On Valentine's Day Brad DeLong thanked the Marquis de Lafayette - and France - for helping us toward independence. Mr DeLong called it "a debt that we can never repay, but only honor".
That post garnered over one-hundred-and-sixty comments (162 when I came in). The ahistorical politics of our current day quickly crowded out any other thoughts, with all the common, well-moistened accusations and counter-accusations of "what French people are really like" being flung about like so many grammar-school spitballs. I got real bored real quick. But prior to that degeneration were a few curious posts to much the same effect: "the debt has been paid, goddammit".
There is a Calvinism in the American heart that can never let a debt go unpunished. To a certain miserly species of soul a debt is something to discharge at the earliest possible and convenient moment. Until then, it is a blot upon the spirit, reflecting an unworthy need to rely on the fragile goodwill of others. Debt is, to these people, a reflection of innate inequality, something that calls into question their position among the elect. More, it undermines their notion of absolute personal responsibility, where no righteous person - or nation - should ever need to owe another. All debts must be paid up front and on time (all I can wonder is whether they pay off their credit cards in full every month? do they have mortgages or car payments?).
In their insistence that this debt to France has been paid (goddammit!), they imply a deep worry that somehow the US - as a nation - might still be beholden to France in some way, might be required to perform some service or make some payment - or perhaps France might even make some personal demand upon them, their own blood or treasure.
Honor, in this vernacular, is just another commodity, like love or grief, whose careful tally is inscribed in columns in the great ledger of the spirit. At the end of the day, at the end of a brief life, or at the end of all creation, these emotional books must balance ere we enter Nirvana, else some will be found wanting and they will be tossed into the long, dark debtor's prison of the soul.
How does one approach a debt that, as Mr DeLong says, one cannot pay, but only honor? What does it mean to say that a debt cannot be paid?
Only this, that the debt itself is assumed by one party without obligation.
The "lender" has not offered anything extraordinary, has perhaps acted entirely in its own self-interest, has perhaps taken on debts of its own. But the result of the lender's actions, the loan as it were, is something deemed priceless, something that no coin can compensate. Liberty, my friends. Freedom. Independence. Pearls beyond price.
We can play our "what if" games on lazy Saturdays, over a beer or four. But we live in this world, where certain things happened, and others came to pass as consequences, in part, of those certain things. Did the Marquis de Lafayette fight in our Revolution and did France help to finance it? Then, my friends, know that as long as my family endures, there will be Americans who honor that debt.
Vive la France!
Posted by Martial