While Paris Burns
Jason Kuznicki on Nov 4th 2005 09:54 am |
I’ve become increasingly angry at American conservatives lately. I have two reasons for this, both having to do with foreign policy.
First, the minor gripe. I can’t help but notice the schadenfreude in the blogosphere as France suffers a wave of Islamist-inspired riots.
It’s almost as if… they’re rooting for the other side. Better that the Islamofascists win, than see the French continue to exist. Revolting.
And remarkably ignorant: Although France notoriously refused to help in our Iraqi adventure, its domestic policies have been firmly aimed at pressuring Muslims to assimilate, exactly the sort of thing that clash-of-cultures conservatives should like to see: Muslim symbols are forbidden in government buildings, including schools; the Mosques and their leadership were recently brought under state supervision; Islamic rites and charities are scrutinized far more closely there than they are here.
Nicholas Sarkozy — heck, how many Americans even knew who he was a few days ago — Nicholas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, has taken a get-tough, zero-tolerance approach to the thugs, as well he should. While I may mock zero tolerance as regards drugs or alcohol, zero tolerance for rioting is quite another matter: In a less euphemistic era, we might have called it “civilization.” The government of France, like it or not, is on our side here, even with its many and serious faults.
And now for the major complaint. Fiddling while Paris burns makes about as much sense as, well, dismantling the Iraqi army in the early months of the occupation, or going in with only a fraction of the strength we needed… or holding prisoners secretly in former communist gulags.
It hardly matters whether the prisoners are receiving proper treatment there, although I don’t imagine that they are, given how openly the administration has lobbied in favor of torture. The symbolism alone of using Soviet-era prisons is something we should be smart enough — and decent enough — to avoid. As Hilzoy writes, what’s next — opening a secret “work camp” near Dachau?
And the reaction on the right? Outrage, of course — at the Washington Post, for revealing classified information. How un-American of them.
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“France suffers a wave of Islamist-inspired riots.”
Interesting.
The mueslims are the one who calmed the first riots down, religious authorities calling them to stop.
And it’s not France but some suburbs of Paris only. Otherwise I think I would not be at work today.
I couldn’t agree more. When government-sanctioned torture is carried out and the most today’s conservatives can generate is a yawn, they’ve lost their way. I have no respect for them and refuse to vote for any candidate who can’t see how irresponsible and reprehensible such a policy is for America.
I’d rather prosecute this war too vigorously then then treat it as a law & order issue, which are the choices that the major two parties are giving us. I’m hoping to vote for McCain this next election, then I can rest easier, knowing he will keep a hard line against prisoner abuse but will still do what it takes to win this war. These secret camps and use of torture, while troubling, are not as troubling as the reality of men & women abusing our openness and our system of rights to make plans to blow us, and themselves, up. To fight against such sneakiness we need to use some of our own. If these folks want Geneva convention protection, then they should start acting like a regular army.
Jason–
I’m not quite sure I follow what you mean when you suggest that America is “fiddling while Paris burns.” Are you suggesting that the U.S. military help put down the rioters?
Isn’t the schadenfreude justified? After all, “Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: “the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs.” President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the “conservative society” that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it “is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world.”
Further it seems to me that one of the reasons the French opposed us in Iraq (besides their corrupt business practices) was to placate their Muslim population, they thought they were buying some good will. It’s laughable their whole approach to assimilation and Islam, they are reaping what they sowed.
These are race riots. The Muslim North Africans have not been assimilated because they are physically different looking and have different names – readily identifiable on job applications as “not us”. And they are stuck in multigenerational poverty, in poor-quality schools, so it is harder for them to rise out of poverty than for “French-origin” French. I don’t think religion is the single major issue here, though it is a very handy cultural signifier. Economics is highly important.
Several observations.
Neuro: Rioting had spread to several major cities as of this morning. And while mainstream religious authorities have called for calm, it’s naive to think that Islam is uninvolved.
Scof (I): I’m coming around to support for McCain myself, despite his obnoxious and unconstitutional campaign finance reform. As to the Geneva Conventions, you are right — but even in their absence, the government has no constitutional power to inflict punishments without a trial, which is what detainment and torture amount to.
Mike: I’m not suggesting military intervention, of course not. I am suggesting, though, that the right-wingers stop cheering while Islamofascists attack a western liberal democracy.
