Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France (New York: Walker, 2011).
Aurelian Craiutu, A Virtue of Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1839 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2012) ("The question reins: what do moderates stand for? It would seem to me that they affirm three basic attitudes. First, they defend pluralism--of ideas, interests, and social forces--and seek to achieve a balance between them in order to temper political and social conflicts. Second, moderates prefer gradual reforms to revolutionary breakthroughs, and they are temperamentally inclined to making compromises and concessions on both prudential and normative grounds. They acknowledge that the best course of action in politics is often to 'rally around the least bad among your adversaries, even when that party is still remote from your own views.' Third, moderation presupposes a tolerant approach which refuses to see the world in Manichean terms that divide it into forces of good (or light) and agents of evil (or darkness). It consists in a distinct political style that stands in stark contrast to the overconfident modus operandi of those whose world is dominated by black-and-white contrasts. Moderates refuse the posture of prophets, even if sometimes they, too, may be tempted to make grand historical generalizations and predictions. Anti-perfectionists and fearful of anarchy, they endorse fallibilism as a middle way between radical skepticism and epistemological absolutism, and acknowledge the limits of political action and the imperfection of the human condition." Id. at 14-15.).
Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: Volume I: Conflicts and Divisions, under the direction of Pierre Nora, English-Language Edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1996) (From Gerard Noiriel, "French and Foreigners": "The numerous Declarations of the Rights of Man since 1789 and the great constitutional principles of the Republic are the true underpinnings of the French tradition." "In order to understand how those great principles affect the collective consciousness, however, we cannot rely on legal texts alone. We must explore the thousand and one material channels that, unconsciously and therefore all that much more effectively, orient our everyday perception of the social world. An excellent example to illustrate this point is the official statistical apparatus of the government. It has often been said, and rightly so, that statistics are the lenses through which modern man observes the society in which he lives. A comparison of U.S. and French immigration statistics is enough to demonstrate, once again, the importance of the French Revolution as a foundational moment. Until the 1960s, American immigration statistics were based on racial and ethnic categories (race, religion, language, parents' place of birth). By contrast, French statistics since the nineteenth century have incorporated the principles of 1789: hence there are no questions about religion or parents' place of birth, and the most important criterion is the legal one of citizenship (French or foreign). A thorough comparative study would reveal the crucial effects of these initial differences in nomenclature in determining how the Americans and the French have perceived immigration over the past century and still perceive it today: on the one hand as an 'ethnic' problem, on the other as a problem of 'foreigners.'" Id. at 145, 149-150.).
Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: Volume II: Traditions, under the direction of Pierre Nora, English-Language Edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1997) (From Jean Starobinski, "The Pulpit, The Rostrum, and the Bar": "In classical rhetoric there were three types of eloquence: deliberative (practiced in assemblies making political decisions), judicial (used for settling legal cases), and demonstrative (mostly encomiastic, that is, laudatory, but also deprecatory on occasion). ... Suffice it to say that eloquence, the 'art of persuasion,' has been taught for centuries because it was inseparable from all forms of nonviolent collective behavior. Whether in popular assemblies or (select) courtrooms, in halls of justice, in churches or academies, eloquence was cultivated by the leaders as well as their opponents, as the art of eliciting consent. Persuasive communication has undoubtedly always pervaded all walks of life, though taking many different forms. Nowadays, commercials and advertising have unfortunately taken over some of the functions which had been ascribed to education in the past." Id. at 391, 392. "The pulpit, the bar, and the rostrum are places where this power of language was exercised before it was relayed by books and newspapers. These same places could also be denounced as suspect when those who used them to gain a hearing for themselves were discredited by counterpropaganda that could avail itself of the same sites as well as of instruments such as a books, caricatures, and theatrical or journalistic satire." "...What is different now is that orators are no longer confined to the traditional sites; often they tend to avoid adopting the stance of an orator.... Now that the technical power of those influence--amplifiers, the media, ensures an inexhaustible, endlessly renewable supply of messages, the orator on the rostrum, at the bar, or in the pulpit is an anachronistic figure, chained to a symbolic site from which the power of his speech to reach and penetrate an audience, even if magnified by currently available technologies, may seem limited. To be sure, there are still 'charismatic voices.' But authority and seduction avail themselves of other instruments." Id. at 393-394.) .
Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: Volume III: Symbols, under the direction of Pierre Nora, English-Language Edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1998).
