Posted on 05/18/2006 11:52:13 AM PDT by George W. Bush
Sarkozy's reform bill will "stiffen the rules for immigrants in France, establish a sort of quota system and let authorities cherry-pick who gets in - such as doctors, computer whizzes or sports stars." (Independent Online, South Africa) "The bill, which also makes it difficult for immigrants already in France to have their families join them, is expected to go to the [French] Senate for final approval in June." (BBC)
Sarkozy himself is the son of a Hungarian immigrant. Promoting his reform proposal, Sarkozy had earlier said that "We can't keep welcoming to France everyone who wants to come and to whom we can offer neither housing nor employment." (Le Figaro)
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Hitler would have won the war in Russia easily had he just treated the conquered Russians humanely, they would have considered Hitler a liberator from Stalin. Hitler forgot the primary lesson for winning wars, make the enemy want to surrender.
Alternate history is fun.
Here's a better alternate history: Hitler takes power in Reichstag Fire and suppresses the Communists, just as happened historically.
He rearms the country and launches his massive construction projects and thereby gets people back to work. This is really Keynsian economics, and it worked in America too.
He remilitarizes the Rhineland, thereby repudiating the Versailles Treaty, and stokes the flames of German nationalism.
In 1938 he completes the Anschluss and adds German Austria and the Sudetenland to Germany. And then he hunkers down on top of a roaring German economic powerhouse, develops his military, but he avoids the error of Poland.
So, Germany consolidates its central European empire, and its alliances with Mussolini and Franco, and Peron and other dictators in the Western Hemisphere, but does not go over the tripwire into war in 1939.
THEN WHAT?
Well, one thing's for sure: France and Britain were not going to gratuitously attack him.
There were indeed Communists, but Hitler and the Nazi, like Mussolini and Franco, were ruthless Communist hunters.
After the Reichstag fire and Anschluss, German pride (under Nazi nationalist ideals) was stoked and the Germans were working again. The future looked pretty good. The Communists flat out lost in Spain, and they would not have been successful in Germany.
But had Hitler kept his powder dry, there would have been no invasion of Poland, and peace would have been maintained with the West...which desperately wanted it.
Chamberlain's "Peace in our time" would have actually been correct.
Germany would have gotten stronger and stronger, and would have come to economically dominate the whole of Europe.
Now, in the absense of the general war, Germany would have still be tied to the world and open to trade. The Nazis would have abused the Jews, but the "Final Solution" orders of a desperate regime buried in wartime secrecy and possessing the enslaved Jews of Eastern Europe would not have been issued. A peacetime Germany could be really nasty to Jews, just like contemporary America of that time was nasty and horrible to blacks, segregating them, etc. But outright mass-murder? That required a war.
Hitler would have positioned his Germany as the anti-Communist bulwark, and there were plenty all over the West, including in the US, who saw him as that. Once he was ripping through Poland and Paris, of course, that was all thrown aside. But he didn't HAVE to invade Poland. Germany was getting stronger and coming back together under his rule. He CHOSE to start the war when he did.
Had he not obliged with a war, Western Europe would have been progressively economically and politically eclipsed by the Third Reich, but it would not perforce have faced war. Germany didn't have any particular territorial ambitions in the West. France had to be knocked out, because France was the primordial Western military foe, but Germany didn't annex France into the Third Reich. Hitler wanted a subdued France and a cooperative England. He invaded Poland and got a war, but he didn't have to invade Poland.
Now, history would have marched on, and Stalin was a despot.
Would Stalin have been able to resist the temptation to invade the Baltic States on his own? Or Finland, in the winter of 1939. Remember: when the USSR invaded Finland, the sympathy war in the West was very intense. Britain wanted to send troops.
Imagine no World War going on, with Germany as a growing anti-Communist military power NOT at war with France and Britain, when the Russians invaded Finland or the Baltic States.
Would Stalin have even dared attempt to take either Finland or the Baltic States in the face of France, Britain AND Germany?
Probably not.
I guess my point is that I don't think Germans would have been screwed had Hitler not pressed the war button. Yes, they would have had the Nazi Party running the show, but the pre-Final Solution Nazi Party was not noticeably worse than Franco's regime, which became an ally of the USA, or Mussolini's. Germany was powerful and efficient, and the German war machine was dangerous, but it didn't HAVE to set the West on fire. There was no timetable ticking that Hitler had to hold onto.
