Cynical Nation

Yeah let's make 'em teachers! Now, that addresses root causes much more pragmatically than a bullet in the head.

I actually kinda like the last one. Tax breaks are always nice. Let's go with that one. I'm sure no one's gonna put down their molotov for that one though.

gah, my grammar is atrocious today, my apologies.

But boy, the French are reallllllly letting this get out of hand. Good lord!!! Hope they don't get any Cat.4 hurricanes anytime soon. (soory!)

Yes, I tend to prefer the bullet to the bribe myself. For one thing, it's permanently effective, as it doesn't have to be applied at regular intervals the way the bribe must.

The tax cuts?!

O mon Dieu! Impossible.

The government would never go for that. For one thing, the taxpayers aren't rebelling and for another, most of the "rioters"/rebels don't pay taxes themselves. I expect a round of hearty tax hikes aimed at the long suffering French workers, to support all the programs/bribes set up to bring this unrest under control.

Government keeping your immigrant population unemployed and peeved?

Then the answer is more government, baby! Whoooo!

No government on earth can create employment, nor keep people down and "peeved."

Frustration, anger, and being "peeved" are moods that are caused mostly by neuro-chemicals, NOT by things like poverty and unfairness.

In fact, look around, over 70% of the earth's population are "poor" by U.S. standards and apparently most of them are NOT "peeved," because you don't see people anywhere EVER rioting over poverty.

In the U.S. the Los Angeles riots were carried out largely by gang members, who saw an opportunity for "anarchist's profits," and a little racially motivated fun attacking white & Asian owned businesses. Even back in NY's "Bad old days" under David Dinkins, the Korean Boycott and subsequent riots weren't conducted by poor people outraged over their poverty, most of those folks stayed home, but by rabid and avowed racists like Sonny Carson and Alton Maddox and their twisted followers. Ditto the Crown Heights riots in which Yankel Rosenbaum was killed - racially motivated black on Jewish violence committed by gangs of violent skells.

Laws neither cause nor "cure" racism, so laws can't eliminate racism either. It's in the hearts of some folks.

Likewise government can't create jobs, ONLY the private sector can do that. Government creates NOTHING. The private sector creates EVERYTHING and in so doing, affords government the ability to hire police, teachers, firefighters and others required to upkeep the infrastructure. In fact, without a strong, vibrant private sector, government couldn't function at all.

Actually the government can create jobs. It has created millions of them. Of course, I understand that to do so they need money, and that money is provided by taxpaying entities, and that these taxpayers have to have jobs to make money to pay the taxes. Maybe that was the point you were trying to make.

Actually, I think perceived "unfairness" does lead to a lot of crime (or uprisings). One of the reasons we rebelled against England was our perception of being treated unfairly. And look what happened in France around that same time period. That gap between the rich and poor became too much to bear.

Some studies have shown that it is exactly that wealth gap that promotes crime, and that it is not so much the absolute level of wealth. In other words, some of our people in poverty would be considered well off in some countries, but in our country if they perceive that gap to be too big, they start rebelling.

I also think drugs have a lot to do with crime, though that doesn't seem to be the issue in France.

It does seem as if the government is trying to deal with some of the core issues of the unrest instead of just responding to the symptoms with increased police forces and mass jailings. Seems like a good idea to attack the root cause.

Sometimes it is the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

Actually Tracy, government produces NOTHING.

Police, Fire, even educational services, when provided by the government are a "net cost" to society. Not to mention the fact that State provided education pales in comparison to the quality offered at private institutions.

ONLY the private sector creates value, by, often combining cheaper substances to create a more valuable one, or providing the goods & services that the consumers/people need and want, for a profit.

That PROFIT is the lifeblood of industry and in turn, is the only thing that allows government to function.

That's why all of Western Europe has turned away from the failed policies of Democratic Socialism (the government managed economy) and moved to Corporatism, the state regulated but privately owned and managed economy, based on private property rights.

The poorest nations aren't those with the least effective governments. In fact, many sub-Saharan African governments are very effective, in terms of organizational control - most totalitarian governments excel at organizational control. The poorest nations are invariably those that don't respect private property rights and who have either a non-productive (State-run), or in most cases, a non-existent private sector.

Violent crime is NOT correlative to poverty in any appreciable way.

In America's inner cities, drug dealers are among the wealthiest people in those communities. Mere teenaged "lookouts" can make upwards of $3,000/week cash for their efforts, and these are the people committing the bulk of the "random violent crime," in those areas.

