The colonialists of the 20th century are the colonized of the 21st century. There aren't too many Frenchmen left in Tunis and Algiers. There are quite a few Tunisians and Algerians in Paris. The white man's burden of empire weighs heavy, even upon the progeny of imperialists.

Immigration sucks.

It's really very simple: go in with guns blazing and when the fires die down and there is calm, round them up and ship them out.

All foreigns are guests in their countries of choice and can not be allowed to create chaos and work against the laws of order.

It's government that continues to enable this type of activity by not taking action and trying to take the social high ground.

When I saw footage of the rioting in France I thought either Jerry Lewis must have died or they didn't qualify for the world cup. A country of men who wear berets...jeessh.

What do you expect..France is the only country in the world that gets defeated by itself. Always has, always will.

Yeah, it is quite amazing that the Government hasn't surrendered. Yet!

I am amazed that after 11 days, so far, of rioting and fires being set that it seems only one person has died. I don't get how that is possible, but then I am used to American style riots. But the violence is escalating still so it could get worse.

Already some immediate liberal/socialist responses have appeared about the problem of the Muslim population being oppressed by "intolerance" and "poverty." Naturally social and economic concerns are tantamount to the liberal mind and culture and character is totally disregarded as even a factor at all. If I was to distinguish the liberal from the conservative mind I would start with that difference; liberals assume social/economic causes where conservatives stress culture and conscience/morality.

Following hundreds of years of France's history... I expect them to surrender any minute now.

Brokeback Mountain is the Film of the year !

Actualy, I saw the original Brokeback Moutain in Times Square back in the late 80's. It was called Bare Back Mountains. It was part of a double feature that showcased Heavy into Geoff. I was busted by a vice cop during the intermission but I bought my way out of it.

Brian, you mean "paramount" not "tantamount" and, no, I don't accept the distinction. The fact is, in the case of the Paris 'suburbs', the two - character among the youth and economic and social integration coincide. The fact that the latter has not happened leads to a lack of the former, and an increase in anti-social behavior.

Excellent post Echo5mike. I also remember the Times Square Theatre. Heavy into Geoff a brilliant film directed by Petr Strassemen who also directed one of my favorite films about a young my fighting his inner demons. Do you remember..."Pinkish Hugh".

My apologies for my malapropism above, I claim lack of sleep as my reason (but not as an excuse).

I don't follow you Ali G. Are you denying my distinction that the liberal side stresses the social and economic while the conservative stresses the cultural and moral? Or are you just saying that to understand the Parisian riots one has to take both into account? You say you deny my distinction but then give as the reason for rejecting it that it doesn't explain the rioters. But they are two different claims, and I didn't actually develop a theory to explain the rioting. I only commented on characteristic, imo, responses to such events.

However, going beyond that confusion on my part, I find your explanation of the rioting problematic in the very terms that I characterized as the "liberal" response above. (I don't mean that word in an automatically derogatory sense btw, not pulling an Ann Coulter here). You are suggesting that social/economic matters are determinative of moral character, thus following the Marxist base and superstructure construct but denying the effective reality of culture. So I think that in rejecting my distinction you then went on to make use of it in giving an explanation for the rioter's behavior.

This is kinda interesting to me so I hope you get a chance to respond.

I'm shocked and disappointed the govt hasn't clamped down on this faster. asdf has the right idea. Police shouldn't be afraid to draw blood. Deport the inciters, esp. religious leaders, since prison is all-expenses-paid training camp.

