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You could not fail to comprehend the underlying view of human beings that inspired the architect--and the society that embraced his aesthetic.

Nonsense. Le Corbusier was not a "totalitarian architect" and blaming the house one lives in for barbaric behavior is Psychobabble 101. Explain the criminals who live in Southampton mansions or on the beach at Malibu or in very nice, middle-class homes in the suburbs. Were their homes too nice for them so they turned to crime and evil behavior because of that? Or explain those who have the moral and ethical values to rise above their humble beginnings to attain status and position and become contributing, valuable citizens. It is not the house, that's just a convenient excuse invented by the "don't-blame-me" crowd.

The author points out that these immigrants are living 100 times better than they did in their own country. They are certainly not poor, at least by the standards of all previously existing societies: they are not hungry; they have cell phones, cars, and many other appurtenances of modernity; they are dressed fashionably—according to their own fashion—with a uniform disdain of bourgeois propriety and with gold chains round their necks. They believe they have rights, and they know they will receive medical treatment, however they behave. They enjoy a far higher standard of living (or consumption) than they would in the countries of their parents’ or grandparents’ origin, even if they labored there 14 hours a day to the maximum of their capacity.

One must assume that they want it all and they want it all without the responsibility of working for it. I lived in Africa for three years and am very familiar with the local housing there. If you look at the apartment house that I posted that Le Cobusier designed, trust me, that's a palace compared to what these immigrants lived in at home.

In Raphael's School of Athens Aristotle and Plato are discussing something. Plato is pointing to the heavens arguing, perhaps, for the sublime perfection of the ideal. Aristotle, on the other hand, is gesturing outwards as if to say that we CAN know truth and beauty by lookiing around us; that we can even penetrate to the very nature of things by the power of observation.

Here is Dalrymple's first paragraph again:

...Everyone knows la douce France: the France of wonderful food and wine, beautiful landscapes, splendid châteaux and cathedrals. More tourists (60 million a year) visit France than any country in the world by far....

Whether the francophobes around here like it or not---this is true. And what is the most immediately observabledifference between la belle France and that other France which he so brilliantly writes about in this article?

As somebody--I forget who--said: "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists." I believe "terrorists" have been waging war against human beings on many fronts long before Osama ever minced his way onto the world scene. And architecture is evidence of it...

blaming the house one lives in for barbaric behavior is Psychobabble 101...

You're absolutely right, but at the same time, I'm glad to see somebody point out that the Brave New World archictecture of Le Courbusier (and others) reflects certain attitudes towards society that I believe do have something to do with our contemporary problems.

Many of the architects of his time fancied themselves social theorists, and they were constructing their buildings for the "new man"(Socialist, Nazi, Communist or whatever) who had thrown aside the past and was going to live "rationally." Hence their contempt for any non-theorists who might have objected to their arrogant assumptions about human environments, theories that had to do with a lot more than architecture and design.

So now we have a Europe that has consciously thrown aside its past, rejects its own culture, and wonders why it's feeling a bit menaced by the not-quite-so-rational folks it's breeding in its concrete hatcheries.