Columns of Entropy Rise Over Paris

Oregon Magazine ^ | November 8, 2005 | Larry Leonard

[WaterDragon]

Pat Buchanan describes it in terms of the fall of the West. "Rome conquered the barbarians, then the barbarians conquered Rome." Pat often dons his twenty league boots, these days, but it is he, not the West, who has seen his best days. Rome, whose senate from time to time officially declared this or that caesar a god, will never select Buchanan for the pantheon.

Paris is a tourist destination, these days, nothing more. Eastern liberal college students traditionally spend some time there, casting about for culture and trying out their skill with the lingua franca. Painters pay homage visits to the Louvre, and places made famous by impressionists. Some writers try to be there as young men, and to feel the bad weather come in so they can rise in the night and close the shutters against the wind and the rain, for Paris is a moveable feast.

For all that, Paris is a wedding cake -- baked flour covered with fancy icing. Since fashion is important only to dilettantes, the only significant thing that happens in the entire nation is the production of wine, and the cuisine which has developed to accent the craft of the vine. Both are ephemeral, like the butterfly. Beautiful and briefly here, then gone. So, nothing happens in France. It is a nation of the senses, like a summer afternoon.....

So, other than simple human compassion for injuries to the innocent during these riots, why should anybody care about the fall of France? Well, France has the Bomb....

[ncountylee]

He called the project Trinity just so he could use that line. What an ego.

[gaijin]

I had the same reaction immediately.

For French to be a lingua franca, it would have to be understood by everyone, or at least by many, many people.

And there is nothing necessarily "franca" about a lingua franca.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Pat Buchanan describes it in terms of the fall of the West. "Rome conquered the barbarians, then the barbarians conquered Rome."

I don't like Pat because I don't like paleoconservatism, but he happens to be right on this one.

[enviros_kill]

Oppenheimer was a Commie sympathizer who gave nuclear secrets to the Russians as he didn't consider the American culture morally superior and felt he had to level the playing field. He'd be the darling of the left today.

[Moonman62]

For all that, Paris is a wedding cake -- baked flour covered with fancy icing. Since fashion is important only to dilettantes, the only significant thing that happens in the entire nation is the production of wine, and the cuisine which has developed to accent the craft of the vine. Both are ephemeral, like the butterfly. Beautiful and briefly here, then gone. So, nothing happens in France. It is a nation of the senses, like a summer afternoon.....

MacArthur Park is melting through the dark
All the sweet green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
Blah, blah, blah