It's all Geological Man!!!

Fire of Liberty

Check out John Derbyshire's take on the events going down in the suburbs of Paris. It's quite an interesting piece, here's a peek:

Major social disorder can arise from seismic movements in any one of these four geological strata: human nature, religion, race, foreignness. More than one might be implicated. In these recent French riots, I think all four have been.

The moral of this story is that maintaining a peaceful, harmonious social order isn't easy even under optimal conditions. To introduce extra causes of disorder into your society by importing great masses of foreigners of different races, speaking different languages, and practicing different religions, is foolish. Under some special historical circumstances, you might pull it off, but the odds are long against you. That it will result in your having a better society is not very probable. That it will end with insurrections like the one we have been seeing in France, is quite probable. That any of this needs saying is a measure of how far postindustrial man has drifted from the simplest, most obvious of truths about human nature and human society.

Only John Derbyshire can hack through the jungle that the press has created throughout the burning of the suburbs of Paris and come to such a clear conclusion about what's wrong in the French capital.