Are we seeing an intifada in France? I don’t know; I hope not. But what’s happening is very scary. The government is failing to meet its first responsibility, to maintain order. …
Affordable Housing Institute (via Barone, via Instapundit):
France’s entire urban housing policy has failed, massively failed. The riots are proof. … In a world of scooters, cell-phones, and satellite television, no longer can poverty be isolated in high-rise blocks. … This is not yet a political or organized assault on French society … but it could rapidly become one.
We live in a multi-cultural and multi-faith world. This makes it imperative that the international media cover the ongoing riots in France in an open and frank manner. The stifling barriers of political correctness can not be an excuse to avoid discussing the ghettoized culture of insularity that contributed to the riots.
RTWT, all 3.
Update: OK, make it four:
The riots in Paris are exposing the very soft underbelly of Europe. Economic malaise, government failure, and an emasculated response to violence have all played a part in the rampages and destruction of property. …
RTWT. (I especially like the “Anglo-Saxon v. Social Humanist” unemployment comparison. It is long past time that we touted the glories of the Anglosphere Social Model.)
Update II: Oh, OK, five:
There is no Western country more profoundly racist than France. … [E]very American who believes in racial equality and human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the effete bigots on the Seine.
Thanks Lex. Good in-depth reading.
I wasn’t at all surprised by what I read about the dehumanizing effects of high-rise warehousing of the poor. The police have known for many years they were bad, bad places. Baltimore, like Philly, recently demolished every single one of their 1950’s era low income high-rises, much to relief of everyone in the area.
I actually find large buildings in general to be dehumanizing. Washington DC is a much more human city for its’ building height restrictions than similar sized cities. It’s a city where it’s a joy to just stroll around. Annapolis, Savannah, Charleston and San Diego are similar in that sense of human scale, of being able to breathe. Manhattan leaves me feeling dwarfed, overwhelmed. It’s beautiful in spots – mainly near the surprisingly well maintained parks – but seems to say each person passing within its’ canyons, “You are nothing as compared to this!”
The Chicago Housing Authority will receive a HOPE VI Revitalization grant in the amount of $35,000,000, which will enable the housing authority to revitalize approximately half of the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development, which originally contained 4,321 units. This plan includes the demolition of the final 1,103 units and the first phase of redevelopment on the site.
Link
Two sentences especially catch my attention. Michael Barone notes that this is a rebellion against the Rule of Law and in the Brussels Journal, George Adair refers to the emasculated response to violence.
We should recognize that the attack on the rule of law is not necessarily coming only from the rioters. As such it may be more correct to talk about an emasculated response to lawlessness. France has always been more of a populist democracy than one that holds tightly to the rule of law and this poor response to lawlessness has been going on for a very long time.
France is not the only place where the idea of non-violence as an end in itself is touted as the benchmark of a civilized society. We see evidence of this in the US to various degrees in different places. Unfortunately non-violence on its own is a poor proxy for law and order.
One of the ways to prevent violence is to avoid confronting lawlessness and the lawbreakers quickly figure this out. Not being concerned with non-violence themselves they learn to extract concessions by using the one thing the police (and politicians) fear most – violence.
Affordable Housing Institute backs up Ralfs point about architechture.
Lex,
the guys at Brussels Journal are dweebs:
Intifada Spreads to Brussels and Berlin, my ass.
A couple of cars, a total of eight in all of Berlin get burned, and he calls this intifadah.
Ralf, Brussels Journal is a group blog, and the one I linked to is good. So read it. It is actually more along the lines of your thinking.
You have to go by the blogger not the blog! You would not want someone to say, “those guys at ChicagoBoyz are a bunch of right-wing creeps who cannot write a decent English sentence”, just based on reading some of my stuff would you? That would be unfair. You want them to say, “Goergens, now, he is really on the ball — but that Lex guy, what the Hell is he smoking???”
Alright, I’ll take a look.
Btw, *what* exactly have you been smoking?
Best Headline: TOULOUSE LA WRECK (NY Post)
Best Wise Crack: De Villepin selected to head Vichy government in French Caliphate
Best Jibe: Israel proposes “Two State Solution” to French Intifada (Land for Peace)
Ralph Peters says: “E]very American who believes in racial equality and human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the effete bigots on the Seine.”
Calm down, Ralph Peters!
From what I’ve read about the underlying situation you’ve got to blame the rioters as well as the “effete bigots” (or EBs). I don’t feel the need to pick one dog in the fight; the whole thing is tragic and sad. The EBs may have sown the seeds with their policies, but the rioters are still thugs and misfits. What about personal responsibility? No one forces you to douse an old lady with gasoline and set her ablaze, or to torch kindergartens.
For an excellent article on the background to this situation, see Theodore Dalrymple’s article in the Autumn 2002 issue of City Journal magazine: “Barbarians at the Gates of Paris” (http://tinyurl.com/vnep).