Sometimes I visit the graves of France's great historical figures to pay my respects. I do this several times a year 😅
I do this because I personally feel that I owe an enormous amount of respect to all those people who built France, who made her greatness and glory, who made considerable sacrifices to do so, and who bequeathed us this country with all this heritage. I don't think we have the right to forget what they did, and their sacrifices oblige us to remember.
As Ernest Renan wrote
"The most unfortunate error is to believe that one serves one's country by slandering those who founded it. All the centuries of a nation are the pages of the same book. The true men of progress are those whose starting point is a profound respect for the past. Everything we do, everything we are, is the culmination of centuries of work. For me, I am never firmer in my liberal faith than when I think of the miracles of the ancient faith, nor more ardent about the work of the future than when I have spent hours listening to the bells of the town of Is. "
The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of efforts, sacrifices, and devotions. The cult of ancestors is the most legitimate of all; our ancestors made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (I mean true glory), that is the social capital on which a national idea is based. To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to want to do them again, these are the essential conditions for being a people. We love in proportion to the sacrifices we have made, the ills we have suffered.
We love the house we have built and that we pass on. The Spartan chant: "We are what you were; we shall be what you are" is in its simplicity the abbreviated hymn of every homeland. "
I do this because I personally feel that I owe an enormous amount of respect to all those people who built France, who made her greatness and glory, who made considerable sacrifices to do so, and who bequeathed us this country with all this heritage. I don't think we have the right to forget what they did, and their sacrifices oblige us to remember.
As Ernest Renan wrote
"The most unfortunate error is to believe that one serves one's country by slandering those who founded it. All the centuries of a nation are the pages of the same book. The true men of progress are those whose starting point is a profound respect for the past. Everything we do, everything we are, is the culmination of centuries of work. For me, I am never firmer in my liberal faith than when I think of the miracles of the ancient faith, nor more ardent about the work of the future than when I have spent hours listening to the bells of the town of Is. "
The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of efforts, sacrifices, and devotions. The cult of ancestors is the most legitimate of all; our ancestors made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (I mean true glory), that is the social capital on which a national idea is based. To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to want to do them again, these are the essential conditions for being a people. We love in proportion to the sacrifices we have made, the ills we have suffered.
We love the house we have built and that we pass on. The Spartan chant: "We are what you were; we shall be what you are" is in its simplicity the abbreviated hymn of every homeland. "
