Charles Krauthammer on France
Hat tip to
Maggie's Farm for this link to an essay by Charles Krauthammer on the present 'troubles' in France.
The essay appears on
Time's website:
What the Uprising Generation Wants
France's underclass is tired of being shut out. And time is on their side
The gendarmes have weapons. The kids they face in the street have mostly stones and Molotov cocktails. It is a mismatch. But it's the cops who are the heavy underdogs--the cops and the France that the cops alone represent in those burning godforsaken ghettos where most Frenchmen dare not go.
On the one side are the protester-arsonists, many if not most of them Muslim, whom the Interior Minister called racaille (rabble)--young, restless, violent, vibrant, angry, jobless, envious and fecund. And on the other side is an aged and exhausted civilization, the hollowed-out core of European Christendom, static, aging, contented, coddled, passive and literally without faith. Who would you think will win in the end?
If you needed a snapshot of the balance of forces in this civilizational struggle taking place in France, consider only the incomprehension and inertness of the official French response. The President didn't say a word for 10 days. The state of emergency wasn't declared until Day 13. Meanwhile, the Interior Minister and Prime Minister offered dueling slogans and empty promises, with an eye more on their upcoming presidential contest than on the fire this time.
And the money quote:
As the French seem to learn every 70 years, appeasement does not work. It merely whets the appetite. And the angry alien young were already hungry.
The whole essay is quite good -- go and read it if you have a few minutes to spare.
Posted by DaveH at November 16, 2005 7:46 PM