Scof (II): I’ve seen on another forum the very same claim that France is reaping what it sowed — but in reverse. By being too strict with its Muslim minority, they have brought on a backlash. I’m not quite sold on either one.
As to whether anyone should be happy about any riots at all, the answer, I should think, is no. I mean, did the storekeepers and car owners in suburban Paris actually write the editorials you mention? And even if they did, would that justify violence against them?
Finally, I do have just one thing to say about the question of class and welfare in the French case. I suspect, though I have nothing to back it up, that the degree of social welfare in a country influences strongly the type of immigrant that tends to arrive there. Few, for instance, come to the United States out of a congenital laziness or a desire to live off our lavish social safety net. They come here to work their asses off. I don’t think the same can be said of France.
No you are right about that, was looking at it all as a justification for the theory I believe, but the actuality of the destruction is more important to notice.
This entire blog’s authors and commentators appear resistant to another obvious and startling reason justifying apparent Schadenfreude.
The world resurgence of traditional Islamic imperialism and its agents of destruction should be expected if one understands that a GWOT is but one strategy to deal with the problem. If instead one insists in a naive hunky dory multiculturalism, that flies in the face of the fact that hundreds of millions deny universal human rights, and that the best organized among this group to act on achieving this denial in principle and en mass are Islamists – and therefore believe an ostrich-like denial of the problem is your friend… then aren’t suffering consequences of one’s (often self-righteous) ignorance truly appropriate? It is, and thus the gloating by the worrying sorts is just.
On the other hand, one could be a Bush opponent, an Iraq war opponent, and yet still fully and sensibly engaged in thinking through the primary security problems of our age: what if Islamists get nukes? What if Islamist fifth-columns infiltrate our society and undermine it from within? See this recent warning from October in France.
Neither the Kery campaign nor the powers-that-be in Euroland have manfully engaged either of these obvious questions. Bat Y’eor prophesied these “riots” in her book “Eurabia.” Dhimmitude has the price of subjugation and betraying one’s funadamental values.
Yet another good reason for schadenfreude is the fact that after the fall of communism, yet another favorite “model” of the anti-capitalist left has suffered collapse. Most of my Chomskyite friends, like Jeremy Rifkin, have idealized Euroland, especially France, insisting that this is the way for the US. But these events rudely necessitate rethinking their fanstasies in at least two ways, both rooted in escaping from the facts of reality. Shouldn’t such reality testing be welcomed by all who are partisans of enlightenment and progress?
In all events, this has nothing whatever to do with Jason’s rediculous claim that conservatives are rooting for the triumph of Islamism! No one I know is happy about the violence. What is sensible is the finding of a just target for it – ie, those most obnoxiously prostrate in denial. The point is to awaken those in the slumber of their rationally constructed “reason” from those who ought to care about these questions but manifestly do not. In short, to slap the denial out of former standard bearers of western civilization; they cut their nose (the aggressive US) off to spite their face (French hubris), and now must pay the long-term, continuing price of it – just as the US has already committed itself to doing.
When a people or a nation has demonstrable foresight and acts on it it, should anyone be surprised that pleasure ensues when the gamibt is shown to be prescient? No. Therefore, I must simply call our blog hosts reactionary, censorial, and shortsighted. (But not alone)
But finally, the root of the problem has been the failure of American politics to engage honestly in a debate about who our enemy today really is. Instead we got fantasies about Haliburton, “Bush lied,” wild charges of election-stealing, and pervasive Bush conspiracy mongering. Paranoid non-sense has prevailed, substituting for serious debate, long after the painful disorienting sting of 9/11 wore off. (One explanation for their unseriousness.)
As an ex-Democrat, I’m certainly ashamed. As a thinking American, I’m angry. And as a libertarian, I’m disappointed: I expect more from us.
This entire blog’s authors and commentators appear resistant to another obvious and startling reason justifying apparent Schadenfreude.
The world resurgence of traditional Islamic imperialism and its agents of destruction should be expected if one understands that a GWOT is but one strategy to deal with the problem. If instead one insists in a naive hunky dory multiculturalism, that flies in the face of the fact that hundreds of millions deny universal human rights, and that the best organized among this group to act on achieving this denial in principle and en mass are Islamists – and therefore believe an ostrich-like denial of the problem is your friend… then aren’t suffering consequences of one’s (often self-righteous) ignorance truly appropriate? It is, and thus the gloating by the worrying sorts is just.
