34 Comments

1. David:

The rioting is over, just ask the MSM. I guess the cars are now spontaneously burning in sympathy to the goals of the rioters. They are sacred.

Nov 13, 2005 - 9:17 am 2. ras:

I sure ain’t seen any signs that the Intifada (sorry Thibaud et al, but “riots” are less organized and more spontaneous than this) has ended.

Sounds more like, having been a boffo show in the suburbs, it’s heading out to tour the big cities next.

And the kids’ less-than-scholarly religious knowledge matters little when it’s the tribalism and contempt for others that remains from their Islamic roots: those are the key factors. And that’s why they shout “Allahu Akhbar.”

Nov 13, 2005 - 10:52 am 3. Terrye:

Nothing to see move along now…

so says the NYT.

They did manage to get through the discussion without using saying “Mu****”

pardon me, I hope I did not offend anyone.

Nov 13, 2005 - 12:04 pm 4. Ed Poinsett:

The curfew has probably helped some, and some of the gloss is off the every night rioting, but it doesn’t seem that the yoot have changed their objectives very much. A severe cold front would help some, martial law might make some more difference. However, the French authorities must be terrified of the Zarqawi types capitalizing on the unrest and setting up an Iraq type terrorist operation there.

Nov 13, 2005 - 12:07 pm 5. truepeers:

I would like to hear Thibaud’s response to this analysis (please delete if quote is too long, Roger):

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Olivier Guitta offers a shocking look at one expression of that culture — rap music as we in the United States have never quite heard it, even at its “cop-killing” worst. As Mr. Guitta explains, some of the most successful bands in France are made up “mostly of French citizens of Arab or African descent” — like our pals in the French projects, or “cites.” But where so-called gangsta rap, American-style, glorifies senseless violence and sexual bestiality, Muslim rap, French-style, fuses that same violence and sexuality to attack the state.

Mr. Guitta has translated some choice examples. There is the rap band Sniper (nice), which, not incidentally, was unsuccessfully sued in 2004 by Mr. Sarkozy for violence and incitement in the song “La France.” Sniper sings: “We’re all hot for a mission to exterminate the government and the fascists… France is a b- and we’ve been betrayed… We f- France, we don’t care about the Republic and freedom of speech. We should change the laws so we can see Arabs and Blacks in power in the Elysee Palace. Things have to explode.”

Well, of course, things did. But not, our elites instruct us, because of Islamic attitudes toward a non-Islamic country, but because of establishment attitudes toward a downtrodden minority. Integration, we hear, or the lack thereof, is the problem, so integration is also the answer. But how will France — or “FranSSe,” as rapper Mr. R has titled this song — integrate this? “France is a b-, don’t forget to f- her to exhaustion. You have to treat her like a whore, man!… France is one of the b- who gave birth to you… I am not at home and I don’t give a d-, and besides the state can go f- itself. I pee on Napoleon and General de Gaulle… F- cops, sons of whores…” It goes on, lashing out in a similarly poisonous vein. Not that this stopped Fnac, the largest chain of French music stores, from praising the popular Mr. R as “a revelation.”

And so he and his rap brethren are. But a revelation of what — urban blight or ghetto jihad? Or some new, cultural permutation of both? The vicious contempt, the exhortation to humiliation, the vindictive rape imagery: These are the motifs, at least, of brutal conquest, patterns and expressions familiar to students of jihad for having repeated themselves over the centuries as non-Muslim lands — Dar al Harb (Land of War) — were conquered and subjugated as Dar al Islam (Land of Islam). Is that what’s going on in France? Without doubt, such music prefigures a state of war, although no one but the rioters seems to have been listening. Too bad no one is listening still.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051110-080159-7881r.htm

Nov 13, 2005 - 12:08 pm 6. truepeers:

I would also add, that one of the problems with Thibaud’s argument that the rioters are not targetting in a way that would make clear any Islamist motives is that this fails to make full light of the irrational psychology at play. The kids started by destroying their own neighborhoods as a way of asserting their authority and control in their neighborhoods. According to one report I saw, their girls hate them for it; they don’t understand the self-destructive psychology. But anyone who was once a young male, part of a gang polluting its own garden “knows” this kind of “thinking”. The cops were trying to reassert themselves in the hoods, the youth told them who is boss there. Pathetic, but that’s youth’s attempt at asserting its independence.