The bulk of the violent crime nationwide are "crimes of passion," and another large sector are those committed by serial rapists, pedaphiles and serial and mass murderers, most of which tend to be committed by people with jobs (thus the term "going postal" at work) and who are seemingly "productive" members of the community (ie the BTK killer, who fits the precise profile of a serial murderer).

No, sadly for Leftists, who yearn for a "poor people's revolution," poverty doesn't appear to be causal to violent crime. Of course George Bernard Shaw saw and expounded on that a couple of generations ago, starting the Fabian Socialists Society, when he realized that the poor and working classes would never "rise up" against the owners of businesses, as most workers tended to see these folks as "the founders of the feast."

Moreover, what's going on in France is not a "riot" at all, it's an ethnic uprising by "racist" (in this case anti-French) black & Arabic mobs.

There is ONLY ONE answer, one solution to this problem from a European perspective, surrender the inane ideal that "people are people, and we can all get along" and move to deport huge numbers of these "useless eaters" (upwards of 80% in my estimation) and place severe restrictions on all future immigration to these nations.

France has already begun deporting some of the so-called "rioters," but I believe only those who are new immigrants. They're going to have to move to the brave new world of deporting many of those radical ethnics born in France.

It's the only way for France to come out of all this culturally unscathed. The next few months should be interesting to see which direction France chooses and how French they remain.

JMK: Who said anything about the government producing jobs? Or anyone being poor?

I said that it was keeping them "unemployed", which is a very different thing from being poor.

And a government can overregulate the private sector to the point that it becomes inflexible, and generally, as a result, less likely to hire anyone new because it's so difficult to fire anyone once they get on the payroll.

It's not like anyone could really make the case that they're pissed because they're poor or homeless. They've got cell phones, TVs, homes, microwaves, and they dress pretty nicely.

But they've been stuck in these little ghettos, and the regulations are such that it is very difficult to move out of them. In these areas, I've heard that the unemployment is four times the national average--and the national average is about 10%, innit?

So they aren't suffering or starving or anything.
But, well, I think it's safe to say that they were peeved. I mean, two dumbass kids ran into a dangerous corner and accidentally electricuted themselves to death. I think one would be hard-pressed to make the case that the rioters were just happy, harmless kittens who heard about this incident and then were so filled with a rage previous unknown to them that they went berserk and started setting things on fire...
...for two weeks. And continue to.

But the obvious answer, as with everything in this life, is of course to top off an already massive system of regulations and bureaucratic inefficiency with a new layer of...that.

WOO GOVERNMENT! Take, THAT, Anglo-Saxon economics!

NEVER responded to YOUR post with what you just said I did.

In responding to your post, I merely rightfully pointed out that, "No government on earth can create employment, nor keep people down and "peeved."

Of course, when responding to Tracy, who said this, "Actually the government can create jobs..." I explained why only the private sector really creates jobs, both by employing workers in profit-driven industries and through their's and their worker's taxes, affords government the funding upon which it runs the governmental infrastructure.

You're absolutely right about France's economic morass caused by its over-regulated, pseudo-Socialist economy, BUT this Muslim rebellion has little, if anything to do with that.

Want proof?

Read Tony Blankley's "The Islamist Threat in France" http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051108-102827-5782r.htm

Especially read his last paragraphs; "This is not about Muslim poverty (the Islamist terrorists who hit London all had good jobs. Mohammed Atta, who struck us in New York, was well-born and came from a prosperous family.) It is about radical Islamist self-confidence and contempt for the West. And, it is about Western weakness.

We should not sneer at French weakness, but rather should encourage them to re-find their strength. It is a strength we will need to find in ourselves, as well. Vive la France!"

If this were merely about immigrants who want to work and assimilate into French society, that would be one thing, but this is quite another.

It is nothing short of a radical Muslim uprising in the heart of Western Christendom.

Sorry, I misread what you'd written earlier. Forgive my presumption.

I agree with you, but I also think that the "economic morass", as you put it, made these areas more ripe for conversation to radical Islam.

I just wish they would end this. They are dealing with a foe that they outgun and outman, and yet for a solid two weeks they have been unable to defeat. How many weeks of rioting is it going to take before they realize just what is needed to restore order? How bad is the damage going to need to be?

WILL they ever come to grips with it?

Hmmmm, I can't disagree that economics can certainly make people "more susceptible" to radicalism, but as Blankley pointed out, one of the disturbing trends with radicalized Islam or Islamo-cultism, as I call it, since Islam has never had a Reformation, traditional Islam IS fundamentalist Islam and what is euphemistically called "fundamentalist Islam" is really a cult, is that many of adherants aren't poor. Mohammed Atta, Osama bin Laden himself and the London bombers weren't poor people, they merely despised "the decadent West."

