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November 7, 2005
On Those Paris Riots
Topics:Two particular blog posts caught my eye this afternoon, as being representative of what I'm seeing from conservative blogs, but also pointing to links that demonstrate the gulf that exists from the two sides of the political spectrum. In this, my little snapshot of the two sides, the far left side is represented by none other than the infamous literary arm of the Left - The Washington Post, while the conservative position is represented by Mark Stein, a guy that calls it as it is, whether you agree with him or not, and he's right more often than not. Sort of in the middle, the Washington Times does a decent job of simply reporting the facts on the ground, without using the MSM license to slant the news in order to make it politically correct.
Right-Thinking from the Left Coast has Paris is Burning, and in his post he links to a Washington Times piece that has:
"Asked on TF1 television whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We are not at that point.""I can't help but wonder at what point the nut case de Villepin will think it's appropriate to bring the army in! RTFLC goes on to write:
And what are they rioting for?Dan's Riehl World View has "France's Weakness Showing":<blockquote> Is it me, or do the comments of this French policeman seem absolutely bizarre? Hey, so what if they've burned the schools and a thousand or more cars and a few people - but, now, this could be serious?? Is he kidding? And televised reports tonight are talking about 30 policemen now injured.Dan then points us to link throughs to two articles that present two completely different views of the Paris riots - one from the Washington Post that deserves the award for having an author with the looniest and most naive reporting I've ever seen come from the MSM, and they are infamous for such:The violence has escalated from an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects into a nationwide show of disdain for French authority from youths and minorities, most French-born children of Arab and black Africans angered by years of unequal opportunities.
Unequal opportunities? My ass. They're faced with the same issues that minorities everywhere have. They come to France to take advantage of their welfare system, get the "You owe me" mentality bred into them, and then their children riot out of frustration that blessed Allah has not provided a better life for him. So they resent their state and take it out on the French government, when the true culprit is their own ignorant, uneducated culture which prevents them from succeeding in modern French society.
Why work when you can expect. Why adapt when you can riot. Why create when you can destroy. It's really all these types are good for.
If you really want to read something frightening, click through to here (Ace of Spades) and be sure and read the Steyn column portion.The Mark Steyn piece is the second, more rational, viewpoint of the two: A New "Dark Ages" of "Permanent Conflict," and far more entertaining:
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''
''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.Read the rest, and then be sure to read all the link-throughs, and you can choose on your own, which side is living in the dark.The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
Unfortunately, Stein's final paragraph has that eerie ring of truth, that if proven to be true, and only time will tell, moderate Muslims and non-Muslims alike will be in the dark ages with lost freedom, before they will have even been able to convince their governments, particular like those in Europe, that Islamofascism, multiculturalism, and failing to enable Muslims to assimilate into society, is a most deadly cocktail.
If Chirac isn't exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren't doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn 'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.
Posted by Richard at November 7, 2005 6:37 PM
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