Excerpt:
What does it mean to be French?
As part of a long-simmering question over France's direction, the government of Nicolas Sarkozy today started a website asking citizens to give input on French values, patriotism, and their thoughts on the rise of minorities here.
It's Step 1 of an ambitious national "grand debate" on "identity" that aims to span tiny French hamlets and city districts over the next four months, ending just ahead of a national by-election next spring.
The project, run out of the Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, opens a politically fraught but substantial debate that Mr. Sarkozy first broached in 2007: How to define French tradition at a time when France faces burgeoning African, Arab, and Asian immigrants, and other changes in a globalizing world.