Posted on 11/18/2005 6:56:40 AM PST by Tolik
If the controlled French economy grew at a rate comparable to America's, then most of the rioting youths of the Paris suburbs would probably have otherwise been too tired after coming home from work.
If France tried to be a multiracial society — more like the United States, whose secretary of state and attorney general are minorities — then there would not have been such a racial component to the class resentment.
If the rioters were not almost exclusively from Muslim backgrounds, then there would not have been yet another extremist dimension to the sectarian tension.
If France were not a post-colonial nation, then there would not be the resentment of third-class immigrants from its former provinces.
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(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/ NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
French have a hard time smelling their own cheese.
...Instead, the United States should return to its former ideal of a multiracial society under the inclusive aegis of Western culture. True, Americans are enriched by cultural diversity in food, fashion and the arts. Yet our core American values of democracy, human rights, private property, a free economy, an unfettered press and unbridled inquiry are not optional or up for discussion. In others words, we succeed precisely because we are the antithesis of a tribal Mexico, unfree China, intolerant Islamic Middle East — or socialist and statist France.Yet large areas of central Los Angeles, rural California, New Orleans and Washington, D.C., have become de facto apartheid communities like the French suburbs, with segregated concentrations of either illegal aliens from Mexico, unassimilated first-generation Hispanics or impoverished African-Americans.
One remedy is a return to the assimilation, integration and intermarriage of the past that once characterized the success of most immigrants who arrived in the United States prior to the rise of ethnic separatism of the 1960s. Unfortunately, abstract deference in white America to racial tribalism often serves as psychological cover for an unwillingness to live among, or send one's children to school with, the "other."
...The English language is our common bond. More than ever it is the first bridge between widely diverse immigrants. Bilingual education and a multiplicity of languages in official documents have not only proved wasteful but also eroded first-generation immigrants' facility in English, the sole language that can guarantee them economic security.
...Our immigration policy is in chaos. We have millions of illegal aliens, thousands of whom are in our penal system. Our borders are less secure than France's. There is not even a Mediterranean Sea between America and the source of most illegal entrants.
Instead of allowing in so many illegally, and then ignoring them as they fend for themselves, America should take in far fewer immigrants, ensure that all come legally, and with rudimentary English and knowledge of the United States. And then we must all work together at rapidly making them into full-fledged fellow citizens.
There is a final lesson from France. Paris might proclaim itself a beacon of global liberality, but beneath that veneer it has been exposed as a simmering apartheid city. So take note: Everyday behavior toward one another — not utopian rhetoric or sloganeering about "diversity" — is all that matters in the end.
The United States is hardly France. But as a similarly affluent Western country where immigrants flock, sometimes fail and then often brood, we run the risk of becoming more like France if we don't return to the inclusivity that once worked and abandon the separatism that increasingly has not.
Unfortunately, there is no assimilation, because of all the groups out there promoting individuality and rights for anything that moves. But mostly the government does this.
American leaders are trying to pass some kind of bill to state that "English is the official language" in this nation! Duh!
Politicians at the high level agree to let illegal laborers come in, maybe they take money from those who employ them. And how many would-be-terrorists enter through Mexico, unnoticed, because of this.
...Our immigration policy is in chaos."
There are already too many Muslim fanatics in this land, so when we see them act up in a place like France (they are now blatant not only in Israel), a plan to stop this from happening here should be in place.
"A nation cannot exist without shared values and a sense of common mission."
This is incredibly true and it is probably even in our constitution. Our nation's population has gotten so out-of-control, very few remember this to be the reason for our existence as a nation. Is everybody, just tired of being, a free country? Well, that same attitude may have existed in the tyrrannical societies we know today.
The big lie about France is that it has diversity problems..... France has absorbed hordes of non-northern Europeans since forever. The Moorish influence in the mediterranean is visible in the genepool along the Riviera. France has a track record of cultural diversification.
The only reason the new groups can't fitin is that they refuse to fit in. The Muslims want to make France part of the greater Eurabian caliphate. Nothing less.
The unassimilated have been allowed to create their own caliphate within the suburbs of French cities.
The big lesson here is this: English proficiency needs to be mandatory at all age levels in the USA and potentially all of North America. Cultural connectedness to mainstream western civilization can't happen without English rpoficiency. We need a manhattan engineering district type project to make sure English is understood by all.
Aztlan is the vain hope of those who would enslave their own people for a socialist power grab at the expense of the living standards of the average joe.
"The big lesson here is this: English proficiency needs to be mandatory at all age levels in the USA and potentially all of North America."
There ya go! If we're all speaking the same language ain't no chance for misinterpretation!!!
"The big lie about France is that it has diversity problems..... France has absorbed hordes of non-northern Europeans since forever. The Moorish influence in the mediterranean is visible in the genepool along the Riviera. France has a track record of cultural diversification.
