Monday, November 07, 2005

As Paris Burns

Denise and I have been paying a lot of attention to the nightly riots in Paris, which have recently spread throughout France. We traveled in France in 1999 and transited the banlieus on the way into Paris from Charles De Gaulle airport. They are comprised of block after uniform block of high-rise Socialist apartment buildings. Small wonder that people living there are completely alienated from French society. They then often turn to radical Islam to find some meaning to their subsidized existences.

If you haven’t already, please read this excellent article by Theodore Dalrymple, The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris. The French have done a lot to create this problem and I find it rather hard not to partake in a little schadenfreude.

I also can’t help wondering that if the French had firearms rights, like we have here in New Hampshire, that these riots might have been nipped in the bud. Somehow we don’t seem to have all that many riots in New Hampshire, Texas and other areas that believe in a strong Second Amendment.

But before we get too smug about the situation the French find themselves in, it might behoove us to realize that we are well along the path that the French have trod for us. Many in this country bow down to the twin gods of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness and if we are not careful, we could be in the same boat as the French. Massachusetts is more than half way there already and there are many among us who think that the French way is an example we should emulate.

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