You know.. Both sides seem to complain about the one thing they don't comprehend. How do I mean? The far left 'actually' seems to think communism is actually viable on a large scale and that social equity can be gained by treating everyone equally badly. At least one nut on that side, which thankfully 'does' make even them nervous, seems to think that racism isn't racism as long as 'everyone' has their supposely racial flaws pointed out and we are 'respect' the differences. Huh?? Sure sounds like bullshit to me... The far right on the other hand is the biggest bunch of moral relativists on the planet. Anything goes, so long as it supports their cause, then the moment someone points out that they are not acting morally, they simply accuse everyone else of being moral relativists, because those people are not willing to lie, cheat and steal to get what the right wants done achieved. Hmm... Odd how I never do those sorts of things and I am the relativist... lol As for conscience... I don't think the mojority of them have one. How can you when you grow up having people telling you that as long as you can explain something as 'helping' society, morality or God, its acceptable, even if its also fundimentally wrong?

I suspect these riots are an ugly combination of the worst "The world would be more fair is *those* people where not screwing it up for me!", and, "God is on my side, so it doesn't matter how bad a thing I do, he wants me to win!" irrationality of 'both' sides. Its a social, economic, coscience *and* moral failure. And as I said, each side is trying to explain it from the view they claim the most authority over and yet all to often have far from the most right to make statements about.

Kagehi is a genius. NOT...

12 nights and counting... thousands of cars and buses, state property and private businesses torched, several officers wounded, at least one civilian death... and the Prime Minister says it's not yet time to bring in the army. Go figure.

Ahh yes, Mr Taint, The Hue. A great film. Although I remember little about the experience as I was busted by vice 8 minutes into the first scene, for something refered to as Lascivious acts upon an inanimate object and buttering someone else's popcorn.

That's quite a series of events Echo my good man. Sounds like you entered into a pickle you couldn't escape....how inviting. I would like recommend two things to you upon your next visit to the theatre.

One, a sturdy yet flexible overcoat complete with multiple internal pockets for a flask, a pipe and some a slice of key lime pie. And second, hire a good lawyer. I highly recommend my barrister...Sam "Small Print" Lyman.

Cheers,

Sodman

I read this headline in the paper: "France institutes curfews to quell riots". But...they're not calling out the army, saying "We're not at that point yet". Ok, so I suspect tomorrow I'll read: "France shocked to find curfews must be enforced to be effective: Gives up control of the country to the Moors."

See...this is why I'm not in Hollywood. If I were, I'd be pitching the latest action flick: A geeky suburban teen finds a strange artifact in his basement which leads him to discover that he is a direct decendent of Charles Martel. Through some study with the help of a mysterious Catholic monk, he discovers that Martel actually had superhuman powers! The Monk teaches him the Martel Secret, and the geeky young man becomes the newest SuperHero: "The Hammer". Of course, he saves France and kicks a bunch of Muslim ass. It needs work, I know...

This is also why they won't let me write comic books...

Hey Homer, I actually like your ides for a movie and maybe even the comic book. Any story that presents muslims getting their sorry asses kicked. You write, i do the artwork.

Hmm...just in case:

The Hammer
©2005 Homer J. Fong Productions

Actually, Brian, I had a much longer, more involved comment post worked out, but for some reason Dan's "questionable language" filter wouldn't let me post it, so I was content with a two-sentence reply... not sure why that was.

In terms of the cause of the riots, however, without subscribing to any complicated Marxist explanations, I would just say that when you take thousands of immigrants from North Africa, whom you allowed in to do the "dirty" jobs that no Parisians would do, and then you surround them with ugliness, and then you don't give their kids an education worth mentioning, or any jobs even, you will have riots eventually - or at least behavior that sinks to the lowest common denominator.

Thus "character" in this case (which I'm defining at a minimum level: not behaving anti-socially), or lack thereof, coincides with integrating or failing to integrate these people by means of halfway decent schools, and job opportunities and forcing them - for their own good - to learn to speak French, so they can fit in.

These latter are "social" goals which you say the left focuses on, while the former goal is "character" which the right focuses on. I would argue simply that they coincide in this case. Had the French achieved the social ends, they would not have the "character" problem.

Regardless, then, of whether the right focuses on this or the left focuses on that, in this case they should both see the one-sidedness of their aims.

