The French have been having nightly riots in Paris. Mostly Muslim youths have been tearing things up but good and things seem to be spreading to other area. Now I have been accused of being a French-loving liberal by some. (I’m looking at you Lackey!) Hey, now that I think about it, Chris is literally a French-loving liberal. Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to bash the French a bit.
The French have a monumentally bad immigration policy. Immensely bad. Endanger the Republic bad. The French do nothing to assimilate immigrants who come to their country. Unlike American “culture” which is a mash-up of everything under the sun, the French have a very clear notion of what French language and culture should be and that notion doesn’t let in newcomers. Muslim girls in French schools are banned from wearing headscarves, for example. The result is a complete ghettoization of immigrants in French cities. And Ghettoes, as everybody knows, are places of peace and safety, where young people are bound to turn out ok. If France is going to have immigration, and they need to have immigration, they really need to let these people in all the way. Or else these riots are just the start.
This ends our critic of the French. On a related subject, those French girls sure are cute.
2 comments:
I've been thinking a lot about this situation, since I've visited France several times and obviously admired some of their policies and attitudes.
They also have policies and attitudes that are not so admirable and which have led to the riots. What's striking to me, however, is that I've not seen any response by the government to the causes of the riots, just measures to stop the violence. It could be I've missed it, but while I don't condone violence, I hope the French take the opportunity to learn from this unfortunate situation.
An interesting historical way of thinking of this: It took the Western Europeans 900 years to learn to live peacefully among themselves. (I'm starting with the Battle of Hastings in 1066, though obviously conflict goes back must further, and ending with the end of World War II.) And these are all people of basically the same race, though religious differences that developed over the period obviously made things much worse. It took 700 years for the Irish to free themselves from British rule.
So now Europe is faced with learning to live with people who are even more culturally diverse and religiously different. I don't think we can afford to wait 900 years for this to settle down.
Update: I saw this today:
"On Tuesday (Nov 8), Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced a $35 billion plan to provide jobs, scholarships and other opportunities to those in the riot zones. He also said an agency for "social cohesion" would be created to address joblessness and discrimination."
So is this rewarding violence and lawlessness or making up for past bad policies?
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