Our former minister for foreign affairs, Dominique de Villepin, currently a rising figure in the French government, proclaimed urbi et orbi the radical antagonism between "two conceptions of the world." His own, that of Paris, stipulates the absolute precedence of peace, with freedom following some day or another. The opposite one gives precedence to freedom, the only foundation for a solid and lasting peace.

This second principle guided the first European democracies and great thinkers such as Kant. It inspired the best aspects of the American and French Revolutions. It commanded their Declaration of Human Rights. It is still inscribed today on public buildings of the French Republic, even though no one here in Paris knows how to read them in the right order anymore: "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité." Freedom is the No. 1 requirement, and it's the choice you made.