But the rejection of the state by the youth can have no certain meaning in and of itself. To call it a race riot is as meaningless as calling it an Islamic riot or a youth riot. THink of parents looking at their crazy delinquent son and asking, in total confusion, what does he want? The meaning is in the nascent yet largely inchoate ideas about who will come to power once the state is kicked out. Allahu Akbar anyone?

Nov 13, 2005 - 12:49 pm 7. Jamie Irons:

Truepeers:

The kids started by destroying their own neighborhoods as a way of asserting their authority and control in their neighborhoods. According to one report I saw, their girls hate them for it; they don’t understand the self-destructive psychology. But anyone who was once a young male, part of a gang polluting its own garden “knows” this kind of “thinking”. The cops were trying to reassert themselves in the hoods, the youth told them who is boss there. Pathetic, but that’s youth’s attempt at asserting its independence.

I think this analysis is exactly right.

Jamie Irons

Nov 13, 2005 - 1:27 pm 8. ras:

Truepeers,

The Intifada is about power, status and control, just like Islam itself: Force others to submit to your will; kill ‘em if they refuse. Mohammed did the same.

The kids are too ill-disciplined to study Islam in greater detail, but they sure do like that conquest part. Of course they’ll use it: it tells them what they wanna hear.

Nov 13, 2005 - 1:29 pm 9. Godzilla:

Ah, Paris, Paris. Hector is dead, and you no longer have any gods to save you, as you once did.

Nov 13, 2005 - 3:19 pm 10. Jamie Irons:

Truepeers:

The kids started by destroying their own neighborhoods as a way of asserting their authority and control in their neighborhoods. According to one report I saw, their girls hate them for it; they don’t understand the self-destructive psychology. But anyone who was once a young male, part of a gang polluting its own garden “knows” this kind of “thinking”. The cops were trying to reassert themselves in the hoods, the youth told them who is boss there. Pathetic, but that’s youth’s attempt at asserting its independence.

I think this analysis is exactly right.

Jamie Irons

Nov 13, 2005 - 3:20 pm 11. Jamie Irons:

Please excuse double post.

Jamie Irons

Nov 13, 2005 - 3:21 pm 12. Caroline:

Look – forget the “youths” crap. It’s quite a modern, western notion that 16 year olds are innocent people that must be sheltered from the realities of life until their formal educations are completed. In much of the rest of the world, these gentle “youths” have wreaked utter terror on native populations – I am thinking specifically of Cambodia here.

Mark Steyn, in his recent Spectator piece, had such a great take on these “youths”:

“Let’s take that evasive media characterisation of the rioters youths at face value. What is the salient point about youths? They’re youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It’s not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back on your Zimmer frame across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man’s game.

Now go back to that bland statistic you hear a lot these days: about 10 per cent of France’s population is Muslim. Give or take a million here, a million there, that’s broadly correct, as far as it goes. But the population spread isn’t even. And when it comes to those living in France aged 20 and under, about 30 per cent are said to be Muslim and in the major urban centres about 45 per cent. If it came down to street-by-street fighting, as Michel Gurfinkiel, the editor of Valeurs Actuelles, points out, the combatant ratio in any ethnic war may thus be one to one already, right now, in 2005.”

Call me cynical, but I’ll bet the Muslims already knew those odds before they started this…

Nov 13, 2005 - 4:47 pm 13. Syl:

Definitely culture clash, but I don’t see it as being anything deeper (it’s bad enough) though more extreme elements may take advantage.

I think it was interesting what Saudi Arabia had to say about this:

Saudi Columnist: The Problem is Not with the French Government, but With the Arab Immigrants

Columnist Dr. ‘Ali Sa’d Al-Moussa wrote in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan: “The fires in Paris also set fire to all [the problems] that had accumulated with regard to Arab immigration. The Arab cannot live in harmony with a culture different from his own, for a simple reason: Today, the Arabs are spinning alone in a circle outside the circle of world culture… However much the immigrant puts down roots in the new country, he cannot aspire to full equality with the native residents of the land. The Arab generations that immigrated [to France] one after the other do not understand this, and cannot live with this fact, even though France is the best country for immigration…

“Whoever blames only the French government for the grave situation in these Parisian suburbs is mistaken. The Arabs clash culturally with the other, forcing each [side] to flee to his own community, so that the suburbs of the cities acquire the character of their mother culture. [The French immigrants of Arab origin] carry with their bags their heritage, their culture, their customs, and their conduct…

“The appearance of the streets, the doors, the schools, and the level of services [in the Paris suburbs] takes you back to the cities of Morocco, which have not changed for centuries. Respect for the [French] government is almost non-existent in daily life. Immigration requires a mental predisposition; why would any of us, who longs to immigrate to a different world, revile it with the most ugly of terms as soon as he reaches it?“

I found this at MEMRI and clipped it but unfortunately forgot to clip the url.

