What is Ralph Peters smoking?
Or, as a friend of mine might ask, has anyone checked his teeth lately?
I really don't get it. I agree with almost every sentence in Peters' latest column on the French riots, and yet I draw a violently different conclusion than he makes in the last paragraph.
Peters argues that France is the most virulently racist country in all of Western Europe. That's an inflammatory comment, to be sure, and such factors are hard to quantify, but it's also difficult to dispute.
When I moved to Paris in 1991, I had (believe it or not) pretty much bought into all the conventional wisdom about how the French, despite their other shortcomings, were much more "tolerant" and "enlightened" than their American counterparts, especially concerning issues of race and ethnicity.
Boy, was I in for a shock. I was honestly surprised to see such widespread racism and anti-Semitism hidden just beneath the surface of French culture -- and sometimes not hidden at all. The French, for example, like Arabs just fine as long as they're blowing up Jews in the West Bank, but tend to like them much less within the borders of their own country. The top levels of French government, business and academia are shockingly lily-white for a country with such a diverse population.
Even more striking, in my opinion, is the amount of class consciousness in France. America is by no means perfect, and we often fail to live up to our ideals, but one thing that makes this country great is that talented people, with a lot of hard work and a little luck, can achieve great things, no matter who their family is or where they came from. Not so in France. They continue to attach huge importance to one's family name, class and station in life, and children are routinely shut off from opportunities before they're even given a chance.
Ralph Peters is pretty much on the money with all that, and these factors and the hopelessness they instill in the French underclass no doubt play a role in what's going on now. But Peters' final paragraph is just simply astonishing:
Meanwhile, every American who believes in racial equality and human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the effete bigots on the Seine.
I had to read that twice before I convinced myself that it really said what it did. Look, God knows I have my share of problems with the French government, but this is no different from the kind of mindless, blame-the-West leftism that's plagued our struggle against jihad from the very beginning. The French can be pompous, insufferable, effete, and yes, "bigots," but I have to pull for them on this one, as should everyone who thinks Western civilization is worth fighting for. The stakes are just too high to do otherwise.
Comments
"Meanwhile, every American who believes in racial equality and human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the effete bigots on the Seine." (Ralph Peters)
That is about the most inane thing I've heard on the subject.
The French may be an insular culture, one not given to upward mobility or even rewarding education or entrepreurship, BUT it is THEIR culture...and THEIR country after all.
The invaders here are these Third World immigrant, welfare hounds, who have neither any place in, nor any love for France, their adopted homeland.
France could prove to be a beacon to the rest of Europe by merely abandoning their absurd "assimilation program" and simply restricting all future immigration, while initiating a massive round-up and deportation of the bulk of these malcontents.
It's horrific that so many of these former Somalis and Algerians are now residing in French ghettos, when they should be either out hunting in the bush, or fishing off some blue watered beach off the coast of Africa.
Posted by: JMK | November 8, 2005 03:37 PM
JMK, understand that the people doing this are second or third generation French. Hence, I would disagree with the idea of it being their adopted homeland.
That said, however, I truly believe that these individuals consider themselves muslims first and French second, if there even is a second.
While the liberaals have wrung their hands about their lack of assimilation into the French society, I would posit that many, heck the majority, want nothing to do with being "French".
Posted by: mal | November 8, 2005 08:53 PM
I'd add no more than any of them want anything to do with being "Western," Mal, because "Western" is a synonym for decadent, especially among the Islamo-cultists.
I wonder what mechanisms France has in place for deporting second and third generation skells?
Posted by: JMK | November 8, 2005 09:25 PM
Which makes me wonder why they would stay in a nation whose ethos were so despised by them.
Posted by: mal | November 8, 2005 10:32 PM
"Which makes me wonder why they would stay in a nation whose ethos were so despised by them." (Mal)
The best possible answer to that might be found in the flick "Back to School" with Rodney Dangerfield - "Well, to be fair, it was an awfully big check." In this case, an awfully big welfare check, courtesy of the French taxpayers.
Triple Lindy anyone?
Posted by: JMK | November 9, 2005 06:31 PM