Had Hitler held his fire and built up Germany further and further and further, the West would have had the peace it craved. France feared war, but grimly accepted it. Britain didn't want war at all. The USA wasn't interested.
Stalin and the USSR would have been in the most isolated position, because the Westerners would not have been at war with each other.
Other alternate histories are difficult to really accept, because they require all sorts of different parties to behave differently. However, Germany not invading Poland is not unimaginable. That depended solely on a different calculation in the mind of Adolph Hitler. Dictators can indeed make such calculations. Franco did. Franco was every inch the dictator, and his Falangists were every inch the Fascists, but Franco chose to remain aloof from the pleas for alliance from the Nazis and Fascists who had help him win the Spanish Civil War. Spain desired war with Communists, but certainly not with the West, and so Franco stayed neutral, and eventually became an ally of the US.
Hitler didn't have to invade Poland and unleash World War II. It was optional with him. There was nothing inexorably driving him the way his decisions drove everyone else's in that war. German politics did not require him to launch that war in order to hold power. He held Germany in a hypnotic spell, and hadn't committed any irreversible atrocities yet.
And had he decided differently, the Germans wouldn't have been screwed at all. They would have been victors in the historical game against Communism, probably.
"No they're not."
I just phoned a friend in France to confirm..yes they are. Low pay after graduation, except for those who will be in the government.
Your friend in France is not one of the "best and brightest", then.
The best and brightest in France go to the elite grandes ecoles, from which they graduate with several job choices in the governmental and quasi-governmental apparati and corporations that run French society.
The French system is a closed one, and a ruthless academic meritocracy. There are virtually no "self-made men" in France, and to the extent they are, they are actors of businessmen in a particular niche where they are good - they are by no means the "Best and the Brightest" of France.
No. The Best and the Brightest have emerged again and again from the ruthless examination cycles that begin in college (middle school), proceed through the baccalaureat at the end of lycee, and then through the national competitive concours to obtain entrance into the grandes ecoles. Those who are the best performers go to the grandes ecoles - nobody declines that opportunity - and become the elite. And they stay in France and command French society.
The second tier, those who go to university, work under the direction of the Best and the Brightest who command the nation and its grand enterprises. Some of them seek their fortunes outside of France, especially in London and in America. But those are not the best and the brightest. They are the smart also-rans. The top of French society graduates from the elite prepartory institutions into positions of command and control over French society. They do not emigrate.
Very intelligent and bright French people, especially those who find their "wind" later in life, do indeed emigrate. But even brighter and more accomplished French people are left behind, already in command of society. The French elite does not emigrate. The frustrated sub-elite sometimes do.
Explain to me why the government has to go to Africa to recruit doctors?
French education is tiered.
If you just compare the top institutions, the grandes ecoles, France is very, very strong.
But university in France, where MOST people go after the baccalaureat, has been open admission and a universal right since the 1968 student revolution. Those reforms popularized and diminished the general higher education system.
If in America one adds in all of the community colleges and state colleges, and weights American higher education by the NUMBERS coming from various schools rather than the particular prestige of the pinnacle American institutions such as Harvard, one has the same variegated patchwork as in France.
All levels of higher education are not created equal.
The French government doesn't "have" to go to Africa to recruit doctors.
It wants to.
You could reasonably retitle that old photo:
"Legal American Citizens Express Dimay That A French Politician
Can Act Saner Than Their Own President and Senate"
The Republicans should have pushed the Democrats to adopt the immigration
policy that Canada took towards immigrants fleeing the return of Hong Kong
to Communist China:
(IIRC) They had to deposit $150,000 each in a Canadian bank before thei
application would be considered.
The Ukrainians initially welcomed Hitler with open arms. They were being exterminated by Stalin's planned famines and purges. If the Germans had treated them well, the Ukrainians would have joined the Wehrmaht en-mass
Two questions:
There are times when I wonder if that's why the public school system in this country has become so bad (which is why I homeschool). Namely, that there is a limit to how much of an educational boost one can give elite children, but you can always limit the competition by ensuring that non-elite children can't get a good enough education to be competitive
Your Question 1. What is the probability that a child born to a baker, but with a 160+ IQ, will successfully make it through the hoops he must jump through in order to make it into one of the grandes ecoles
Answer: He will almost certainly make it into a grande ecole. There are not many hoops. The first is the baccalaurat. Think of this as the SAT. The baccalaureat is a comprehensive national exam taken at the end of the high school. Status does not matter here. What matters is how one does in maths and French. Just like the SAT, only much longer and harder.
