Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France two years in a row, and the French are upset. Last year, they pooh-poohed his victory because their own stars had been kept out for soaking up forbidden concoctions of the kind that make racehorses faster. This year, the stars competed, and got their clocks cleaned in big ways. So, some French rags suggested that Lance used vitamins, which is not illegal, but ... unfair. It is not the first time that a foreigner wins the race, but what the French find disturbing is that Lance is an American. The French dislike Americans.

I had always found it puzzling that a people we bailed out of trouble in two world wars could resent us. I called that the French Enigma, and just filed the subject under the rubric of inexplicable cultural quirks. But my recent trip to France brought back the Enigma to the fore. Conversations with the natives always seemed to lead to American "hormone beef," France's immensely greater number of cheese varieties, our bad taste for ketchup, and the inferior bouquet of California wines. An then, there is our capitalistic system, cruel to the weak and the luckless, which encourages individualism and makes people work too hard÷the Frenchman's worst fear. In short, these comments were meant to bring home that France was much better than America in all aspects of life, morality included. I found out that debating the subject was just futile. You can't debate gnats. Back in California, I decided to give a little thought to the Enigma. And I think I cracked it, most of it.

Collectively, the French believe that they are superior to other peoples. For centuries, they have been indoctrinated in the notion that France occupies a special place in the natural order of things. As such, she has the duty to correct the wrongs of the world, that is, to make the world as French as possible. It is under that banner that Napoleon wreaked havoc on Europe. His bloody exercises were supposed to propagate the enlightened liberté-égalité-fraternité ideal of the French revolution. In their nineteenth-century colonial ventures, the French tried to turn Africans and Asians into Frenchmen, with the results that we know. More recently, De Gaulle held the belief that France's history entitled her to a role of political and cultural leadership in the world, a vision of grandeur enthusiastically espoused by the French.

This collective self-perception has long been the main motor of puzzling national and international policies. By the end of the second world war, De Gaulle endeavored to turn France into a world power able to carry out the vision of grandeur. First, he placed the economy in the care of the government, based on the notion that the government knows better. Serious French economists called that dirigisme, and declared it a clever new way to eschew the socialist-capitalist dilemma. Of course, it was not a new idea. It had existed in one form or another since Louis XIV. It was also part of Mussolini's view of the fascist state and Hitler's blueprint for the Third Reich. Second, since a direct competition with the United States was out of the question, De Gaulle decided to acquire due leverage in international affairs by playing each side against the other in the Cold War. Thus, France built short-range nuclear weapons to make a show of independence, banned NATO US troops from her soil, played footsie with the Soviet Union under the cover of economic and cultural exchanges, opposed the installation of US missiles in western Europe, and so on and so forth. She also launched the Plan Calcul, De Gaulle's brainchild to produce homegrown supercomputers dedicated to defense designs, an assurance against technological dependence on the US. The grand scheme, for reasons that only the French can understand, included an African component. In Africa, after a disastrous colonial war in Algeria, France embarked on a mission to support corrupt dictators with money and weapons, threw her Foreign Legion into local wars, and involved herself in other murky enterprises that had no moment whatsoever on international affairs.

These policies filled French hearts with enormous pride, because they were seen as a daring poke in America's eye. The grand scheme, which De Gaulle's successors tried to carry on, fell short of educing any measure of international attention, and ended up a total failure.

When the French look at their current condition, they must find few reasons to be happy. Their welfare is entirely dependent on the government, which gobbles up about 55% of the GDP. They must endure high taxes, massive regulations, and a rate of unemployment of 10% or more in spite of myriad government make-work jobs and a thirty-five-hour workweek. The rate of economic growth is less than spectacular, and less than Germany's. France trails both Britain and Germany for Nobel prizes in science. The computer revolution has left her behind as well, the long-forgotten Plan Calcul notwithstanding. French entrepreneurs emigrate to Great Britain or the United States to find an environment less hostile to private business. The educational system, once a model of efficacy, is in shambles. Finally, evidence of bribes, misuses of public funds, and other corrupt practices has tainted the highest levels of political power. On the international scene, France has no sway to speak of. Disconnected from their ruling elite---alumni of an Ecole Nationale d'Administration created by the government for the government---the French take to the streets, go on strike, or block the highways every time they have a complaint, which is quite often. To appease discontent, and to justify its omnipresence in economic affairs, the government has made "solidarity" its official objective. In this context, solidarity is the code word for ever massive income redistribution in the name of charity. That noble goal has given rise to complex rules of taxation, which invariably get in the way of industry productivity. Under the rule of solidarity, corporations spending "too much" on high salaries are slapped with a special tax to subsidize the transition to a thirty-five-hour workweek that small businesses cannot afford. Such measures, meant to assuage popular feelings of envy, have far-reaching consequences and too often push corporations into unproductive reorganizations with attendant layoffs and more people taking to the streets.