The only reason the new groups can't fitin is that they refuse to fit in. The Muslims want to make France part of the greater Eurabian caliphate. Nothing less."
Your first paragraph is correct. France and "French", as a race, was made by a fusion of cultures.
But your second is not.
The key difference is that when the various other European tribes were amalgamated in Europe, they all shared Catholicism as the primary value, but they also were joining a country that for centuries and centuries had the biggest, most bustling and industrious economy in Europe. There was always work to do in France.
That remained true in the 1960s, when the North Africans came to work in the factories and the mines. What is different from all of the past is that now the French economy is NOT the bustling, industrious, commercially vibrant place it was during the age of Empire, during the age of Napoleon and the Revolution, and under the Kings. Now, instead, it is sclerotic. People blame "socialism" in general, but that is too imprecise. Specifically, labor regulation in France is so arduous and difficult, that hiring people is an unrewarding experience for business. There is still plenty of commerce and enterprise in France: it is not true that it is impossible, or even difficult, to set up a private business in France and start making money. French individuals are rather entrepreneurial, and do indulge in quite a bit of private business. Quite a bit of it is on the black market, but quite a bit is also normally organized.
Where these businesses hang-fire, however, is that they cannot GROW. They remain tied to the individual entrepreneur and his family: a labor and skills pool related by blood, where the rigidities of labor law do not reach. But expanding to that next step: a SECOND store, or transforming a workshop of an artisan into a small factory for manufacture: this is rendered very frightening by the labor laws, by the inability to discharge workers even for economic necessity.
And so there is a lot of business, and considerable wealth generation in France, but there are scarcely any jobs created by this. Those who have jobs, stay in them. Those who start and run their own businesses, do so but do not employ others.
And that is the biggest problem to integration. If you cannot get a job, you cannot assimilate. In all the earlier ages of France, both the Republic and and Kingdom, there was always work to done and jobs to be had. France was never concerned by immigration overwhelming the country, as for most of history, when the other groups integrated, there was no social safety net. In France before the post-war period, those who did not work often literally starved. America was in many senses more generous and socially protected than France was, because of the overlap of charitable religious societies. To be poor in America only very rarely meant to be truly hungry. In France, until the 1960s, poverty often meant starvation. "Laissez-faire, laissez-allez" as an economic AND SOCIAL principle, only began to be seriously altered in France in the 1960s.
So, now you have the new arrivals and their children, the Beurs, who do not have access to jobs, because the economy doesn't create them. This is destined to leave them permanently unassimilated.
Unfortunately, changing the rigid labor laws of France is about as politically possible as changing the gun laws in America.
Which means that all one can do is to seek to maintain the calm by half-measures, and to suppress the violent.
Without a shift in labor law, France cannot truly heal.
ping
This phrase was in common use in the mill city in Massachusetts where I was born and raised and was used derogitoraly to describe anyone who wasn't amenable to assimilation.
It worked because there was a common understanding that assimilating was desirable.
Learning English was top priority for most new arrivals, because they understood the importance.
My grandmother's parents, from Germany, insisted their children speak only English, because "We're in America now."
correct as usual ping
This used to be true but I won't join the liberal 'goodie-goodies' who believe this will work in dealing with terrorists.
I'm not sure it will work with the El Salvador MS13 gangs who professed many years ago that they would come here to 'slash and kill' and take over cities!
Thanks for the ping!
Great Hanson article, as usual.
There's absolutely no valid excuse that either political party can give for this mess. Everyone should read V.D. Hanson's wake-up calls!
It's not the first time the French have descended into catastrophe because of denial--the most dangerous thing there is.
The American Left is also in denial. That's one of the main reasons it's so dangerous.
During the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960's and '70's, mainstream, white America faced a decision: (1) Complete the American Revolution and provide complete liberty and equality for all citizens or (2) Become Nazi Germany. I. e. : (1) Liberty or (2) Death". In fact, the demand of Black America was essentially: "Liberty or death!"
Wisely, mainstream America choose option #1: Liberty.
Since then, there has been no turning back.
The Revolution is not complete, but it is happening. A drive across America or a visit to any American city reveals the progress.
The decision was not only irrevocable. It also required that the liberty and equality be true, honest, and thorough. Mainstream America is not in denial about this; it is happening.
There's still quite a way to go.
"My grandmother's parents, from Germany, insisted their children speak only English, because "We're in America now."
When my husband's family came over from Germany in the 1880's, the same applied to them. No one went up to the schools and demanded that everybody start speaking German. They would immediately have been told to find their way back to Germany. Many have simply forgotten that we are in America and we must all follow the rules of OUR constitution. Not the rules from some other country.
Assimilation is a problem whose solution is economic.
A man with a good job of whatever color will have no difficulty finding a spouse of any color.
This man nails it every time! We are no longer a united nation with emigrants coming here to be Americans. In fact, emigrants are given more rights to their culture than we are to our ours.
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