America must be open to voices of its critics by Pete Hamill, New York Daily News 06-01-2003 I have no idea when I'll receive my check from President Bush's nutty tax cut, but I do know what I'm going to do with it: I'm going to spend it in Paris with my wife. We will sit at the tables of Fouquet's, over coffee and croissants, read the International Herald Tribune and watch the passing show. We'll buy books in the stalls along the Seine. We'll wander through the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. We'll gaze up at the preposterous uselessness of the Eiffel Tower. We'll climb the slopes of Montparnasse and buy CDs by Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf and Georges Brassens. We'll dine on mussels in the clattering noise of La Coupole and have coffee later in the Dome or the Rotonde. We'll go to Paris, because it is beautiful and human, a city of the world. But this year, we'll go for a larger reason: patriotic duty. For months now, all of us have heard the yahoo chorus of France-bashers, acting as if they speak for all Americans. These amazing patriots seem to think that changing the name of French toast is an act of immense moral courage, a glittering example of patriotism. They think that pouring French wine into the gutter is the equivalent of landing on Omaha Beach. Sorry. As Sam Goldwyn once said, "Include me out." If you love the U.S. and its traditions, you must embrace the right of citizens to say no. This is not a monarchy. We don't bend our knees to any king. And that principle goes for the rest of the world. Bush is President of the U.S. He is not King of the World. In the relationships among nations, there should be no obligation for weak countries to bow before the strong. For the moment, the U.S. is the most powerful nation on the planet. But other nations - France, Germany, Russia, China - should be able to respectfully disagree with the U.S. and not be dismissed with sneers or threats. Those who disagree are not our enemies. They can have absolutely honorable motives for their disagreements. They could be troubled by the possible consequences of reckless American actions. They could genuinely worry about what might happen if the U.S. squanders its moral and financial capital in the world. We need their skepticism and criticism if we are to be a nation that lives with discipline and restraint. We don't have to agree with the French about anything. We would be fools to ignore what they might be saying. That's why I'll be going to Paris with my wife. It's a way of saying yes to America, and no to the yahoos. It's also a way of saying thanks. This would not be the same world - or the same U.S. - without Honoré de Balzac or François Truffaut or Henri Matisse. Courbet and Daumier, Bonnard and Cézanne and a hundred other French masters adorn the walls of American museums, enriching each one of us. Our finest 20th century literature was nurtured in Paris, the city that found room for Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Hart Crane. Paris also found room for the Irishmen James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, for the Spaniard Pablo Picasso, the Russian Igor Stravinsky and many thousands of others whose work has made us more civilized or more human. This is not to say all Frenchmen are admirable. A few are rude bastards. A few are anti-Semites. A few are racists. The French intellectuals are often irritating and arrogant when they are not writing the most impenetrable prose of the last 50 years. In that sense, they resemble New Yorkers (including those of our intellectuals under the sway of French theorists). Paris is broad and varied, dense and layered, just like New York, and if you look hard, you'll find a few of everything. But France is not our enemy simply because its political leaders disagree with our political leaders. Both sets of leaders are only temporary. We have been joined together since the French fleet saved the day for George Washington at Yorktown. That relationship can be strained, challenged, bruised - but never permanently broken. In time, we'll know whether the French and Germans were more right about Iraq than Bush was. In the meantime, there is Paris. No politician can tell me that I can't love her, too.