"American Values"

Through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy.

February 28, 2026 ~ Vol 48

It was the end of a long, delightful day of touring the French countryside. We had started the day in Annecy, a resort village in the French Alps near the border with Italy—a few miles farther east of Annecy. Geneva, Switzerland was only thirty miles north. The Alpine mountain backdrop framing the photos of Lake Annecy looks just like the programming from the recently completed winter Olympics. The next winter Olympics will be held in this region of the French Alps.

Lake Annecy in the French Alps. Photo JC Steiniger

Later that day, on the way back to our rental in Lyon, our guide suggested that we make a stop in the nearby medieval walled village of Perouges. The village dates from the 12^th century. A few dozen families sill live there, but it is primarily a living, ongoing historic restoration and popular tourist attraction. It is there that we met the Thibault family, which has owned the Hostellierie de Perouges off the central village square since 1912. Our visit with the Thibaults will most definitely make the highlight reel of our stay in France.

As we entered the lodge, we were greeted by the smiling forty-nine year old faces of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were featured at the entrance in a spray of photographs taken during their visit to the region and to the family’s lodge during the G-7 meeting in Lyon in the summer of 1996. We were also greeted at the entrance to the dining room by Laurence Thibault, the owner of the hostellerie. Four generations of her family have run the business. As Laurence was pouring us a bottle of a local red wine, I asked her about the Clintons and her memories of the event. I should share that I was somewhat apprehensive to ask about the Clintons, as we had very purposefully attempted to avoid any discussion of politics or even our nationalities during our stay in France, for fear of finding ourselves in a conversation about US politics that we really did not want to have. Laurence smiled and excused herself, but came back minutes later with a gentlemen whom she introduced as her father, Georges Thibault. Georges is ninety-two years old. Georges happily told us the story of meeting the Clintons during that last week of June in 1996. I suspect that his daughter has come to appreciate that her father enjoys telling this story to curious American customers as much as we appreciated hearing it.

Laurence Thibault, Hostellerie Perouges

Georges’ earliest recollections of growing up in Perouges are from the period during the war and the German occupation of France. The area around Lyon, including Perouges, was the center of the French Resistance movement. The German Gestapo was also headquartered in Lyon, just nineteen miles away. Klaus Barbie, the notorious “Butcher of Lyon” was head of the local Gestapo. Our group of travelers, history buffs all, had spent a morning earlier in the week visiting the Historical Museum in Lyon, which focuses on the history of the French Resistance fighters, the French collaborators headquartered in the city of Vichy, and the Nazi occupation of the city during the war. The presentations at the museum include a video of the trial of Klaus Barbie, who had been found hiding in South América in 1983. Barbie was convicted of executing over 4,000 French citizens, in addition to deporting over 7500 Jews to concentration camps.

A few months after the Allied Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, the 2^nd Battalion of the 179^th Infantry had arrived in Perouges and nearby Meximieux to battle the embedded German Panzer division that had occupied the area. The battle to liberate Perouges was part of the battle that has come to be know as the Battle of Meximieux, and had consumed the villages for days. Georges pointed to an archway in the dining room that was a few feet from where we were sitting. That is where my parents told me to stand, he told us – under the arch – in case a bomb brought the house down. Young Georges was ten years old at the time.

The Hostellerie de Perouges, Perouges, France

The commander of the US tank Division, Captain Fred Snyder was sleeping at the Hostellerie where his group was garrisoned. At one point during the skirmishes, the German Panzers had been driven out of the city, and it appeared that the Allied Forces were in control of Perouges. Captain Snyder had asked young Georges to wake him the next morning. “At 8 AM?” Georges recalled asking the Captain. Let’s make it 9, Captain Snyder responded. It had been a long week. Unbeknownst to the Allied Army, the Germans had doubled back and surrounded the US Infantry and were about to launch an assault to retake the village.

Captain Snyder never returned to the inn. He was killed that day fighting for the liberation of Perouges. This story, which a now 92-year-old Georges Thibault told us last Wednesday afternoon, was the same story that he told the Clintons in June of 1996. Georges asked President Clinton if he would sign the hotel register near where Captain Snyder had signed in—and never signed out. He said that the President wiped away a tear with his handkerchief as he signed the book. I love your country, Georges told us. I love the United Stated of America. And I am absolutely certain that Georges Thibault really does love our country.

92 year old Georges Thibault, Perouges, France

As my friends and I immersed ourselves in the history of Europe over this past month, it has been difficult not to draw parallels with the current state of our politics. It is easy to compare the territorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin with the ambitions of Adolph Hitler. It is also easy to see similarities in the comments of Stephen Miller when he says that we live in a world where those with the power make the rules and everyone else must deal with that reality. It is easy for our European allies to also draw similar conclusions when we talk about our right to Greenland, because – we must; it is a strategic imperative. What exactly is the difference between that logic and Putin’s logic? Or Hitler’s?

It was not the Nazi Gestapo who rounded up the Jews in Lyon during the war, or the Romas, or the homosexuals. It was the local French Gendarmerie – the local French police who knew who the local “others” were—the Jews, the Catholics, the gypsies, the gays—and those helping the resistance. The local police had access to the local population records as they collaborated with the Nazi occupiers. They knew who the “others” were. How can you not be concerned when you hear of our local sheriffs’ departments being asked to help in the round up of our own “others”. Yes, law enforcement should all work together, but when the federal homeland security agencies have been weaponized to terrorize our own “others”, when anyone whose skin is darker than ours is subject to detainment and interrogation, we should all be very concerned. We should be more than concerned.

Ours is now a government without oversight, without checks and balances, and without any moral compass. We have abandoned the alliances that were formed over years of cooperation and forged in the fires of wars against tyranny. And we are standing by and allowing it all to happen, and for those alliances and relationships to be squandered. Here in Perouges, Georges Thibault still remembers the America of eighty years ago when we were at our best—when “American values” meant something. We can only hope that there is enough time for the words of Winston Churchill to again be proven correct. “We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.”

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