On the other hand, one could be a Bush opponent, an Iraq war opponent, and yet still fully and sensibly engaged in thinking through the primary security problems of our age: what if Islamists get nukes? What if Islamist fifth-columns infiltrate our society and undermine it from within? See this recent warning from October in France.
Neither the Kery campaign nor the powers-that-be in Euroland have manfully engaged either of these obvious questions. Bat Y’eor prophesied these “riots” in her book “Eurabia.” Dhimmitude has the price of subjugation and betraying one’s funadamental values.
Yet another good reason for schadenfreude is the fact that after the fall of communism, yet another favorite “model” of the anti-capitalist left has suffered collapse. Most of my Chomskyite friends, like Jeremy Rifkin, have idealized Euroland, especially France, insisting that this is the way for the US. But these events rudely necessitate rethinking their fanstasies in at least two ways, both rooted in escaping from the facts of reality. Shouldn’t such reality testing be welcomed by all who are partisans of enlightenment and progress?
In all events, this has nothing whatever to do with Jason’s rediculous claim that conservatives are rooting for the triumph of Islamism! No one I know is happy about the violence. What is sensible is the finding of a just target for it – ie, those most obnoxiously prostrate in denial. The point is to awaken those in the slumber of their rationally constructed “reason” from those who ought to care about these questions but manifestly do not. In short, to slap the denial out of former standard bearers of western civilization; they cut their nose (the aggressive US) off to spite their face (French hubris), and now must pay the long-term, continuing price of it – just as the US has already committed itself to doing.
When a people or a nation has demonstrable foresight and acts on it it, should anyone be surprised that pleasure ensues when the gamibt is shown to be prescient? No. Therefore, I must simply call our blog hosts reactionary, censorial, and shortsighted. (But not alone)
But finally, the root of the problem has been the failure of American politics to engage honestly in a debate about who our enemy today really is. Instead we got fantasies about Haliburton, “Bush lied,” wild charges of election-stealing, and pervasive Bush conspiracy mongering. Paranoid non-sense has prevailed, substituting for serious debate, long after the painful disorienting sting of 9/11 wore off. (Here’s one explanation for their unseriousness.)
As an ex-Democrat, I’m certainly ashamed. As a thinking American, I’m angry. And as a libertarian, I’m disappointed: I expect more from us.
I’m really not sure what to make of the above two comments.
First you should know that when I post to this site, I speak for myself alone unless otherwise noted. Address your comments to me, not to the other authors.
Second, I fail to see how I subscribe to a “naive, hunky dory multiculturalism.” I was quite clear in stating my belief that these riots are inspired by radical Islam, and that the only proper response is to punish those responsible, not to negotiate with them. This is a position that puts me at odds with many in the liberal blogosphere and quite firmly in the conservative camp, so much so that I’ve been wondering whether the evidence really warrants my initial judgment.
But, if you want me to be angrier, then you didn’t read me carefully enough. I’m furious. I’m furious that these thugs are destroying a city that I love profoundly. I’m also furious that some people seem to be smirking about it.
As to the following,
…I stand by my claim. Follow the links I gave you, and tell me if those authors weren’t practically peeing their pants from joy, just because France is burning. They may conveniently forget, perhaps, that the Islamic terrorists are the winners in all of this, but that doesn’t exonerate them.
Lastly, as to the insinuation contained in the following paragraphs,
…do you find any of the authors here guilty of any of this? I think Bush has been terribly incompetent, and I suspect that the others feel the same way. I opposed the war in Iraq, but not the global struggle against Islamic militancy. Sandefur in particular has supported the war quite strongly. The charges you refer to, though standards of the liberal blogosphere, have pretty much never appeared on this blog.
So I really have to ask what you mean by all of this.
[...] Are the riots in France the result of Islamist extremism? The question has lately become a hot one in the always-active Positive Liberty comment sections. At first I took for granted that this must be the case, but as the days have gone on, I’m not so convinced. The evidence just isn’t there, at least not that I’ve seen, and I’ve been reading the French sources on the question as well as the English. [...]