On Bastille Day we remember our French allies, without whom we would not have celebrated our own Independence Day ten days ago. The French gave us de Grasse and Lafayette, and without their aid we could not have won our struggle. In return, we gave the French our republican ideals, and the French decided they liked them so well that they have collected five republics since 1789, in addition to three monarchies, two empires, a short-lived commune, and that thing that happened from 1940 to 1944 that we don’t like to talk about much.
