I think I explained how Napoleon fits in, as a response to your original Basing 21st Century politics on something written in the 18th century is weird bit. France has laws based on an early 19th century system, its motto is an 18th century slogan, its modern constitution straight up begins by #including an 18th century document.

I can't actually find a reference to 'founding fathers' in the linked page but maybe the confusion here is a misunderstanding of what that usually means in political speech - it's an invocation (often derived from context) of some principle they espoused or are said to have espoused. It's functionally equivalent to standing in front of that 18th century slogan.

> It's functionally equivalent to standing in front of that 18th century slogan.

I don't think it quite is. There's references to phrases from founding documents - which Americans often invoke ("we the people", "shall not be abridged", etc). But there's still an awful lot of reference to "Founding Fathers" specifically. I'm not sure you can listen to more than a few hours of right wing radio in the US without someone invoking Madison, Jefferson or whoever else fits their particular talking point for that moment. The individuals' names, and their writings, are still very much referenced outside of individual slogans.

We were talking about the phrase 'founding fathers' specifically and invocations of 100+ years old 'founding' principles of the state generally. If you want invocation of individuals and their writing, here's president Macron again, a year ago:

In the Paris Pantheon, a mausoleum to France’s heroes, Macron handed five new citizens their French papers in a solemn ceremony to mark the 150th anniversary of the Third Republic.

“At the start of the trial of the attacks of January 2015, I say that to be French is to defend the right to laugh, jest, mock and caricature, of which Voltaire maintained that it is the source of all other rights,” Macron said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-politics-macron/to...

Voltaire, a man born in the 16th century and who is buried at said Pantheon - a temple to the secular saints of France, dedicated in the 18th century - "On April 4, 1791, the Assembly decreed "that this religious church become a temple of the nation, that the tomb of a great man become the altar of liberty.""

Voltaire is an author, not a politician. Hardly the same thing.

EDIT: Today Voltaire could be regarded as an anti-semite it seems. Maybe more due to his disdain for religion, and Judaism being the oldest mono-theistic religion, than a true hate for Jews but still. Always nice to read up, even just quickly, on people and things. And he corrected these statements after being called out for them, specifying he disagrees with Judaism as a religion and not the believers. More than can be said of most people being called out for BS they publicly say.

He was a lot of things, including a political philosopher and he is quoted as such by Macron. You can split these hairs indefinitely, I don't think it changes the (I think more than amply) demonstrated fact that the political system of France is, among other things, thoroughly permeated by 18th century stuff and politicians allude to it and refer to it directly all the time.

Not at all, the Founding Fathers, as implies their name, founded a nation. Voltaire did nothing like that. Philosophers are quoted all the time, and yet nobody really tries to justify his plans by interpreting what these philosophers would think about them. That's not splitting hairs, it is about not drawing falls equivalents.