The French Connection, Part II
Now that I've defended the French, it is time to belittle those cheese-eating surrender monkeys (thank you, Groundskeeper Willy). The Constitution of the United States has endured uninterrupted since 1788. Since 1789, France has been governed by five separate Republics, two Empires, two Communes, the collaborative Vichy government, and the briefly restored Bourbon autocracy. The longest lasting, most stable government they're had in the last two hundred fourteen years was the Third Republic (1871-1940), which was founded in the ashes of the defeat of Napoleon III's Second Empire in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the anarchy of the Paris Commune of 1871 and met its demise at the hands of the Nazi blitzkrieg in June 1940. (Anyone noticing a pattern?) In short, the French are only slightly better at self-government than the Russians, and there is hardly a greater insult.