Nov 13, 2005 - 6:31 pm 14. Syl:

Quite a difference between these young arab males in their banlieu’s and chinese immigrants in their Chinatowns.

Nov 13, 2005 - 6:34 pm 15. Erik:

Syl, I think this might be the url you found it at:

http://www.memri.de/uebersetzungen_analysen/themen/europa_und_der_nahe_osten/eu_paris_riots_10_11_05.html

Nov 13, 2005 - 11:15 pm 16. thibaud:

Peers,

I’m well familiar with the Guitta piece– as you’ll recall, I was the one who first excerpted from it here last week. As far as I can make sense of your analysis, you seem to have concluded that these riots are not only not riots but are… well, nothing that anyone can understand. Or something.

To call it a race riot is as meaningless as calling it an Islamic riot or a youth riot. THink of parents looking at their crazy delinquent son and asking, in total confusion, what does he want? The meaning is in the nascent yet largely inchoate ideas about who will come to power once the state is kicked out. Allahu Akbar anyone?

Glad to see you agree with me that there’s an adolescent element to this, along with the racial element. As I’ve said, there is clearly a copycat phenomenon going on, and just as clearly a rather pointless element of fun mixed with youthful anarchy that I call Grand Torch Auto. Political or Islamist it ain’t.

Leaving aside the rather pompous muddle of the above–”nascent” and “inchoate” both mean “just beginning to develop”; it makes no sense to treat them as contrary notions, as you do when you separate them with the word “but”– the logic here includes yet another of the logical grand leaps, unsubstantiated by evidence, of the New Katrinamongering, All Anti-Islam All The Time crowd.

Whose “ideas” are these? Are they from the imams, every one of whom we’ve heard from has spoken against these riots?

And what, exactly, are these phantom ideas? It’s a nice dodge to say they’re “nascent”– nay, inchoate– rather than full-blown, but if they exist, then show us more evidence than the kind of misogynist lyrics or anti-cop filth that one can now easily find on either side of the Atlantic in any best-selling hip-hopper’s latest venture.

Nov 14, 2005 - 5:55 am 17. thibaud:

As to their “ideas about who will come to power once the state is kicked out”, given that these are testosterone-ridden boys, or boyz 2 men, I think it more likely that their vision of an ideal polity have more to do with booty calls and endless, elysian fields full of Peugeots awaiting torching. With a gratis 24/7 McDo on every corner.

Nov 14, 2005 - 6:05 am 18. thibaud:

Let me be clear: this does indeed represent a major crisis for the French state. It is not, however, an Islamist challenge, which, as I’ve pointed out, the French state has responded to ruthlessly, with far more draconian and sweeping police and judicial and counter-intel measures than anything seen that side of Gitmo.

It is a challenge to France’s refusal to admit the existence of race, and racial difference, and a minority that is utterly lost between the French and the african or arab cultures, neither of which offers them much of anything they really need. Like, um, jobs, for starters…

Nov 14, 2005 - 9:04 am 19. Syl:

thibaud

Sorry, you aren’t even making any sense. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Are you saying there is no cultural element to the riots? Are you implying that all cultures are really the same therefore race and economics are necessary and sufficient to explain the riots?

Can you explain why Arabs, themselves, understand the cultural element and you do not? Is it so difficult to believe that Islam is an underlying factor in a culture’s beliefs, attitudes towards others, and behaviors?

An understanding of the influence of Islam on arab culture does not require the presence of fanatics so I’m a little puzzled by all your protestations.

Nov 14, 2005 - 1:23 pm 20. truepeers:

Thibud, Sorry I am just seeing your response as I’m heading out the door. SO a quick reply for now. You can call mine a pompous muddle, but my point was that you are trying to rationalize the irrational and that is something I am yet refusing to do. You are glad that I note a youthful testosterone element. Sure, a necessary but not sufficient cause for explaining a riot. A riot, if that is what this is – i.e. not a planned campaign of war – is irrational violence. Those who try to rationalize the violence with “root causes” – like race, unemployment – are not actually explaining why human beings are often violent or violent at just this moment. They are simply justifying the resentful feelings the violent probably have. They justify resentment without trying to understand its anthropological workings or “causes”.

