I was watching my usual highbrow, intellectual television programming tonight and caught a South Park episode about dancing. "You got served" sums up the theme. Anyway, in that episode, Stan makes a comment to Butters: "You might as well go to France with all the other pussies." That comment struck me with the inherent bias Americans seem to hold against France.Bias, you say? Well, we like their luxury goods, as does most of the world. The French corner on that market was established by Louis XIV and entrenched by that icon of taste, Mme. de Pompadour. But we make fun of their cheese, claim our Californian wines are better, joke about their lack of military prowess, not to mention their lack of personal hygiene. This last one is justified, especially if you're in Paris during a heat wave. We whine about their rudeness, especially Parisian waiters, and scoff at their certainty that their culture is still one of the premier forces in the world. Recently many Americans lambasted France for it's lack of support for the War in Iraq, which is pricelessly ironic considering how foolhardy that war is and how most Americans now are opposed to it. Why is there so much animosity towards a country that we owe so much too?Owe, you say? We saved their asses in two world wars and gave them billions to help them rebuild after the last one didn't we? If anyone owes anyone, they owe us. Well, without diving into the flaws of that attitude, ponder that without France, there would be no United States. The American Revolution, started by greedy merchants and not supported by a majority of Americans, would inevitably have been crushed without French financial, and ultimately military support. We owe our existence as a country to French money (money which the king, Louis XVI, would ultimately have to pay for with his head) and men. What about the British? Aren't they are closest allies? Well, we've fought two wars against the British, plus we spent over a century eyeballing each other's imperial expansion, our military and theirs both planning campaigns against the other as a contingency. How many wars have we fought with France? None.What about Russia? Cold War. Germany? Two World Wars. Spain? Spanish-American War. Canada? War of 1812, with Canada as a British client. Mexico? Mexican-American war. Italy? World War 2. China? Many scuffles, including the Boxer Rebellion. In fact, France is the only major power with which we have not fought a war. You may argue that the Netherlands should share favored nation treatment with France, since the Dutch also joined us in the American Revolution and we've never fought a war against them. Plus we can go there and legally smoke pot and screw whores. That ignores the fact that the Dutch contibution to the American Revolution was miniscule in comparison to that of the French, and that the Dutch maintained neutrality during WWI. So take our centuries of amity with France and add to that the Louisiana Purchase and the Statue of Liberty...and tell me why we, as Americans, don't revere the French and France as our true brothers in liberty, our most staunch of allies?