In other words, re-read your Dostoyevsky: if you don't have bread in your stomach or a means of providing it, your moral character is going to go out the window pretty fast.

"Poverty is not a crime," intones the unemployed, drunken Marmeladov early into Dostoevsky's *Crime and Punishment*. But arson, battery, are murder are.

"...when you take thousands of immigrants from North Africa, whom you allowed in to do the "dirty" jobs that no Parisians would do, and then you surround them with ugliness, and then you don't give their kids an education worth mentioning, or any jobs even, you will have riots eventually - or at least behavior that sinks to the lowest common denominator." -Ali G

Ali G: what's wrong with dirty jobs when they are all governed by half-socialist labor standards, vacation demands, and wage rates? And if no one forced them to go there then isn't it fair to assume that they themselves judge it to be superior to their home-grown alternatives? And isn't the lack of jobs mostly a result of the high labor standards mentioned earlier, and isn't it compensated by prodigal unemployment and welfare plans? Finally, is it not enough that France gives them a free and better education than they'd recieve where they're from?

Unless they are responding to a particular injustice (lack of equal protection of the law, unequal labor laws, etc.) they are just being incredibly ungrateful to a country and culture that they are not fond of. And who are you kidding with Dostoyevsky? These people aren't starving. On the contrary, they are biting the hand that feeds them.

Leftist intellectuals often justify totalitarian behavoir by drawing flimsy literary parallels. Anti-French Frenchman Jean Genet once tried to justify terrorism with the following verbal sleight of hand, "Violence alone can put an end to the brutality of man." Make no mistake: Lefties imagine "solidarity with the oppressed", but in reality it's "sympathy for the devil".

I just read that the govt set a curfew for midnight. That's not a curfew - that's a bedtime!

To address Jeremiah and Scully:

I'm not justifying or even attempting to justify (a) the riots in Paris or (b) totalitarianism (huh? - sounds more like a knee-jerk reaction, Jeremiah...)

My response was to Brian, who asked me what my explanation for the riots was, and how I saw the interaction between moral character and social/economic issues.

Now that we're clear on that point, let's get around to addressing your comments that actually pertain to what I wrote, rather than those which pertain to what you assume I'm thinking...

1.) Scully, France is not educating these kids. That's exactly the point. These schools are no more adequate than our inner city schools in the Bronx are adequate (probably less so). So there's one place you could start. You can't say: "Presto-change-o: you're now 17! Feel responsible and act responsibly" when you've been neglecting to do this all along. The feeling of responsibility, and responsible behavior - as you know from Hume - are moral sentiments, and they must be instilled during education. They don't magically appear. My argument is that lack of education and realistic job opportunities is the cause (not the excuse for) these riots. And the problem with joblessness doesn't lie with the French economic system.

2.) Secondly, to address the more general issues you raise, albeit implicitly with your rhetorical questions, Scully:

Yes, by all means: let's throw labor-standards out the windows and send the men back to the mines. Then at least we'd have (statistical) full employment, especially if the on-the-job death rate is higher!

Moreover, let's bring back child labor while we're at it because, don't you know, it's all about freedom ...

...NOT!

The one thing you consistently fail to grasp, Scully, in your conservative outlook (which I occasionally admire), is that the world is different than it was in the 50s or even in the 70s. As I see it, there are three stages one can discern in the last 150 years, in the interplay between state power, business power, and the people.

1.) Stage one (later 1800s): there is a threat to workers from business owners, who make unreasonable (i.e., life-threatening) demands. In reaction to this, government intervenes to pass child labor laws, restrict working times, etc. This era continues until the 1970s (although the backlash begins slowly in the 50s).

2.) The conservative counter-movement (Information/Computer age): Unions have become bloated on members' dues, are generally useless, and regulation is putting a strangle-hold on business. Therefore a movement begins to free business from these regulations. After the disasterous economy of the early 70s, people are ready for new solutions. The economy improves, recieving a boost from tech sector (continues to the 90s).