The riot is irrational violence. Our justificaitons/rationalizations come after the irrational and attempt to set a stage where such violence can be mediated and deferred in future. That’s a noble enough game to be playing. But if you are playing the game of putting voice to what is yet inchoate, you should be playing it with those youngsters in France and not simply with us. We cynics are betting that you will not get far with your McDos and jobs speech to them. We are betting that religios ideas are going to increasingly appeal to these people without a future. Perhaps the cynics should be crushed. I don’t actually want to be right about this; I would like to fight with you for jobs and racial harmony. But to do so I think we need to fight the Islamist temptation that is front and center on the world stage from which these youth can hardly be assumed to be wholly ignorant. You talk as if they don’t have visions of the twin towers when they are torching those peugeots. COme on. We need to give them more than jobs; we need to give them something in which to believe. That’s where the real battle lies.

Nov 14, 2005 - 2:09 pm 21. truepeers:

Thibud, Sorry I am just seeing your response as I’m heading out the door. SO a quick reply for now. You can call mine a pompous muddle, but my point was that you are trying to rationalize the irrational and that is something I am yet refusing to do. You are glad that I note a youthful testosterone element. Sure, a necessary but not sufficient cause for explaining a riot. A riot, if that is what this is – i.e. not a planned campaign of war – is irrational violence. Those who try to rationalize the violence with “root causes” – like race, unemployment – are not actually explaining why human beings are often violent or violent at just this moment. They are simply justifying the resentful feelings the violent probably have. They justify resentment without trying to understand its anthropological workings or “causes”.

The riot is irrational violence. Our justificaitons/rationalizations come after the irrational and attempt to set a stage where such violence can be mediated and deferred in future. That’s a noble enough game to be playing. But if you are playing the game of putting voice to what is yet inchoate, you should be playing it with those youngsters in France and not simply with us. We cynics are betting that you will not get far with your McDos and jobs speech to them. We are betting that religios ideas are going to increasingly appeal to these people without a future. Perhaps the cynics should be crushed. I don’t actually want to be right about this; I would like to fight with you for jobs and racial harmony. But to do so I think we need to fight the Islamist temptation that is front and center on the world stage from which these youth can hardly be assumed to be wholly ignorant. You talk as if they don’t have visions of the twin towers when they are torching those peugeots. COme on. We need to give them more than jobs; we need to give them something in which to believe. That’s where the real battle lies.

Nov 14, 2005 - 2:10 pm 22. Michael_B:

Another Olivier Guitta article at Tech Central Station. His assessment seems sound at this point. Excerpt:

“Some even allege that French Islamists, who find support in the country’s poor Arab ghettoes, are organizing the riots. This theory is far-fetched.

“But that doesn’t mean the Islamists don’t stand to profit from the ongoing violence.”

[...]

“This is the same strategy that has long been embraced by the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF), an offshoot of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, and the second largest Muslim organization in France. Like other Islamist groups, the UOIF has been hard at work in France’s Arab suburbs since the mid-1990’s, radicalizing young Muslims and spreading the message that Islamic values are incompatible with a secular, multicultural society.”

Nov 14, 2005 - 4:42 pm 23. thibaud:

Syl, where on earth did you get the notion that I deny a “cultural element to the riots”? Haven’t I made clear that the French version of gangsta culture is heavily influencing this behavior, especially the apolitical, copycat aspect that causes teenagers to go out and torch their neighbors’ cars in dozens of cities across France? It’s just not an Islamic cultural element.

Nov 14, 2005 - 7:46 pm 24. Jamie Irons:

Thibaud and others may enjoy reading Melanie Phillips’ Diary entries of November 13 and 14. An excerpt:

The French authorities, in desperation, have asked imams to restore order in the ghettoes. Funny kind of non-Islamic problem when imams are having to sort it out. They have also issued a fatwa telling the rioters to cool it — all in the name of the same Islam which we are told has nothing to do with the problem.

Jamie Irons

Nov 14, 2005 - 8:12 pm 25. thibaud:

Apoogies if Typepad mangles this posting effort, but I’ll try again. Let me see if I can understand the logic running through Ms Philips’ Diary Entry.

The second sentence puts forth a conclusion– the riots are not a “non-Islamic problem”, ie are inspired by Islamism or led by Islamists or both.

