<\/a>Paris protests against Donald Trump<\/p><\/div>\n
This intellectual and cultural renewal which aimed for the triumph of reason over\u00a0faith\u00a0and\u00a0belief and the triumph of the\u00a0bourgeois\u00a0over\u00a0nobility\u00a0and\u00a0clergy is something the French are still proud of.<\/span><\/p>\nEvery year French students in their last year of \u201clyc\u00e9e<\/em>\u201d or Secondary school sit down to a Philosophy exam where they are expected to write lucid arguments in answer to questions like\u2014\u201cCan a scientific truth be dangerous?\u201d and, \u201cIs it one\u2019s own responsibility to find happiness?\u201d etc.<\/span><\/p>\nExamples worth following<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nBe it the French revolution in the late 18th<\/sup> century, when the French said no to monarchy or the student revolution of May 1968 which overturned the social order of the day, or the French labour unions that love to protest and say no when they do not agree with something. More often than not when the French take to the streets, they force their governments to pull up their socks and clean up their acts.<\/span><\/p>\nIn personal life, even though using the word \u201cno\u201d too liberally can land you in conflict situations very easily, it is fair game if what you hanker after is a structured debate. Standing your ground is viewed by several cultures as a brave act and ideally requires self-discipline to be delivered well. It is also rumoured to save one\u2019s time on unnecessary engagements and be more productive, though in the case of the French that last bit would be inapplicable.<\/span><\/p>\nFinally, what we need to be on the lookout for is\u2014will the French not lose their gumption and say as definite a no to Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate of the French National Front, a\u00a0right-wing populist and\u00a0nationalist political party, when they go to vote next month, as they did to Donald Trump when he was elected president of the United States. By May 2017 we should have the answer to that.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As opposed to the polite Indian dawdle of the head when faced with the prospect of saying a hard no; the French do not dodge the opportunity of saying \u201cmon oeil\u201d\u00a0 By Shailaja Paramathma If you have never heard a French say \u201cnon,\u201d you still do not know the finality which that one single word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1503,2046],"tags":[2772,1764,2775,2770,2774,2776,2773,2771],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2017\/03\/mon-oeil-gesture_youtube.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12652"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12652"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=12652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}