It is en vogue these days for conservatives to reference historical French writings as authoritative commentary on American society. Why such a romantic sentiment should manifest itself at this time is curious, but probably has to do with the sentiment of patriotism itself.

In the popular arena of American commentary, Ann Coulter started it. Her book, Demonic (2011) is a scintillating application of simple psycho-sociology theory of the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) is a simple, terse collection of observations about group behavior, “mob” (populace) behavior specifically. These observations are abundantly clear to any, and, as BadEagle.com noted, are addressed essentially in Britisher Charles Mackey’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of the Crowds (London: Bentley, 1841) published half a century before. European hysteria, that is, out of control crowds, within the confines of civilized society, was not uncommon. Mackey’s work is a bit ponderous, however, and Le Bon’s is much more accessible, and of more immediate application. In its brevity, abstraction, and non-specificity, it can be applied with wondrous efficacy to our modern times over a century later. This is what Coulter basically accomplished.

Mark Levin, however, chose the sociological, political French commentary, rather than the poetic psychological. The irresistible prose set truth in an undeniable, unavoidable confrontation. In Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America (2012), Levin’s text is ensconced with an abundance of reference to the work of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the French traveler, historican, and political commentator. That work, a commonplace, standard text in any college course on basic American history, is Democracy in America, first published in 1835. De Tocqueville was quick to observe the American experiment in government, and wrote endlessly on the effect of the American constitution on the ethos of the American people. Levin find great affirmation in the observations of a Frenchmen, great validation of the theory of modern conservatism–which is in fact, patriotism.

In is unclear how the French influenced the American Revolution, other than it’s financial and military contribution, but, it seems now that, in popular American political commentary, it is fashionable to reference the French.

Not to be outdone, then, by these illustrious commentators like Coulter or Levin, BadEagle.com recommends yet another, even more evidentiary French reference, Robert Castel, The Regulation of Madness: The Origins of Incarceration in France (1976, translated int English by W. D. Halls, for Blackwell, London, 1988). Castel begins, in fact, with consideration of the insane, in France, as early as 1834. It is most facile to consider the insane in the context of social ills, or “crowd” problems, since the insane were a social class. In the early 1830′s, there were some 300,000 beggars, some 100,000 ‘travellers,’ and another 300,000 foundlings (deserted child or infant). These were the poor, or we might say, the homeless. It was estimated that there were 10,000 actually insane, or mentally irreparable. No actual “legal solution” (as Castel calls it) was attempted until the Third Republic, or The Law of June 30, 1838. It was the first legislative declaration of a right of assistance and treatment. While Castel attributes the late coming remedy to “the convulsions of the fall of the Ancien Régime,” or, the previous administration, as it were, the fact is, the French government recognized the insane as a special kind of dependency.

Enter: Dr. Phillipe Pinel (1745-1826). We should say, enter the influence of Pinel, who had published Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale; ou la manie in 1801. Roughly translated, “Medical-philosophical treatment of mental alienation or mania,” Pinel sought to understand the mentally ill with a compassion surpassing any form of liberalism known in today’s indulgent society of fraudulent professional philanthropists known as Democrats. Pinel is given notice in Castel’s history, of course, but it is significant to also note that the French romantic, or psychologically sensual approach awareness–at all levels of consciousness, individual and collective, is the foundation of modern psychology. The Jewish Austrian Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was indeed influenced by the French precedent, having studied in Paris in the 1880′s. Hynotism was the rage, and in fact, Freud later rejected its revelations as unreliable. However, there is no denying that Freud sought to understand the rather unique French approach to human behavior.

And to offer triumphant evidence of the French taste for the strange, the avant-garde, and the whole notion of redemption through beautification, we present, Elissa D. Gelfand‘s Imagination in Confinement: Women’s Writings from French Prisons (1983), a rather unique work of fanciful scholarship, only the second half of which analyzes directly the work of French women prisoners. Gelfand begins with Madame Roland, imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, 1793. Mme. Roland of course was the wife of Jean-Marie Roland, former minister of the interior. In other words, Mme. Roland was very high class, educated, and literary. Then Gelfand examines the work of Marie Cappell-Lafarge (imprisoned in 1840), a common Parisian who dramatized her imprisonment in an age of social reform. Marguerite Steinheil, imprisoned in 1908, represents the confinements of modernity. Then we are presented two feminist heroines of the ’60′s, and the notion of social aggression (activism), the new cause célèbre at that time: Anne Huré and Albertine Sarrazin.

Alas, our expectations of French romanticism are painfully amiss, as Gelfand is absorbed in academic competition with her male peers. Her treatment of an otherwise gloriously imaginative prospect, potent with every surge of compassion and pity in the human heart, is at last chiefly boring if not disgusting, however successful her academic entry in academic competition may have been. A professional feminist, the last thing we could expect would be romance and feeling. Her treatment of women destroys all sensitivity–in the cause of academic competition. Indeed, nothing could be more abrasive and unbeautiful than a woman consciously trying to out-intellectualize a man, and using the subject of damsels in distress as the ploy.

This is really worse than Mary Gordon‘s treatment of Jeanne d’Arc (2000). Gordon wants to implicitly assert her authority as a women in assessing The Maid, but at the same time self-consciously attempts to reason objectively, as a man, or as a mind, and this compulsion completely overrides even her moments of particularly brilliant insight. Gordon lacks the one element that alone allows correct understanding of Joan: faith. Gordon’s compulsion for academic respect forbids it. Her work ends up as just another woman’s attempt to be academic, sacrificing womanhood on the alter of competition with men. Failure on all sides, seems to me.

At least we know Joan of Arc was a patriot par excellence. If that is the ultimate French connection here, so be it.

I note that both Gordon and Gelfand are associated with Barnard College, Gordon having graduated in 1971, and Gelfand being an eminent professor at present.

Artist: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867). Jeanne d’Arc au sacre du roi Charles VII, dans la cathedrale de Reims (1854). Joan was not a man-hating feminist. Feminists are utterly unworthy of her, therefore.