The first and third sentences state facts: the imams who supposedly (per Ms Philips) figured among those inspiring and/or leading the riots have

a) issued a fatwa condemning those same riots and

b) have been asked by the police, who bore the brunt of the violence in said riots, to crack down on the rioters.

Huh?

Recall my IRA analogy in which I said it was as inaccurate to say that these riots are about Islamism as it would be to discern a Catholic motive to the (marxist) IRA’s mayhem. Ms Philips’ argument is like concluding that, because the IRA are drawn from Ulster’s Catholic minority, and because that community so often defers to its Catholic priests, a call from the Ulster Constabulary upon those Catholic leaders to try to rein in the IRA is ipso facto proof that the IRA’s agenda is all about imposing a Catholic theocracy on Ulster.

Nov 14, 2005 - 9:23 pm 26. thibaud:

Michael B, I agree that there is certainly a risk that a few of the kids torching cars today may become hardcore Islamists at some future date– a risk that increases if they serve hard time for any extended period in a French prison. I don’t deny that the consequences of such conversions are dire. It only takes a few jihadists to make a particularly lethal cell.

But so much of the hysteria on this side of the pond ignoes the simple, obvious, overwhelmingly important fact that the French authorities, despite their incompetence at stamping out car-torchings, are and have been for decades ruthlessly stamping out Islamism and Islamist plots, to an extent and with a severity that stands in stark contrast to their British counterparts’ record.

What so many Americans fail to grasp– probably because France’s foreign policy emphasizes appeasing and currying favor with all manner of Arab states– is that in the domestic policy sphere, France pursues a completely opposite iron-fist policy, the most ruthless, no-BS anti-jihadist and anti-terror policy seen anywhere in the western world. French intelligence cooperates very closely with ours regarding their domestic terror threats. And that policy has been very effective during the last ten years.

So for all the scorn heaped on the French here, I don’t see any recognition of the fact that the French police and judicial system cannot realistically be much tougher than they already here. They’ve already done away with habeas corpus protections. They have pre-emptive arrest powers, wiretapping, interrogation without benefit of counsel.., in effect, the French have their own Gitmo within France.

So pardon me if I view this determined effort to pillory the French authorities for not cracking down on Islamism as nothing more than the ignorant man’s revenge on the French (and US MSM) media for their own bullshit-fest regarding Katrina. Enjoy it, savor that schadenfreude, but just remember that within their own borders the French are already kicking the merde out of their Islamist suspects.

Nov 14, 2005 - 9:43 pm 27. thibaud:

Compare the French approach with the British approach to Islamism, which includes sheltering fiery jihad-mongers, refusing to deport terror inciters, watering down Blair’s very sensible, rather mild anti-terror bill, allowing more than 3x as many islamic immigrants in each year as France does….

The very reason that the British suffered the 7/7 attacks is the same reason that the French have thwarted and will likely continue to thwart every attempted terror attack on French soil these last ten years: while the British scruple over whether this or that jihad-monger’s speech rights are being trampled upon, the French have gone 180 degrees the other way.

The French are dead-on, and viciously so, in their understanding of the Islamist threat. They are utterly clueless as to the racial nightmare upon them, one that can no longer be obscured by their pretensions to a color-blind republic. The former threat is under control. The latter problem is far, far greater than you all suppose, and will haunt France for many years. Probably at least as long as it has haunted us lo these last four decades.

Nov 14, 2005 - 9:53 pm 28. thibaud:

Peers,

Appreciate your very thoughtful reply. Agree with much of what you say, including this:

We need to give them more than jobs; we need to give them something in which to believe

As I’ve mentioned on other threads, I believe that the civic faith that you’re implying was elegantly expressed by these kids themselves at the World Cup in 2000. Specifically, a vision of a multiracial France in which one can derive some sense of dignity and self-worth from one’s north african beur or sub-saharan noir identity and still be a loyal and patriotic Frenchman. A France which does not pretend that Zinedine Zidane isn’t different from a pampered white kid from the XVIIeme arrondissement, or that his success does not have special significance for north africans in France, and yet one where Zidane is still proud to call himself French. A France whose elites do not sneer at the notion of even a peaceful, prosperous, loyal and largely assimilated ethnic neighborhood such as Little Italy as “unthinkable” in republican France.

Note that all of the above are taken for granted in our own land of immigrants. But they represent a sea change for France, which at present cannot even admit the possiblity of any citizen having a dual identity. That’s the heart of the problem.

