READER HAMISH CAMPBELL also opposes a boycott of France:

Like many Scotsmen, I find myself rather conflicted with regard to France. The ties of ‘Auld Alliance’ go back to 1295 and strange as it might sound to some, that actually does count for something even now to people like me. Yet contrary to what others might think, England too is not an enemy… a rival at times yes, but in the final analysis, our customs are more akin to our brothers in London and our even cousins in New York than our mistress in Paris.

I see the Franco-German dominated EU as not just harmful and misguided an endeavour, but indicative of how the truth of the matter is that what I hear called the Anglosphere more and more in various blogs really does exist and France is not in any real way a part of that. Our old liberties, hard won yet hanging in the balance this very day across BOTH the United Kingdom and the United States, can be better secured by cutting the ties of government to socialist Brussels for Britain and a closer association between both the United Kingdom and the United States. Not union, mind you, for whilst the USA has much to admire, it has other things to abominate, such as its over-mighty taxation ‘service’ which makes our Inland Revenue seem like kittens, a legal system seemingly designed to maximize the revenues of the legal profession and the fact un-enumerated rights are in reality in the USA second class rights compared to those in the written constitution.

Yet regardless of gibes about ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys’ so beloved of many blogs, the French, rather than the corrupt French Republic, have much to commend them. To dismiss a people such as they as all hopelessly anti-Semitic and mindlessly anti-American is, as the good folks on Libertarian Samizdata have pointed out, to paint a people with a grotesque broad brush. A French reader wrote to Instapundit telling Glenn Reynolds he would be happy to see France become the next US state! Obviously this will never happen…hell, I am usually said to be an Atlanticist and I would not actually want to see the UK actually join the USA… but it does show that
there are French people who do not take the racist Le Pen or ‘little France’ Chirac world view.

Boycotting France to ‘punish’ the French people for the views of some would be rather like boycotting the USA because of the existence of the KKK, the Aryan nation and Susan Sontag. It will be ineffective at best and harmful at worst to the very causes the boycott seeks to further. I shall continue to take my holidays in the Loire valley, I shall continue to argue for British withdrawal from the EU and I shall continue to argue for the tolerant ‘small c’ conservative values that I belive underpins any civilised
society and allow it to resist the siren call of irrational racist or ethnic hatreds.

Boycotts have their time and place but I cannot see the value of trying to boycott all of France other than allowing some loud mouthed pressure groups to try and gain some attention for themselves.

Hmm. That “mistress in Paris” sounded pretty good until I figured out what Campbell meant. I still think that the French will come around. They have perhaps the worst political class in Europe (which is saying something — and it’s not like I think the American political class is any great prize) but Campbell is right that the real problem is there, not among the populace, for the most part.