Wednesday, June 11, 2003
THE DEATH OF FRANCE?
Via Instapundit, here's a symposium in David Horowitz's Front Page magazine among various French non-left luminraries (presumably all of them, since there are six) about the pathetic state of French society these days. Here are some choice quotes:
Toni Kamins: For decades Muslims from France’s former colonies have settled in France proper. But the French, who are loathe to accept anyone or anything non-French, have not made them welcome -- they don’t want them there. And to drive that point across they have relegated them to living in what are known as the banlieue or suburbs. These are government housing projects soulless places where the residents have little if any contact with the rest of French society except for a mind-numbing bureaucracy. Unemployment is high, education is an afterthought, access to mainstream French society is nearly impossible, and being arrested for suspicion of this or that is common. The disdain and contempt in which these people are held is palpable, and as comes as no surprise to anyone except the French, crime, drugs, and other social problems are rampant.
Guy Milliere: France behaves more and more as if she does not belong to the West anymore and as though she is the leader of the third world. Doing this, France has nothing to win, maybe just second-rate contracts and an ephemeral popularity among all the frustrated in the world. France will win only one thing, and for a short time, peace inside France: it will avoid riots among Muslims living in France now. If many Muslims did not integrate in France, it’s because a long time ago the government has chosen subsidies and welfare instead of jobs, and lawlessness instead of order. Now comes the time to pay the price: France has many unemployed Muslims, many lawless zones where people live off of many illicit tradings and make there in one day what they could make legally in one month.
Alain Madelin: France is a welfare state where it’s easy to earn more money asking for assistance than looking for a job. In many families, and now many Muslim families, assistance has become a way of life. If you spend your days doing nothing, you can start to have temptations. If you see drug dealers driving around in fancy cars, your temptations take shape. ... In schools, leftist teachers teach young Muslims that France colonized their countries and that the French army committed atrocities. The result: many young Muslims hate France. It’s not their fault it’s the fault of French education. ... For years, France has permitted to countries like Saudi Arabia to build many mosques and to send many radical imams to preach in these mosques. The result is a new generation of young radical Muslims.
Yves Roucate: France is a very sick nation. Sometimes I think that it’s only if France pays the full price for its positions that some real change will come. It’s not really the fault of the French people; they receive very bad information and almost all the books they can find in bookstores are anti-American. It’s the fault of the politicians who have no courage and explain nothing. It’s the fault of journalists who prefer Islam to America because the majority of them have been leftists in the sixties when they were young. They have not changed, they are just older.
Jean-Francoise Revel: France is the prey of an anti-American obsession. For the French, Americans are the enemy they have to hate in every circumstance. They have to hate Americans because Americans are successful, because Americans are powerful, because the French prefer resentment to achievement. They are so obsessed by their hatred of the United States they do not see anymore the real dangers confronting France. It’s a very dangerous situation. I do not know how we could go out of this situation. I honestly don’t know if it is even still possible.
What I find immensely ironic is the fact that the situation of the Muslims in France -- a chronically unemployed welfare class that is physically and socially segregated and despised by the native French population -- is precisely what the left -- in France and elsewhere -- describes America's ethnic minorities to be. And this isn't a picture just painted by critics from the non-left; I heard a lengthy report on NPR within the last couple of months that described exactly the same situation. Pathetic.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:36 PM
