The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris

City Journal ^ | Autumn 2002 | Theodore Dalrymple

[Pelham]

I live and work with Mexico's citizens on a daily basis. My impression is a bit different from yours.

[stboz]

Islamist vs frogs, I do not see as I have a dog in this fight. But it will be fun to watch.

Les Froggies have nukes and missiles.....this musn't get out of hand.

[bondserv]

Of particular interest:

I first saw l’insécurité for myself about eight months ago. It was just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in a neighborhood where a tolerably spacious apartment would cost $1 million. Three youths—Rumanians—were attempting quite openly to break into a parking meter with large screwdrivers to steal the coins. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; the sidewalks were crowded, and the nearby cafés were full. The youths behaved as if they were simply pursuing a normal and legitimate activity, with nothing to fear.

Eventually, two women in their sixties told them to stop. The youths, laughing until then, turned murderously angry, insulted the women, and brandished their screwdrivers. The women retreated, and the youths resumed their “work.”

A man of about 70 then told them to stop. They berated him still more threateningly, one of them holding a screwdriver as if to stab him in the stomach. I moved forward to help the man, but the youths, still shouting abuse and genuinely outraged at being interrupted in the pursuit of their livelihood, decided to run off. But it all could have ended very differently.

Several things struck me about the incident: the youths’ sense of invulnerability in broad daylight; the indifference to their behavior of large numbers of people who would never dream of behaving in the same way; that only the elderly tried to do anything about the situation, though physically least suited to do so. Could it be that only they had a view of right and wrong clear enough to wish to intervene? That everyone younger than they thought something like: “Refugees . . . hard life . . . very poor . . . too young to know right from wrong and anyway never taught . . . no choice for them . . . punishment cruel and useless”? The real criminals, indeed, were the drivers whose coins filled the parking meters: were they not polluting the world with their cars?

[A. Goodwin]

It's a bit of an old-fashioned useage, but it really doesn't have the law enforcement intelligence-gathering connotation that has become common; here, it just means the person who is imparting news, telling the story.

[wideminded]

Very excellent article.

[SuzyQue]

Dangus - I want to second your observation. Catholicism in central/south America is not necessarily what we think of as Catholicism, but a mismash of "Liberation Theology", socialism/communism, and local traditional beliefs. It's a very different animal.

[SuzyQue]

I can't raise, but here's my contribution to the pot: " Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

[dennisw]

That's my impression as well. And there is a substantial streak of anti-Catholicism in their "Revolution" as well.

Their Indian paganism carries the day. Aztec, Mayan and a thousand more.

Mexico is an Indian plantation with Spanish overlords

[bitt]

gotta read bump

[Boazo]

But the petty bourgeois, deaf and blind, continues to play the buffoon without knowing it. Still miraculously comfortable in his lush fields, he cries out while glancing toward his nearest neighbor: "Make the rich pay!" Does he know, does he finally know that it is he who is the rich one, and that the cry for justice, that cry of all revolutions, projected by millions of voices, is rising soon against him, and only against him. That's the whole theme of Camp of the Saints.

So, what to do? ,This is so much more than true!!!!

[Boazo]

Bitt,this is by far the most frighting article I've read!!!

[ForGod'sSake]

It's a keeper; thanks for the ping.

[Zacs Mom]

"Islamist vs frogs, I do not see as I have a dog in this fight. "

I wonder....

WE, as a nation, seem to be oblivious to what is happening right here on our own soil, let alone what is happening elsewhere.
Sure, we all hear about the "protests" and we shake our heads and mutter about what a bunch of idiots these people are -
but do we ever look closely at who these idiots are, what they are protesting or, more importantly, what they are advocating?

The following is just a small collection of images collected from recent protests here in the US -



I've refrained from including the more vulgar images but this is a fair representation of the philosophies embraced by the base the cRats are currently catering to.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Le Bump

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Cronos]

like Le Pen?

[Sam Cree]

I am kind of shocked by this article.

I've never read Kafka, but it reminds me of what I imagine his stuff to be.

[Pajamajan]

This is a long article but, it is an absolute MUST READ.

Every single politician should be required to read it line for line. There are numerous warnings here for our own society. What's happened in Paris could easily happen here, if we keep going down the socialist road.

Excellent post.

[syriacus]

Very informative article. Thanks for posting it.

[Paved Paradise]

This article reminded me of my visit to Paris in 2001. We hired an english-speaking cabbie to drive us from Orley airport to Paris. He was intelligent and articulate, having spent two years in the US playing soccer. He told us then how frustrated he and many others were at the "ghettos" of immigrants surrounding Paris. We drove by one of these areas and at the time, being quite uninformed, I was truly surprised at the large numbers of African immmigrants... and I had no idea they were Muslims.

The recent violence in France is very upsetting to me. While I can understand all of the smaller elements that have gone into making this volatile and potentially catastrophic situation, I still hurt for the people, such as our cab driver, that are trying to have things changed but, much like here, are faced with the elitists among the media, government, and academia that promulgate these utopian and ridiculously-impossible set-ups. Frankly, I think our own welfare system is similar to what the French have done, just not on their level. Thank God for good old fashioned American pragmatism and our wonderful work ethic.

Anyway, thanks for the post. People need to wake up and see that as France and other European countries become islamicized, it is going to bode very poorly for us. Eventually, it almost seems like it'll be the US and Israel against everyone else.