In my view, if anyone has a reason to riot in France today, it's the beleagured taxpayers, the citizens who must live in a static and stunted economy, where neither education, nor entrepreneurial drive are tickets to advancement.

I agree with you that France's economy is a disgrace and an insult to its people, but my gut feeling is that this "unrest" is more than a mere "riot." It has a tone of ethnic (read that Islamo-cultist) conquest.

This from Blankley's piece; "As Paul Belien, writing from Brussels this weekend, observed: "It is not anger that is driving the insurgents to take it out on the secularized welfare states of Old Europe. It is hatred. Hatred caused not by injustice suffered, but stemming from a sense of superiority. The 'youths' do not blame the French, they despise them."

And quotes from some of the Muslim "leaders" in those areas; "Dyab Abou Jahjah, the leader of the Brussels-based Arab European League, says: 'We reject integration when it leads to assimilation. I don't believe in a host country. We are at home here and whatever we consider our culture to be also belongs to our chosen country. I'm in my country, not the country of the Westerners.' "

And this, also from Blankley's book ("The West's Last Chance"); "Or consider the statement of a German radical Islamist that I recounted in my book (based on a National Public Radio news-story broadcast): "Germany is an Islamic country. Islam is in the home, in schools. Germans will be outnumbered. We [Muslims] will say what we want. We'll live how we want. It's outrageous that Germans demand we speak their language. Our children will have our language, our laws, our culture" (The West's Last Chance, page 75),"...pretty scary stuff.

BTW, no worries about the misunderstanding, as I also misunderstood your initial post as blaming the French government (as vile as it is) entirely for the rebellion, as opposed to the Islamo-cultists engaged in the "unrest."

The best thing I've read so far on this subject was actually written in 2002.
If you're interested, check out this article by Theodore Dalrymple.

I think that i basically agree with you. These guys are not poor they're just...for lack of a better word..."bored". And dissatisfied.

I actually think that fundamentalist Islam is VERY different from traditional Islam. When you hear the Bin Ladens talk about what Islam has been traditionally, he's quite hostile towards it.

As you say, the tendency is for this strain to develop among those who are not poor, but even towards the well-off side. In fact, I would go so far as to say that fundamentalist Islam has developed among a group of relatively well of Middle Easterners who have been exposed to Western culture in some way.

After all, there are many stories of perfectly level-headed muslims who go to Europe and become radicalized while there.

I don't pretend to have the answers, but I think the entire affair is skull-poundingly complex.

France is pretty good at appeasement. Look how they faired in WWII. Maybe we will come rescue their sorry asses again and then they can invent another non-existant French Resistance to explain it all away.

I hope the muslims win. Fuck France.

"I think that I basically agree with you. These guys are not poor they're just...for lack of a better word..."bored". And dissatisfied." (Adam)

A very good article, though I believe that Mr. Dalrymple does what is natural for most of us to do, and that is to try and understand this problem from a Western context, when these people don't think like Westerners at all. Still, even Dalrymple comes to this conclusion, "Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable...

"...Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order."

There's never really been a "poor people's uprising," and this rebellion is certainly NOT one. These are people, mostly Muslim, who disdain France and despise French culture. The answer isn't more jobs and an Americanized economy (effort, education and hard work emphasized and rewarded), though that would certainly improve France for EVERYONE there.

These people don't want to contribute to France, and they certainly don't want to assimilate and become French.

No, I believe Blankley has it exactly right, they despise France and wish to make it over in their image.

"I hope the muslims win. Fuck France." (Bailey Hankins)

I'd expect as much.

How abot Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy and England?

Hope the muslims win there too?

JMK, I've attended private and public schools. Granted, I was AP in high school, but still. I had life experiences in a public school you just can't get in a private school. I'd say a healthy mix of both is probably the best education. Private when you're learning the basics, public when you're in high school/jr. high.

That Guy, it can be argued that the "social milieu" at public schools are generally more diverse than that of most private institutions, BUT, that is sadly, often offset by the inability of public schools to eliminate the most disruptive "students" from those institutions.

Moreover, I'm not saying that public education is useless, only that it's (1) increasingly Union (ie. UFT) based in most places, that is set up for the benefit and in the best interests of the teachers, rather than the students and (2) not very cost-effective, largely because of the tendency of local pols to palcate Municipal Unions.