Nov 14, 2005 - 10:05 pm 29. truepeers:

As I’ve mentioned on other threads, I believe that the civic faith that you’re implying was elegantly expressed by these kids themselves at the World Cup in 2000.

Civic faith is not a new idea for France, of course; e.g. they created a rather violent one during the Revolution. The problem is that France has always been more of a violent Republic than a democracy. That is to say they are willing to advance various intellectual and political causes in the name of the Republic, but it is always for them a bitter civil war to define this republic. Intellectual debate is thus encouraged – which is why France has such a powerful intellectual and artistic tradition – at the expense of compromise and politically-correct bowing to the opinions of all parties in the state. Republican destiny has been more important than muddling through.

IOW, the trade-off for France’s past cultural vitality, if it was a trade-off, was the necessity of a rather monolithic republicanism. One fights for universal truths as a Frenchman, and not for hyphenated compromises. The French intellectual tradition has not been what it was for a generation now. Hyphenated Frenchmen may be desirable from a democratic perspective – and even inevitable from the perspective of a global marketplace – but may not be desirable from an intellectual one. THe whole world is losing something now; let us find a new reality that can be fruitful too.

Nov 15, 2005 - 12:35 am 30. thibaud:

Well said, peers. Interesting points on French “republican destiny” and their own weird compromise. You’re right that the French are basically terrified of their own violent, anarchic tendencies, which is one of the reasons they allow the state such vast latitude in kicking the sh*t out of anyone who threatens the state on their home turf. A schizoid nation, appeasing muslim states abroad and bashing them at home. I suppose every nation-state, like every parent, evolves its own way of muddling through and managing its unruly “children.”

RE the US comparison, interesting as well. I’d only point out that America’s own version of “compromise and politically-correct bowing to the opinions of all parties in the state” didn’t quite spare us from extremely bloody race riots, both white-on-black (Chicago 1919, Detroit 1943, Tulsa, Atlanta, Nebraska, South Carolina, southern Illinois etc etc in the period 1917-1923) and black-on-black and black-on-all during the last forty years.

As to what the French will lose, it looks like the first victim will be the superbly high standards of the French primary and secondary educational system, and the sacrosanct concept of meritocracy allied with it. Based on Chirac’s latest speech it appears that the French will move quickly, as I guessed, toward some kind of affirmative action scheme.

Which is probably as necessary for France in 2005 as it was for the US in 1965 and for the next 20-25 years or so, to jump-start the creation of an assimilated, prosperous, loyal nonwhite middle class and to give real teeth to anti-discrimination legislation in its first few years.

This is going to be even more painful and problematic for the French than it was for us. They don’t even have a vocabulary for race, or official statistics broken out by race. How are they going to chart the success of something they don’t measure and heretofore have decreed does not even exist?

Nov 15, 2005 - 12:06 pm 31. thibaud:

Disclaimer: I loathe affirmative action and think it outlived its usefulness and rationale in this nation at least a decade, perhaps two decades, ago. THe lefty madness of U-C Berkeley’s Chancellor arguing for more preferences for black and hispanics– in order to curtail the 47%, and climbing, level of asian-american entrants to Berkeley each year– shows the danger of aff action taken to its logical conclusion and treated a anything more than a temporary, crude form of restitution for past discrimination. The French are in for a very bumpy ride.

Nov 15, 2005 - 12:13 pm 32. truepeers:

Well Thibaud, I never said the US was a perfect democracy. There is always something to be said for Republican meritocracy as an alternative to too much democracy. Affirmative action can only be justified when it helps us overcome more resentment than it creates. It is wise to seem to be working to give previously disadvantaged people encouragement to succeed, rather than simply playing some zero-sum game of one more for you, one less for you. And so the measure of successful aa is not so much to be found in any statistics as in people’s common sense, after free and honest debate, about what is fair in this time and place. If the French don’t play it perfectly, they will only discover that aa might be an even quicker route to Islamic-inpsired separatism, with separate spheres of influence and bank accounts, than doing nothing.

Nov 15, 2005 - 6:35 pm 33. Michael_B:

A solid backgrounder of modest length, from Policy Review 2003, Anti-Semitism and Ethnicity in Europe by John Rosenthal who blogs at Trans-Int.

Nov 15, 2005 - 8:34 pm 34. Michael_B:

Aggregating a couple more articles here, first in the Christian Science Monitor, Not all Muslims Want to Integrate and secondly yet another Olivier Guitta article, Leaving No French Islamist Behind.

Nov 17, 2005 - 8:53 am

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