Under such circumstances, it is comprehensible that the French would seek solace in claims of hormone-free beef and innumerable cheese varieties. Unfortunately, instances of cheese-induced listeria poisoning periodically mar the gastronomic bliss, and cattle fed with carcass meal are falling prey to the mad-cow disease. Recently, large quantities of canned cassoulet were found to contain damaged meat, chopped feathers, and other debris.

Sooner or later, France will have to junk her bankrupt model and inject a good dose of free market in its economy. It is likely that only a disaster will prompt any move in that direction. For now, it is easier to blame current ills on the usual villain, that is, the United States. America's economic dominance is a constant reminder that private enterprise, a competitive market, and productivity beat enlightened dirigisme hands down. America is too free, too eager, and too creative, which stands in the way of French preeminence. So, faute de mieux, some Frenchmen have chosen to be annoying gnats. A Mr. Bové, owner of a sheep farm that produces expensive Roquefort cheese, has made it his mission to vandalize McDonald's restaurants in the name of preserving French culture. A Mr. Jack Lang, former Minister of Culture in the Mitterrand administration and now Minister of Education, has gone on a crusade against the state of Texas for its exercise of the death penalty. He travelled a few times to the Huntsville penitentiary to meet certified murderers whom he declared innocent and victims of American racism. Then, a French judge ordered Yahoo! to prevent French Internet users from accessing Web sites selling Nazi memorabilia. Jerry Yang, chairman of Yahoo!, pointedly protested that such an interdiction could not be enforced without applying as well to American Internet users, which was against the first amendment of the US constitution. This statement gave rise to a storm of accusations that America behaved like a bully by imposing its values on France, and a weekly paper promptly called for a boycott of Yahoo!.

The French press makes much fuss about such futilities by presenting them as admirable manifestations of native bravery. Of course, this brand of bravery goes entirely unnoticed here, and for good reason. On this side of the pond, bravery is something more like US Rangers scaling Normandy cliffs under enemy fire on 6th June 1944.

Hopes to resurrect the politics of grandeur have been revived with the construction of the European Union. This venture, initially conceived as a way to contain a Germany thrice at war with France in less than a century has evolved into the creation of an anti-American bloc. The reason for its recent inclusion of Britain is not just economic. It also aims at severing British traditional ties to the United States. The EU's much-touted economic "Third Way" is but more dirigisme to accommodate the current statist policies of the main partners and to impose them on other members. Of course, it is doomed. A week does not go by without the French taking to the streets to protest new European rules applying to one trade or another. The constitution of the EU, yet at an embryonic stage, is already about as complex as the US tax code in its goal to regulate the smallest details of business practices and social policies.

Complaints of cultural invasion notwithstanding, there is enormous Gallic enthusiasm for things American like Levi's blue jeans, T-shirts that read "Moab Utah," Zippo lighters, Rock n' Roll, and movies. Last year, a company in the Champagne province---no less---started manufacturing Royal Crown Draft, Premium Cola. It received an innovation award because of the concoction's original recipe, natural ingredients, and a packaging looking like a beer bottle of yore. No one mentioned that this "innovation"---including the packaging---was an RC Cola creation discontinued in 1995 for its lack of success. That a failed American product could be turned into a French innovation is bizarre enough, but reflects the French extraordinary infatuation with America. This is the part of the Enigma that I could not crack.

Now, why should we pay any attention to the French and their bunglings? Because they are a textbook example of statist folly. France, a country blessed with a mild climate, abundant arable land, natural resources, and great stretches of coastline, should be incredibly prosperous. But the pusillanimous French have instead opted for mediocrity, under the false assumption that substituting government power for individual initiative would protect them from the trials of life. We are not there yet, but strong political currents are now pulling America in the same direction. The image of a happy, laid-back France often invoked by the left to advance its agenda of "protective" government is just a myth. The French are neither happy nor laid-back, and they lead Europe for their use of anti-depressant drugs. Let us not take the same road.