Ali Akbar, the last newspaper hawker in Paris, has been awarded a knighthood by French president Emmanuel Macron. “Macron went on to refer to Akbar as ‘the most French of the French — a Voltairean who arrived from Pakistan.’”
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Comments 1
Inspiring. Especially this bit, which expresses an attitude that I try (and often fail) to uphold myself, day to day:
I also love that Macron called him “the most French of the French”. I’m pretty close to Voltairean myself, and it’s often occurred to me that I’m more committed to liberty and freedom than many others in the society in which I live (as a migrant), despite that society’s strong self-perception as liberal and free. I realised after reading “most French of the French”, that there’s a difference between people who claim universal values for their cultures as a way of shutting others out, and those who do so as a way of drawing others in.
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