An Open Letter to the President of France

November 12, 2018

Dear President Emmanuel Macron,

Yesterday, you marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One by blaming nationalism for that war.  You said, “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism.  Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.  By saying our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.”

I find it incomprehensible that a French President would lecture an American President about how nationalism represents the notion of, “who cares about others,” when, frankly, France would not exist had American nationalists not cared about France, on two separate occasions.  You calling out American nationalism on the 100th anniversary of a war Americans died in, to protect your nation, is a mockery of all that is good about both of our countries.  It would appear that American nationalists have historically cared more about your country than you do.

Before I get into a long diatribe over your comments, allow me to introduce myself.  My last name, ‘Garneau’, probably sounds French, but it is actually French Canadian.  The first instance of the name spelled as ‘Garneau’ occurred when an ancestor of Francios-Xavier Garneau migrated to Quebec, in 1630.  Francois-Xavier Garneau wrote the first history of Quebec, titled, “Histoire du Canada,” in 1845, at a time when the British believed that the French Canadiens lacked their own language, culture, and history.  Francois-Xavier Garneau’s history recorded how the French Canadian language had evolved to be very different than French, how the French Canadian culture had evolved to be very different from that of France, and how the history of Canada was a very proud history of the French Canadian people.  This history became a firebrand of French Canadian nationalism, and became the official history of Canada in 1866.  To this day, the highest Canadian award given to Canadian historians is the Francois-Xavier Garneau Medal.

The date of November 11 has another meaning to me.  I left for Marine Corps Boot Camp on November 10, 1990 (the Marine Corps’ Birthday), and stood in formation at the San Diego airport until 1:00 AM on November 11, when I climbed on board a bus that brought me to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, where I became a member of Platoon 1111.

My family has a proud heritage surrounding history.  My father was a history teacher.  My grandfather has a hall named after him at Western Michigan University.  I, sadly, am neither a professional historian, nor a Canadian.  I was born and raised in Michigan (which had also been a part of New France), and I have lived in Michigan my entire life, other than when I was defending the United States, first as a member of the Marine Corps, and then of the United States Army.  If my father were still alive, I might ask him to write you, but my father recently passed away.  The task of writing this letter has fallen on my shoulders.

There is a slight irony in my writing you.  Francois-Xavier Garneau was a French Canadian, writing to correct the historical miscalculations of a British king, regarding nationalism in New France.  What would Francois-Xavier Garneau think about one of his American forebears writing a letter to correct the historical miscalculations of the French President, regarding nationalism today?  I’m guessing he would be tickled pink…

Let us start with definitions.  I will use the American Heritage Dictionary.  The word ‘Nationalism’ is a noun, with several meanings, listed below:

1. spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation.

2. devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism.

3. excessive patriotism; chauvinism.

4. the desire for national advancement or political independence.

5. the policy or doctrine of asserting the interests of one’s own nation viewed as separate from the interests of other nations or the common interests of all nations.

6. an idiom or trait peculiar to a nation.

7. a movement, as in the arts, based upon the folk idioms, history, aspirations, etc., of a nation.

Let us also define ‘globalist,’ as you call yourself a ‘globalist.’  ‘Globalist’ is the opposite of ‘nationalist,’ and it has but one definition:

1. the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations.

I will agree that it is entirely possible to take ‘nationalism’ too far (as in the third definition).  I want you to note, however, that ‘patriotism’ is a nationalist instinct, completely lacking in the globalist mind.  I want you to also note that a nationalist is only concerned with the governing of their own nation, leaving the rest of the world alone to do the same, whereas a globalist, such as yourself, wants to rule over everyone.  As I mentioned earlier, it was the sense that the French, rather than the Germans, should rule France, that brought America into World War One, and that led America to help restore France in world War Two.

There is nothing in nationalism that prevents nations from cooperating, such as with international trade, but a nationalist believes that such things must be mutually agreed upon, whereas globalists believe they have the right to force such things down other nations’ throats.

Had nationalism been in play in 1914, when a Serbian separatist killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), the world would have seen a brief war between the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Serbia.  Sadly, the world was at the time filled with globalists, like you, such that the nations of Europe were all bound to fight for one another, leading to a world war.  Globalism, rather than nationalism, caused World War One.

At the end of World War One, the Ottoman Turkish Empire collapsed, leaving the Middle East in disarray.  It was globalists in France and England who carved up the Middle East, based on what they viewed as “the world’s interests,” rather than in the interests of the people who lived in the Middle East.  Those borders ensured that the Middle East would be a hotbed of conflict for the foreseeable future.  Thanks to globalists, like you, the Middle East is still a hotbed of warfare.  Had France and England used nationalist interests, they would have considered the people who lived in the Middle East, and would have created borders that made sense, based on the different cultures of the peoples who lived there.  The Kurds, for example, would have had a homeland, and Iran’s border would have included all of the Persians, rather than forcing many of them to try and co-exist with a Sunni minority, in what is now Iraq.  Your globalism destroyed the Middle East.

