Comment by lily on Sunday, Jul 8 at 03:53 PM

I'm French and I found Jack Lang ridiculous. He is too proud to ask for a translater. He thinks his English is enought good and he said a lot of mistakes. Too bad for him. You said 'honest'? I don't think so. He is one of the most ' gauche caviar' in France.

Comment by Pierre, Canada on Thursday, Jun 28 at 01:44 PM

Jack Lang is one of the most honest politician and one of the finest public figure in France presently. It is a shame that the interview did not gave justice to that clever and humane person. It is certainly not in French DNA to be anti-democratic. If it was the case they would not have made the French Revolution and inspired philosophically the American Revolution. But France is an European country who has lived hundred of years under a strong monarchy (a monarchy much stronger than the British one), and since its origin in the Renaissance the French State has built itself progressively through a continual centralisation in Paris (ask the French region what they think of Paris), so the habits of centralisation and hierarchy of power is deep rooted in France, which makes the French governance systematic and rigid, with or without a democratic constitution. We have to remember that the origin of France as a country is not the French revolution itself but understand their character as a nation by looking through their whole history. The forces who would opposed Sarkozy are the forces of the French street: the peoples, the unions, the various civic organisations. They can paralyse the country. The French society is in a continual tension, usually soft and sometimes hard, between the people and The State, with on one side a perpetual desire to overthrow the State (not necessarily a desire of violence but a desire to change or challenge the State) and on the other side a perpetual desire to control the destiny of the country from A to Z. These two aspects are main components of the French Revolution which re-enacts itself from time to time and is always latent. Remember that the French Revolution was a people revolution but also a revolution directed by an intellectual and political elite who wanted to change France from A to Z in an uniform way, not something the US has truly known. It is very different from the US where the State and the People are ideologically one and the same and where the power is much less centralised (in many ways but first of all because it is originally a federation). The American Revolution part the new nation completely from the original monarchic state of England and the old British society. The French Revolution, in spite of great efforts to abolish the past, could not part France from its land, its society, its history, its traditions, etc. Therefore the tensions coming from this revolutionary era, the hate & love relationship between the Peoples and the State and the internal conflict between liberty and identity persist in the French society. PS I do not understand why it is not possible to find a French interpreter in New-York (in French! not in an obscure Amazonian dialect, and in New-York!), while in Montreal being able to translate a guest from his native language is the A.B.C. of interviewing.