Her name was Edith Sanski. She was 22. I was 10. She kissed me in Menton.

First time and place I fell in love. There is passion there and don’t you dare brand it all as effeteness or cowardice. (No. Don’t get wrong ideas. Edith was a singer with a becoming overbite who was just being sweet to a boy with an obvious crush.) France has been a friend, regardless of her loose talk. The graves at Normandy are scrupulously maintained. The memory remains. Sad but not regretted.

I wrote about France (you could look it up) critically, lovingly, and even slavishly long before today’s tragedy:

My own observation is that the amount of emotion expended in… arguments about France has very little to do with France itself and a great deal to do with what one thinks the other guy believes about France. Maher is using the topic of things French to poke a stick in the eye of his own straw-man stereotype of American conservatives. Most hardcore French bashers, on the other hand, aren’t as hostile to France as they are to self-styled liberal sophisticates like Maher who see themselves as world-class intellectuals in the tradition of Sartre, Foucault, and Rousseau. It’s all cultural war by proxy. And France is, of course, an incredibly picturesque and symbolic backdrop for a war between opposing cultural perspectives.

I believe Bill Maher when he says, “I don’t want to be French.” His most subtle punchline is his correct assumption that his fiercest critics won’t ever believe it.

I also happen to think that both sides of the culture conflict are ill served by choosing France as a theater of war over competing American visions of our national future. There are simply too many disqualifying ‘but’s’ in every instance that make the French experience irrelevant. Hopelessly, completely, permanently irrelevant.

The France they’re all talking about doesn’t really exist, certainly not as any kind of template for American life, good or bad. France is a small country. We are a huge one. France is an old country with a young constitutional government (all its predecessors having failed for centuries). We are a young country with an old constitutional government. France is ethnically homogeneous with a fairly homogeneous religious minority of immigrants it can’t or won’t assimilate. We are ethnically heterogeneous with a heterogeneous minority of immigrants, most of whom do or will assimilate successfully. France is located at the heart of the most violent continent in history, while we overwhelmingly dominate the most peaceful continent in history (barring the uninhabited Antarctic). France has a legacy of conquering its neighbors, executing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, and engaging in oppressive colonial actions in the Third World that continue to this day. We have our own legacy of slavery and warfare against the Indians, but if you’re into comparing bloodstains, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison without meaning or relevance. France is an exhausted nation with a seriously declining birthrate, and its crimes and misdemeanors on the world stage are those of an aged cynic who has learned to seek every possible personal advantage with the least possible personal risk — and to hell with all your naive ideals. We are an energetic, growing nation still willing to risk making big mistakes for big rewards.

In this context, the liberal habit of cherry-picking the “good things” about France to fling in the face of conservatives is delusional and counterproductive. They forget that almost no one of any political stripe wants America to be France. The conservative habit of comparing American liberals to the effete French is equally counterproductive. For the most part, the effete liberal Americans who really would like to be French have already moved there. Johnny Depp. Gwyneth Paltrow. Who else?…

On the other hand, conservative bashers of all things French would do well to remember that this nation they so despise has produced some of the greatest writers, philosophers, artists, architects, generals and armies in recorded human history. If your French-bashing goes beyond humor for the sake of entertainment or clever satire, you’re doing yourselves no honor in the process. For example, it’s fine to make dozens of jokes about how cowardly the French are, but before you get too carried away, read up on the battle of Verdun in World War I. Less than a century ago, the French army was filled with heroes so stupefyingly brave that they allowed themselves to be wasted by the hundreds of thousands to no real purpose. Read, study the battlefield photographs, and the contemporary accounts of the action — then, by all means, give us some more cowardly French jokes. That’s our birthright as Americans, and will remain so as long as we don’t take our jests — and ourselves — too seriously.

I also love Paris. My heart is with all the French tonight.