My wife is Polish, and she listened with interest to your calls for a European Army, which you said was necessary to protect Europe from “China, Russia, and the United States of America.”  We both found it interesting that you think it necessary to defend Europe from the United States, when Europe would look very different had the United States not sacrificed American blood in two World Wars.  Perhaps you feel France would have been better off in German hands?

As a Marine, I take offense at the notion that Europe needs a standing army to defend itself from my brothers in arms, but my wife took another meaning from it entirely.  My wife was born and raised in Radom, Poland.

You might know, from history, that Poland was carved up in 1795, by globalists in Austria, Russia, and Prussia.  From 1795-1918, there was no such thing as a Polish state, though the Polish people continued to exist, and continued to want independence as a nation.  Poland was reborn on November 11, 1918, and when you discuss a European Army, you are also discussing a European State, consisting of those nations who are now members of the European Union.  That would include Poland.  My nation benefited from the dissolution of the Polish state, Tadeusz Kosciusko having left Poland shortly before, to found the United States Army Corps of Engineers.  I served as a combat engineer myself – a position with a direct lineage back to Kosciusko himself.  Kosciusko is a national hero in both Poland, and the United States.

My wife and I have friends and family in Poland.  If you create a European Army, and try to force Poland to join a European state, it will be my profound pleasure to rejoin the American military, and to help defend my Polish friends and family against your tyranny.

You, sir, make rude references to President Donald Trump, that attempt to compare him to Hitler, and yet it is you who wishes to rule the whole of the European continent.  All Trump wants is for you to leave the rest of Europe well enough alone.

You might further remember that France had a treaty with Poland, in 1939, when the Germans (and the Russians) invaded Poland.  I mention this not only because there weren’t enough German troops facing France, in September of 1939, to defend Nazi Germany, but also because the Polish defended their nation against the combined might of Germany and Russia, far better than France defended itself against just Germany.  It took the combined German, Russian, Danzig, and Slovak armies five weeks to defeat a Polish Army that was outnumbered and outclassed in every conceivable way.  France, in the meantime, had a stronger, better equipped military than did Germany, and only faced the German Army.  France fell in six weeks.

France spent the interwar years, between world wars, teaching it’s children such things as that ‘it is better to stand speaking German than to kneel speaking French,’ that ‘the evils of war make it just as wrong to defend as to attack,’ and that ‘the nation of France is, in any case, not worth defending’.  France outclassed the German Army in every possible way, but most French units, having been taught by French globalists not to fight, either fled or surrendered, at first contact with German forces.  I want to be crystal clear in this – the Battle of France was lost, not because the Nazis had a better military, but because idiots like you taught the French people to be cowards.

Not all French units were cowardly.  Some fought like lions.  Many noble French men gave their lives defending the British escape from Dunkirk, and just as we can blame some French soldiers for the loss of France, we have to credit other French soldiers with saving England.  French globalists, like you, lost France to Germany, but French nationalists helped save England, and in doing so, made winning the war possible.

It is also worth noting that when Germany invaded France in 1914 (getting back to World War One), French nationalism was so strong that many of the French soldiers literally took taxis to the Front, in their zeal to repel the German invaders.  Those soldiers who believed France worth defending gave their lives with honor and distinction, in both World Wars.

Those soldiers who listened to people like you did not fight, to the point that General George S. Patton remarked, “I don’t know what scares me more: having a German division in front of me, or a French division behind me.”

You, sir, are a disgrace to the brave soldiers of the French Army, who saved your country in World War One, and who gave their lives fighting the Germans around Dunkirk, in World War Two.  Without the sacrifice of those brave French nationalists, the Germans would have won both world wars.

Had you been in charge of France in 1914 and 1939, Germany would have won both world wars.  Please let that sink in.

We can also look back before World War One, to study the difference between nationalism and globalism, for the French committed countless atrocities in France’s quest to make France global, through colonization.  Just as you, today, view yourself as uniquely qualified (along with Angela Markel) to rule over such places as Poland, so too French kings felt themselves uniquely qualified to rule over French Indo-China; as well as much of North America, Africa, and the Middle East.  For the sake of the world, can you please specify the bounds of your own imperial urges?

Nationalism is the belief that the people who live on a given piece of land have the right to dictate how they will live, whereas globalism is the belief that some global elite should rule over all people, everywhere.  Nationalism is about freedom and self-rule.  Globalism is about tyranny.  You have been very clear about which side you are on.  Allow me to be equally clear: I oppose you.

Luckily for the people of Poland, and the rest of the world, your time is running out.  You do not lead in French polls.  Marine Le Pen does.  She, rather than you, represents your future, and she, unlike you, is a nationalist.  Marine Le Pen will save France for the French people, and will leave the rest of the world alone.  I opened this letter by quoting you, and I will close this letter by quoting Marine Le Pen:

“Vive la France!”

Sincerely Yours,

Wallace L. Garneau

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