3.) Stage Three: The Age of the International Corporation: Now one speaks of a "law" of the market, newer corporations, unencumbered by unions, take actions which harm lower- and lower-middle-class people (workers - all the time using metaphors from healthy weight-loss such as 'downsizing') to appease already wealthy people (known as shareholders). Gov't stands by and does nothing, even making it easier for business to get what they want, by offering tax incentives. General age of sacrifice on the altar of big business.

I would argue in this latest stage, the greatest threats to human liberty (considered in an Aristotelian sense as intellect and foresight) come not from the State, but from international (or multi-national) business.

Thus, I would argue, if this is the case, unlike the second stage, where one needed to get rid of regulation and state intervention, here it would be the duty of the State - since it is the only entity powerful enough to do this - to stand between the employer and the employee, and ensure that the employer has freedom to operate _within certain limits_ and that the employee is not taken advantage of.

Might I remind you that it is a relatively recent development (in the last 120 years or so) that most of us (well over 90% of the population in the US and most other lands), have accustomed ourselves to a life of "wage-slavery" - working in return for wages or a monthly paycheck. This is something Hume and Smith could not possibly have imagined. This being the case, we must look for the threats to liberty which come from international business, which sells (it's labor) to the lowest bidder and behaves like a child, in that does not take the long view, except when it comes to its own profit.

There is not any reason I can see why I should give up on the Catholic ideal of a 'Sozialstaat' in favor of a globalized world wherein I am nothing more than a cog in the machine of some massive multi-national (and where I have no pension and must 'earn' my measly two weeks vacation each year).

I would argue that it is gov't which can prevent this from happening (or change it where it is already the case). The problem is that all, or most of the gov'ts of the world must act in concert, which is not likely to happen. If they don't act in concert, then business can just go to another country that doesn't have the same labor standards, etc. This happens often enough already.

This of course has very little to do with what is going on in Paris ... there it is more of an immigration and integration problem: not the first time this has happened in Europe. I don't think jobless numbers have much to do (in France) with what you are mistakenly (and vaguely) referring to as "half-socialist labor standards" (what is the other half? - capitalist?). Socialism is an economic system, and I'm not sure what sort of labor standards are implied therein, but that's really not the point, as France is (like the US) a mixed economy.

The joblessness in these 'banlieus' outside of Paris has a lot more to do with lack of education and lack of integration.

Ali G.: (1) So, just to get the facts straight, the causes aren't a lack of bread in their stomachs, the lack of state-funded education superior to what they'd get in their ethnic homelands, or a lack of non-oppressive jobs or unemployment payments, as you originally suggested. It really is a cultural problem. They haven't integrated and they resent the hand that is feeding them.

(2) "...most of us (well over 90% of the population in the US and most other lands), have accustomed ourselves to a life of 'wage-slavery' - working in return for wages or a monthly paycheck." Wow, a rather broad definition of wage-slavery: any work for money, it seems. First, Ali G. to consider yourself a wage slave you must have a job. Personally, I don't consider myself a wage slave. I voluntarily accepted to do something for an organization that in return gives me money occasionally. I find it to be nothing like slavery.

Hi Ali,
I'm very concerned that secular intellectuals and jihad-preaching muslims will try to put their spin on what is an intolerable situation for destructive ends.

I know about the former from years gone by on the Left and from heavy doses of postmodern "cultural criticism" in college. What I hear about the latter, frequently operating within Western countries, makes my hair stand up.

Of course France's (fifth!) republic will have to come up with specific remedies to prevent this from reoccurring. To find an integration worthy of the name. But I'm not with you on injecting Marxist terms like "wage slavery" when trying to tackle this issue, or making sweeping economic histories.

