As you well know, the definition of poverty is never wanting to accumulate anything more than you need - it's in the Beatitudes in today's Gospel. Equally as important is the fact that we are taught that one must work for what one needs and to go without what we can't afford or what we don't need. Gold chains, cell phones, pants worn below the waist, free health care, stealing from parking meters - what the hell do these thugs want from the rest of us who work our butts off to get the things we need. Architecture indeed. You could put them in a villa on the Riveria and because they possess the morals and ethical values of a pack rats, their behavior would not change.
This is one of the most interesting thing about internet discourse--its utter futility.
So many things that are so obvious to me seem utterly hidden to others reading the same text. I guess this is the true fruit of "multiculturalism". That we no longer speak the same language although the letters, words and sometimes even the syntax are the same. We no longer respond to the same metaphors or recongnise the same concepts underlying our assumptions. EVERYTHING has to be negotiated or explained in precise detail. And even then we never seem to reach a common understanding.
There never has been, on earth, a civilization like the one that Europe created. In 1914 they stood at what appeared to be the apex of human achievment. Instead it was a precipice. A precipice that the "elite" of that glorious civilization embraced.
Why did they do that? Why are the American "elite" embracing a similar fall down the precipice for our culture--not as "brilliant" as Europena culture once was, but filled with incredible decencies? Why?
How can you not see, Orual, that IS the topic at hand? That is Darlymple's life work in his writing--the melancholoy chronicle of the destruction that Western Elites have wrought upon the civilization that bred them.
The thugs and misfits in French progressive housing complexes have been GIVEN PERMISSION by FRENCH ELITES to defecate upon La Belle France!! Just as the thugs and misfits in our country have been given permission. Remember Radical Chic-- the essay by Tom Wolf chronicling he embrace by rich white people of the Black Panthers? Who do you see wetting their panties as they gush about the wonderful uplifting work done by the Nation of Islam on NPR? Rich white women, of course.
You want to stick to THE TOPIC AT HAND? You woundn't recognise THE TOPIC AT HAND if it fired at you from its bushmaster as it crouched in the nearby woods.
Just keep serpentining and hoping for 3% tax break.....
Is that really the issue? Why would you expect Islamic immigrants imported mainly for the purpose of servile labor, to feel any responsibility toward what is to them a foreign culture? Does Islamic culture have a history of encouraging the idea of individual responsibility? How is it that the architects of France's immigration policies failed to address those issues?