Anybody with an IQ of 160 will do well on the baccalaureat, and based upon those grades will be eligible for admission into a preparatory course for the grandes ecoles. Coming out of the cours preparatoire, there is another examination, the competitive exam to be admitted to a particular grande ecole. The top students, based on grades on the concours, are admitted. If there are 100 seats, and you are #89, you are admitted. If you are #103, you are not. It is a very mandarin system. There is none of the politics of the American Ivy League "admissions boards". And there is certainly no block to check for "race" on the concours!
Now, as to your Question 2: What is the probability that a child with a 120 IQ, but who is the son of a prominent government official, will NOT make it into one of the grandes ecoles.
It will depend on his performance on the concours. There are many grandes ecoles. The probability that he will not get into ENA is probably 100%. The probability that he won't get into Alfort (the veterinary school near Paris) is probably also 100% if he has not studied biology, chemistry and physics and done well on the concours.
He can probably get into Sciences Politiques ("Sciences Po"), because that is not perforce by concours. Of course it is also not as prestigious as some of the others.
If he does well on his maths, he can probably make it into the Ecole Navale, but he will probably not go, as military careers (like veterinary careers) tend to follow family lines, not due to inside influence by family members, but because of childhood exposure and interest. Even in America a high proportion of veterinarians are the children of veterinarians, and a substantial portion of West Pointers have fathers who went to West Point. There are niches in any society that are largely unnoticed by most people, but which are keenly interesting to those people who are somehow exposed to them.
The admissions processes to schools, except ENA of course, are very mechanical. Where you stand on the exam determines whether you have the right to go or not.
Nobody gets into ENA because of his connections. He or she must do exceptionally well on the concours, already have come from a grande ecole. THEN connections can help. But that is ENA.
Family matters in France because of the availability of enrichment in education, because of the discipline that successful parents give to their children, because of example and expectations. Of course where one lives matters as well. Clearly if one attends school in the XVIe Arrondissement of Paris, the school teachers there have competed for those very desireable posts, so they are likely to be very good. Also, the other students in the class are likely to all be from parents of a high status in society. The school teachers in Bondy are not bad, but the students are turbulent, and this does not make for a great atmosphere, especially if family is not pistoning the student to perform.
The French system of educational selection has fewer points of discretionary interference than the US, so it is unlikely that a low-talented and turbulent child of a high status man will go to a grande ecole: he is unlikely to do well on the unavoidable examinations.
US universities are private, so there are always the "legacy" seats reserved for men like George W. Bush when he attended Yale. Schools in America seek private contributions for their endowments, and therefore have a clear motivation, and need, and policy, of placing the sons and daughters of previous graduates and powerful and successful men.
The Grandes Ecoles are public schools. They have no endowment. There is no such thing as a "Legacy seat". They do not fundraise and there are not "alumni associations" in the American sense. They do not have sports teams and homecomings and class reunions.
The two systems are simply not comparable. If you have real intellectual capacity and come from poverty, all you have to do to go to a grande ecole in France is be one of the best scorers in the country on the concours for the schools to which you wish to go. There is no racial preferentialism or "legacy seat" problem to get in your way.
The French system is, in one sense, much "fairer" than the American system. Anyone with talent can rise in it. On the other hand, it creates a sense of arrogant intellectual superiority in the nation's elites which is difficult to combat. They ARE the most intelligent and accomplished scholars in France, and they and everyone else knows it. Does this make them good leaders?
Well, consider this: Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin are ENArques.
General Charles de Gaulle was not.
Leadership is not made through technocracy, but through something else. Unfortuately there is no good way to test for that ineffable quality...perhaps handwriting analysis?
Right..sarcasm off.Had a bit of a difficult time with that answer maybe? Lame.
It is very very strong with the watered down brain pool of the interbreeding of the same old elitists and their family members.
France is not a true republic. They are once again trying to create a two class system. She is kidding herself to think that by importing the middle class and sending the bright French middle class packing to avoid competition that she will survive without another revolution or becoming a known socialist state.
There is no "French dream" for someone who is bright and works hard who does not have the right "connection". It is still a sad, sad little country.
What are you talking about?
There is not a doctor shortage in France.
"It is still a sad, sad little country."
Then don't pay attention to it or worry about it, if it makes you sad.
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