? Or Vichy? Or Algeria? Somehow Vichy which gave current France its retirement system is not 'la France'. Nicely played!
You can't have both absolute monarchy and republic at the same time, for example.
If you're going to include everything and anything into your patriotism, why restrict yourself to some arbitrary borders from a thousand years ago or so? At least the early French saw themselves as people of God, in communion with a greater Christian community, from Rome to Byzantium.
Why are you so triumphant about a culture that is sterilizing that very people then?
Do you include the millions of Frenchmen that lived and died before Alexandre Dumas ever wrote a word?
You can add traffic laws, identity cards, national police and a whole lot of other things.
But I thought it went without saying that those are part of it as well. Pétain c'est aussi la France. Though our claim to Algeria is, as you know, a bit more complicated because of the multinational nature of Empire.
I wouldn't say I am. But you don't really get to pick your culture, ironically. I am what I am and if that leads me to oblivion, so be it. I couldn't bear to be anything else.
I still think there is hope we can deal with this problem. And frankly I think we already would have if the American thumb wasn't pressed so hard on European populism.
Well it's a bit weird asking physically impossible hypotheticals, but what you're really asking is a spiritual question: whether the spirit of France before the Revolution would still have recognized him as one of ours.
I think it would. But I can see how one would disagree. Ultimately it's not really the sort of question that can be resolved through reasoned argument, is it? Nationhood is magic, it works on faith.
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