Just to respond briefly here:

Jeremiah, I understand you reservations. What I'm talking about has nothing to do with post-modernism. Post-modernism or, more accurately said, post-structuralism - apart from a few minor insights, which have already been had and expressed by Foucault & Derrida in the late 60s and early 70s (and then endlessly recycled by their American devotees ad nauseam) is a still-birth. Or, rather, it never really existed, because to have some general movement called "Post-structuralism" you would have to have had a general "Structuralism", which never really existed apart from particular structuralisms in Levi-Strauss, Lacan, etc. So that's the first point. I think the only place this monolithic fiction called Post-modernism ever existed was in the minds of soft-brained English department asst. professors.

Second point, however, is this: if you don't like marxist terms like "wage-slavery" then fine: I'll leave them out. They're not essential to my thesis anyway.

Third point: The problem, Scully, has cultural and at the same time socio-economic and moral dimensions. But the time is long-since past, I think, when political theorists would speak of moral education as the end of government. That's for the religions to handle.

Therefore, if you want a causal look of what went wrong in Paris, you need to look at the economic situation in the Banlieus, you need to look at the social structures there, and you need to look at the culture such living fosters (and the a-social feeling it fosters).

Last night on German news here, I watched a 13 year old black north-african immigrant boy, who minutes before had been playing soccer, launch into a denunciation of Sarcoszy (the interior minister), saying, "If I saw Sarcoszy I would punch him a good one. He wants to purge the Banlieus of us - we're just teenagers: and we're human. But for him we're not human. We're trash. He's a racist."

The fact is, he's right. Sarcoszy and the others in the cabinet there are paying lip-service to tolerance, while at the same time practicing what Martel used to preach. They are racists.

At the same time, the answer is not so neat and clean as the Wall Street journal would like to think. The solution to these problems, I'm sorry to say, does not consist in every economy dropping everything and running as fast as they can to become like the American economy.

The American economy has certain values which are good: it's dynamic, you can come up from the bottom, make good, etc. At the same time, if you come out on the losing end, the American economy has no mercy on you whatsoever.

By contrast, the French and German economies have other values which are good: they're more humanitarian, things there (if you're a citizen) are more secure, there is less radical change, etc.

The solution, it seems to me, lies somewhere in the middle, not in giving international business and the stock market everything they want. Even if you don't like my sweeping economic history, you must admit that the current state of affairs (e.g., 42-45 million uninsured Americans) is not a good one.

" Sarcoszy and the others in the cabinet there are paying lip-service to tolerance, while at the same time practicing what Martel used to preach. They are racists."

I am unaware of Sarcoszy et al speaking or acting as racists. What is the evidence upon which you base this judgment? Playing the race card shuts down rational discussion, so it must be carefully and properly applied, and perhaps you are doing just that.

I'm impressed that Sarkozy is an immigrant himself. Hopefully that can be exploited in French public debate, in the best sense of the world.

This is France we're talking about, not America. There is no race card, and no "card" played by anyone I know of has ever been able to shut up a Frenchman for more than 30 seconds.

I wasn't trying to play the race card, but rather state the facts.

A true story:

If Sarcozy calls the teenagers who are burning autos "dreck" and then, when someone else trys to soften his words, he comes back on French TV with a dictionary in hand, looks up the word "dreck," reads the definition, and then says, "There, that's what I meant," that's not necessarily racist - he's saying they're dreck because they're burning cars and buildings.

What I meant was rather that Chirac (who is a thin little shadow of Mitterrand), Sarcozy, and De Villepin, et alia, are racist because they do not really give a flip whether the Banlieus burn or not.

Observe: when the rioters threatened to come into the city center of Paris this past weekend, suddenly there were hundreds of thousands of police present on the streets, and the French Foreign Legion was just around the corner with their white hats.

This is racist. Just in the same way that when the sniper was shooting up the white suburbs of DC a few years back, they were all over it like white on rice, but when there was an arsonist loose in NE D.C. and the black suburbs of Maryland, it took them two years to catch him.

Or perhaps it has to do with class rather than race ... either way it's a double standard.