Refusing to join the French Club

Fire of Liberty
National Review's Senior editor Richard Brookhiser has a good column over in the November 14th edition of the New York Observer on the current problems that plagues the North African immigrant communities that are currently in chaos in France. While their are plenty problems ranging from a scoleric socialist economy, enormous entitlement programs that suck-up some 50% of France's GDP, Brookhiser makes the biggest points which is the failure of the French government to create a functional assimilation policy and the subsequent failure of these immigrants to willingly assimilate. Just take a look:

France'’s Arabs must be equally perplexed. One of them reportedly expressed the hope, as poignant as it is impossible, that his community should just be "“left alone."” If they wanted to be left alone, then they could have stayed in Morocco, or wherever they or their parents came from. They didn'’t, because those places were poor. To be left alone now that they are in France means being left permanently outside the mainstream of French life. When they are employed, they can do grunt work; when they'’re not, they can lie in the safety net. A few lucky individuals may become soccer stars or super models; others will pursue local politics, the traditional permanent career of outsiders.

For the rest, being left alone will mean sitting in self-made Bantustans. Their street address may be in Clichy-sous-Bois, but their mental address will still be the North African village, or slum; except that it will be a village or slum surrounded by the inducements and frustrations — drugs, girls, advertising — —of postmodern Western life. Bright lights, no city. Living in a hut, outside the candy store. Segregationist policies didn'’t work in South Africa, when the rulers imposed them on the ruled; they won'’t work in France, even if the ruled impose them on themselves.

I guess this is what happens when a society decides to promote the politically correct notion of "multiculturalism" and "identity politics" that decides it's best to let folks go their own way within the country our various communities instead of encouraging them to assimilate. If France would embrace something similar to our own "melting-pot" that respects one's cultural heritage but puts a greater emphasis on being an American rather than some hyphenated identity. So it's time they start becoming Frenchman or the French will become a minority in their own nation as these un-assimilated immigrants slowly tranform ancient Gaul into an new Eurabian nation.

Also check out this piece by Melana Zyla Vickers and this one by Nidra Poller on the events in France.