FRANKLY FREE.

WHEN FREEDOM FRIED FASCISM.

“Freedom” fries or “French” fries are synonymous. Indeed “Frank”, a word that gave “Imperium Francorum” abbreviated as “Francia” (modern “France”), meant FREE. Ferocious and free. The initial Salic law of the Franks gave more rights to them than to plain Roman citizens, reinforcing the meaning of “Frank” as free.

It was hilarious to see ignorant members of the US Congress submitting to their leader, the self described “Decider”, by trying to escape the concept of France while using the very conceptual root, freedom, which gave rise to the word French.

Talking without knowing is like breathing without air: an ominous fate.

The Franks were so free that they insisted their ancestors had escaped from the burning Troy. That made them as prestigious as Rome (supposedly founded by a Trojan). More importantly, it made the Franks born critiques and adversaries of the Greco-Roman civilization.

The Greco-Roman civilization was not conquered. It collapsed under its own errors, in the same way, at least three times. Three times it saw fascism rise, and was unable to stop it. Why? Because it was too fascist to start with. And it was too fascist because it had subhuman populations: the slaves and the women (today the US has the poor, those without health insurance, etc…).

The Franks would shatter the Greco-Roman founding principles of slavery and sexism. Troy was attacked by Greece because a woman had used her freedom of choice. To choose Troy rather than Greece as model and inspiration was to chose women as equal.

Indeed seven Merovingian queens soon ruled. One of them was one of the handful of the most important head of states civilization ever knew. Perhaps the most important, period. Her statue is in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. Bathilde outlawed slavery (~ 660 CE). A US president, Lincoln, discovered that was a good idea around 1863 CE. Excuse us, we are the slows: not enough freedom on our fries…

Thus the Franks proclaimed themselves to be free of the Greco-Roman erroneous preconceptions that were too friendly to fascism, right from the start. Those preconceptions had perverted the Greco-Roman valuation system. That made the purely Greek version of that moral system weak and unable to overwhelm the rough fascist values of the Macedonians. And then unable to persuade the Roman elite either.

Rejecting sexism and slavery allowed the Franks to launch civilization with the very best foundations. They had not been seen since Crete (Crete was very anti sexist, with its female toreadors, and Crete was very equalitarian, as shown by its lack of walls and fortifications; instead archeology finds plenty of the crushed blend of materials characteristic of tsunami debris, followed by civil strife).

The concept of freedom for all had eluded both Greeks and Romans, and its absence ultimately caused their social, economic, and technological demise through mental stagnation. The remedy the autocrat Constantine, his son Constantius II and their successors found, the ultimate fascism they called Catholic Orthodoxy, brought the apocalypse of total mental fascism. The Dark Ages.

Aristotle claimed slavery was needed, because they, the ancient Greeks, did not have robots. But they sure had luxury.

Look at the Acropolis. Pretty, but it may have destroyed Athens (she diverted the Dorian League defense funds to build it, causing serious resentment that old fascists in Sparta used to their advantage).

Charlemagne lived very modestly for someone at the head of a giant empire of more than 300 counties (many dozens of times larger than the Athenian empire at its ephemeral apex). So it had long been, and would long be for all the Franks: they lived well, but without excess. That was the “cost” of freedom for all (Buddha would have said that was not a cost). We are far from the armies of slaves of the early Christian bishops, and the extravagance of the Roman urban centers of old.

But then there were millions of free Franks who were motivated to try to improve their conditions through technology. The Carolingian epoch was characterized by great advances in biotechnology (new breeds of horses, invention of nutritious beans), and engineering (deep furrows, and plenty of horse related tech, water and wind mills; by 1,000 CE, the Frankish economy was the most energy intensive in the world, etc…).

The Franks’ meta principle of more freedom for all thus (re)founded Western civilization as a hotbed of technical and philosophical innovation. That allowed civilization to advance again, by freeing it from social and ecological constraints that had bogged down the Greco-Romans.

So now we know the founding principle of Western civilization, FREEDOM, and that it gave its very name to the people who imposed it on Europe.

What was the founding principle of English speaking America? Some will say it did not need any, because, after all, it’s a descendant regime of the Franks (as is all of Europe, even Russia, when the main cultural flows are carefully traced back). So freedom would also be America’s founding principle, and indeed, US citizens often speak of their country as the “land of free” (in other words, the land of the Franks).

But is that truly true? We will see. Doubts are fed when one is reminded of the two groups that truly founded English America, and thus the fundamental principles of its mentality. Real freedom implies to be mentally fierce. It means not aspiring to be submitted to God or man. The Franks were neither. The Franks knew the Bible very well (Carlus Magnus’ nickname -and excuse for his Pagan and creative behavior- was “King David”). But, as would be descendants of the Trojans, they claimed to be of older mental stock, and they did not submit to that amusing, but much newer story book. Instead, they submitted the Bible to them. They embraced all of life to dominate it, and wore extremely colorful clothing.

 

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Patrice Ayme.

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P/S: 1) The immense mass of the Roman urban population was fed (by giant agricultural businesses owned by the hyper rich senatorial class and manned by slaves), but it did not direct its own fate. So it was not motivated to improve it in any way. Apathy dominated all mental realms. By the sixth century, in Constantinople, the masses, the demos, were only excited by watching spectator sports. Truer democracy existed only in the West among the Franks (and that is why emperor Justinian left them alone as he reconquered the Western empire). 

2) The Greco-Roman civilization had subhuman populations: the slaves and the women (race, although exceptionally a factor (Sparta, that died off) was not dominant as a criterion of sub humanity: it was about how they talked, not the color of the skin). Today the US has the extremely poor under class, those without health insurance, etc; this has followed a tradition of exploiting various sub populations… Rome used torture only against slaves. Recently the US leadership proposed to use it even against citizens. What counts is using the principle of “sub humanity”. Not only does it make society unfair and fascist, it makes it mentally lazy, because those on top stay there, not because they are there because they strove to be better, but because they were born there.