Even if it doesn't sound like it at first, that's an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.

The conservatives want to revolutionize the world all at once. And that's a dangerous proposal.

I reject the idea that there is some sort of existential "clash of civilizations." I am an interventionist, but not a militarist. War should always be a last resort.

Why should an intellectual have to renounce the pleasures of life? I am not a hermit. I am a man of flesh and blood. In fact, if you look at my name in French, that schizophrenia, that aspiration to several lives is contained in my name. Lévy is also les vies - "the lives".

I am 60, and I am as much an internationalist as when I was younger, when I was a Marxist-Leninist. Internationalism is one of the rare pieces of that heritage to which I remain loyal. That is Barack Obama's strength. A politician has finally understood that politics is not only about the closing of a mine in Ohio-it is also about the will to reach out, to embrace the world of today's young Americans. That way, young Americans may eventually reconcile with politics.

France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.

Even if it doesn't sound like it at first, that's an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.