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French themselves are wading fearlessly into their own "end of ideol–
ogy" debate. There is, however, a spirit of millenarianism beneath
this discussion that distinguishes it from our own, for all French in–
tellectual debate lives today in the shadow of the upcoming revolu–
tionary bicentenary. Referring explicitly to this anniversary, the
author of the book's preface writes that "if history is, as Michelet says
the complete resurrection of the past, anniversaries are its burial."
Yet more than millenarianism is at work here. In 1988 the French
also "celebrated," if that is the word, the anniversary of three other,
less glorious events that make the contrast between early twentieth
century French politics and the situation today even sharper. In
books, essays, and television documentaries-and often with re–
markable frankness - the French confronted the fiftieth anniversary
of the 1938 Munich Accords, the fortieth anniversary of the Fourth
Republic's dissolution and the creation of the Fifth in 1958, and the
twentieth anniversary of the 1968 uprisings . This more recent
his tory, one of shame and instability, is also being interred , along
with the ideological passions that gave rise to it.
• • •
This long march toward the center now nearly over for intellec–
tuals , politicians, and apparently the general public, one would ex–
pect to find long-suffering French liberals pleased with what they
have achieved. Marxism is so absent from respectable intellectual
discourse today that, as Luc Ferry and Alain Renault have recently
written, one almost fears a nostalgic revival. The Communist Party ,
once the permanent horizon of French politics for many, now seems
to be passing over it, forever. The Catholic Church certainly poses
no challenge to the liberal order, and while the nationalistic right is a
nuisance , it poses no active threat: The French liberals seem to be
living an American neoconservative fantasy, in a country that has
come to accept moderate political debate at home and an antitotali–
tarian defense of human rights abroad. They should be quite con–
tent, right?
Wrong. The current mood among French liberals , old-fash–
ioned and born-again alike, is one of unmitigated gloom that begins
in politics and spreads into every crevice of contemporary culture .
They are certainly hung over, as all the French are , from the appar–
ently endless cycle of voting that began last year: two turns in the
presidential elections, two for the National Assembly, two for the
l
