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Last year, when that was happening, what PROVOKED it was the death of three children. The police chased them, or they thought the police were chasing them (the police are not honest about these things), they hid in an electrical shed, and they died horribly. The slums exploded in anger. Why were the children that afraid of the police? It's a legitimate question. Because the police are brutal, especially to minorities. So, the explosion, although excessive, was not over nothing. The deaths of three children after a police chase is something.

The burning of cars, the property destruction, this was all very bad. But the rioters were not committing murder. They were acting like French union thugs, or farmers, or regular French students in massive protests: property damage and fights. I was relieved, as were many that the protests and riots were so French. These were not trains exploding, as in Muslim mayhem in Britain and Spain. And the youths had a point. They were wrong to do as they did, but they ARE excluded from society, they can't get jobs, and the police DO treat them like shit. Three children died because of fear of the police. So, there was an accounting, a reckoning, a realization that France did need to face this and change.

I have ignored the frenetic American assertions about jihad in France. That is not what happened, and it's not what's happening now either. There are LEGITIMATE grievances among the immigrants in the banlieux. They were illegitimately expressed, and the government needed to control the situation, but there was Sarkozy being hyper and overly aggressive, and Villepin undercutting him, and Chirac sort of lost in a haze, as though he had had a stroke. That was when Sarkozy started speaking about Affirmative Action, just like Royal and the Socialists. It's a betrayal of the ideals of the Republic and wrong, so I haven't liked Sarkozy since then much, because his performance in the riots and before was erratic and strange - provocatively aggressive, inflaming the situation worse, then running away and calling for Affirmative Action. Blame was thick everywhere. But things settled down, and there was a realization by the government that things had to change, although what, precisely, was not agreed upon in a government so violently divided between Villepin and Sarkozy.

So, that was my view of back then.

In the elections, these events figured prominently in my thinking. Bayrou is right that France does not need the bad, horrible American quick-fix of Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action has been noxious enough in America. In France, it betrays the very ideals of the Republic. Sarkozy and the UMP are power-mad, like most French leaders. Bayrou alone talks about limiting government and regulation. Bayrou's right, and I support his ideas. They're best.

Now enter what happened at the Gare du Nord. Here, it was not ambiguous. There were no dead children from fear of the police. Here, a voyou hops over the turnstile, is called on it, goes after the police, they control him, and a bunch of bandits standing around go nuts and start a riot. Certainly that was part of - a lot of - what happened before, but before there were LEGITIMATE grievances, and fury at deaths. Here, there was NOTHING legitimate, not even a thread of it. There was blind fury, hatred, crime and property destruction. There was no "We are excluded" (which is true), or "the police are so brutal to us our children are afraid" (which is true).
Here, there was no exclusion and no brutality.
A guy wanted to steal a ride, got caught, and the banditti standing around staged a riot. There was no principle here at all, not even a fig-leaf. This wasn't even about Islam. It is about bold, brazen, tough criminals asserting that they don't have to follow ANY rules or laws, can beat up the cops, destroy whatever they want, whenever they want. There is a PURITY in this explosion at the Gare du Nord that there was not in last year's riots.

Then, there were many factions and a whole set of legitimate, and illegitimate, social issues were at the fore. But here, it is purely the criminal class assaulting the very IDEA of police, and wrecking everybody's private property in the area too, just for the hell of it, just to assert their power to commit crime with impunity.

That naked assertion of supremacy over the rule of law by the fist of the bandit is a different thing. It's a distilled, pure moment of what is wrong with the French policing and justice system, and it reveals an issue SO important that if affects everything else. Separate out these banditti from last years' riots, and how bad would the riots have really been? I don't know. I don't know to what extent there were Muslims (as such), laborers, frustrated workers, angry parents, and bandits all out there committing excesses. But I more strongly suspect than before that just the bandit element ALONE contributed the largest share of the problems, like the football hooligans from the UK who spoil football matches for everyone.

That people are unsafe from street crime is already well known, but it's difficult to sort out strands, to know how much is driven by race, by exclusion. In the Gare du Nord, it was very easy. Race was not involved. Exclusion had nothing to do with it. The bandits decided to show the cops who is boss. Well, in France, the law has to be the boss. The criminal class has been able to secrete itself behind other social movements, but they were out in the open at the Gare du Nord - nothing racial, nothing Islamic, nothing but pure arrogant criminal force on display.

And then came Royal, traipsing about how this is about social exclusion. No. No it isn't. Last year was about social exclusion, but how MUCH even of last year, was just these banditti going wild?

Crime has to be brought under control, swiftly. The Gare du Nord was a pure moment of criminals, not even organized as a single gang, suddenly asserting their power to confront the police. That cannot be allowed to be.

Crime is the issue, control that, and we will have a better sense of how much of what happened last year really had anything to do with economics or with Islam or race or anything else. It may be that more of France's problems than we suspect stem from the singular weakness on crime, that has allowed it to metastatize and invade every other facet of life, including political life.

That is what I think. I think that the crime problem itself shows a palsied hand and a weakness at the core of government, an unwillingness to stand for the rule of law and use whatever force is necessary to establish order. I think that if we do that, the other problems will appear in greater and more realistic relief. I don't think that giving Affirmative Action to bandits will solve a damned thing, and I don't think it's about Islam. I think it is about toughs thinking they're above the law, and being RIGHT, because they have been. I think they have to be beaten into submission and taught that in France, the state is supreme, and the individual has no right to resort to crime and property damage and defiance of the law, and that if he DOES, as these bastards so contemptuously did, that the full force of the authorities will beat him into submission and force him to obey, or lock him in a cage, or, if he still will not submit to the law, kill him, as an example to the others.

The challenge to authority is too proud. It must stop. These are young men who don't have to obey the law because they have opted out of it. You or I cannot do it, but they DO, in the open. They need to be beaten down and forced to submit to the state like everybody else does. I pay my taxes or go to prison, they need to be forced to pay their fares or be beaten lame in prison. The state needs to assert its command over the French people INCLUDES young men who right now are openly defying the authorities. The authorities have to beat them into submission, swiftly, and stop the property crime. Nobody can be allowed to be above the law, openly like this. It encourages others to think that they, too, have the option to not obey. Everybody must obey the law. Those who don't, need to be made to or removed from society.

Sarkozy will do this, I think.
Bayrou will shy away from it, I think. He believes that the issues are economic. They are, to an extent. But it is past that. This is defiance of the state. Defiance of the state is totally intolerable to me. The state is the people. It is a democracy. Laws have been duly passed. They should be enforced, on everyone. Whoever refuses to obey should have force applied to him until he is forced to obey, or he dies. Period. Defiance of the state should always end in submission or death of the defiant, every time. The law is supreme, and nobody can ever be allowed to defy it, or the authorities, the way they did at the Gare du Nord. Racial unrest provoked by police brutality is a separate case. That was part of last year. This was pure defiance of the state and of the law. Defy the state, and you should be beaten to submission or to death.

Sarkozy will probably do it. Le Pen will do it. One or the other must be the next President. We cannot have any more of this pure open defiance of the authorities and of the law.

That is what is inside my head. Gare du Nord was crystal clear and unambiguous. It highlights a problem: defiance. Defiance must be broken by power.