Posted on 11/15/2005 9:59:13 AM PST by .cnI redruM
¡"French Lessons: How to create a Muslim underclass," editorial, Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2005, p. A10. ¡"Burning Down The House In FranceLand," op-ed by Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2005, p. A10.
The French model of economics and social cohesion is coming apart, and certainly being discredited, so sayeth the WSJ editorial board.
And they're right. The French model and approach on trade and security and damn near everything else is pretty much screwed up, representing the worst of the Old Core's tendencies.
Here are some good stats:
Consider the contrast with the U.S. Between 1978 and 2002, the percentage of foreign-born Americans nearly doubled, to 12% from 6.2%. At the same time, the five-year average unemployment rate declined to 5.1% from 7.3%. Among immigrants, median family incomes rose by roughly $10,000 for every 10 years they remained in the country. So much for immigrants being unassimilable, points out this editorial.
France has 5 million Muslims in a population of only 60 million, and we've got roughly 2 million out of 300 million.
Clearly, we're attracting the better lot of Muslims, and for good reason, there's serious upward mobility here.
Two-thirds of the 2 million Muslims living in America are immigrants. Roughly six out of ten have college degrees and one in three sport annual incomes above $75k. They marry out of their culture at a rate of one-in-five, which is high everywhere in the world except America, where it's the norm.
The WSJ is dead on: this is not an immigrant problem or a Muslim problem but an underclass problem.
Hechinger, who's serious conservative but also scary smart, makes an even bolder point: France's take on their internal problems with immigrants and economics is the same as their approach to global issues: they bury their heads in the sand and just say Non! to everything.
The French lead in nothing except obstructionism, whether it's Turkey getting into the EU, taking down Saddam, or derailing the Doha Round.
There is no future for France except decay and isolation. We are watching a civilization self-destruct in its old age.
You want me to name a country most likely to leave the Core? France already has.
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