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As a good citizen of Colorado, I should support our governor's recent foray into foreign policy -- if I could understand it.
Early in April, Gov. Bill Owens refused to meet with
Jean-Luc Sibiude, the French consul in Los Angeles, since
I believe your government opposed our efforts in Iraq in
order to advance the government's popularity at home and to
further French ambitions abroad.
Isn't that what all governments attempt to do, including the one headed by Owens? Try to get more popular at home, and promote their citizens' interests elsewhere?
Since France has an elected government, shouldn't its
government reflect the will of the people of France? If a
substantial majority of the French electorate opposed
military action in Iraq, wouldn't a representative
government reflect that? What Owens calls an effort to
advance the government's popularity at home
might
also be called representing the will of the French
people.
So are governments supposed to represent the will of the people who elected them, or represent the will of people thousands of miles away?
We may already have the answer in Colorado, where our legislature spent it last days of its session redrawing congressional district boundaries -- a bill that Owens quickly signed.
This did not happen because there was a demand from millions of Coloradans; I am among the many who didn't like the new districts, but at no time in my conversations with fellow grumblers did anyone suggest getting the legislature to take up the issue again so that we could move from the Fifth to the Third congressional district.
It did happen because Republican operatives in Washington decided to pull some strings so that their Colorado puppets would dance.
Or you could look at medical marijuana in Colorado. We expressed our will; our elected officials have been trying to thwart it ever since.
The more you follow this line of reasoning, the more it appears that our own governor has a problem with the public will. Apparently, it isn't just the French government that is supposed to ignore the will of its citizens; Colorado's government should do the same thing.
A few months ago, Owens complained that most political science professors were Democrats. And if they were Republicans, would they teach students that the purpose of holding elections in France is to choose people who will take orders from the President of the United States, no matter what the people of France think?
That's a strange political theory, no matter how much you may despise France these days.
Granted, I expected more from France. I am disappointed that I have not read of a French politician delivering a speech that went something like this:
It brings me sorrow to find fault with one of our
oldest allies, but I have no choice but to criticize the
American ingratitude.
If had had not been for French blood and treasure --
the four regiments under Comte de Rochambeau in 1779, the
millions of livres of financial assistance for arms and
food for the army of General Washington, the fleet under
Admiral de Grasse in 1781 -- then the Americans would never
have gained their independence.
And if we had not in 1803 given them one of the best
real-estate deals known to history -- three cents an acre
for the Louisiana Purchase -- then they might still be a
minor middling nation, not a superpower.
Further, we might have advanced our own commercial
interests in 1862. We could have formally recognized the
Confederacy whose cotton exports were vital to our textile
industry. We could have dispatched our navy to destroy the
Union blockade, and their nation might have been
permanently divided.
The Americans would not even have a country without
our support, let alone a single nation of continental
dimensions, and yet they now toil day and night to denounce
our people -- what sort of ungrateful wretches are
they?
Alas, no such speech has come to my attention. Meanwhile, I have to wonder what our governor will do next. Will he demand that we stop importing goods and labor from Mexico, since that government also opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq?
Or will he go after subversive geographic names in Colorado -- North and South Platte rivers, the Cache la Poudre River, the towns of Bellvue and LaPorte?
I have no idea, but I am fairly sure of one thing -- in the Owens theory of political science, it doesn't matter what we think about it, any more than the French government should care what French voters think.
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