Rusted Sky

on Radio Blogger.

Upshot? Not good.

HH: What is your assessment of the significance of what is underway, the Francefada, or the intifada in France as we speak?

VDH: Well, there's two messages. One, that we in America can see where an unassimilated un-integrated a population goes, and where that leads to, it leads to a sort of an apartheid. And two, we can see what happens with an EU that can't create real economic growth, and has high stagnant unemployment of 10%. And three, this is I think a little bit more controversial, that we can see what happens to a society that doesn't ask the immigrant to integrate, and the immigrant doesn't feel that he has to integrate, or to learn the language, or learn the traditions of the West. So you have this Orwellian situation when thousands of people are rioting, you want to say let me get this straight. You do not want to go back to the country, an hour or two away by air, that you praise in the abstract, but you surely want to stay in a country that you want to burn down to the concrete. It doesn't make any sense, other than this strong, psychological urges of envy, jealousy, wanting something you can't have. Then, besides all that landscape, you get the impression there's something very wrong in Europe that has high unemployement and generous joblessness benefits, so that it allows people not really to have to go look for a job, because there isn't any, but to stay home and sort of nurse these wounds, with enough money to survive.

HH: Now Victor Davis Hanson, you've studied ancient civilizations, you've studied modern civilizations. When radicalization occurs, and you start having this economic dislocation, and these sorts of riots, does this provide fertile ground for the Islamist to go in and proselytize, and recruit?

VDH: Absolutely. So what's going to happen if you have a hundred thousand of these youths, there's going to be a small cohort. Who knows how many? One, two, three percent. But given the aggregate number of protesters is so large, you may find a hundred or two hundred or three hundred that will want to take this one step further. And if you're already now shooting and burning cars, what's to stop you? You've crossed that barrier, so what's to stop you from blowing up somebody in a...and it'll all depend on the reaction of the French police and the French government. If they can put this down and show that there's zero tolerance for this, then they can reverse the course a little bit. If they appease it, and try to find so-called root causes, which are there, but nevertheless, during a riot, you don't want talk about them.

HH: What's interesting is Chirac and de Villipin have not done anything significant like calling out the army. They are so far from zero tolerance. It's more like 95% tolerance.

VDH: Yeah. I was reading a lot of French papers, you know, when I was in Europe the last three weeks, and I think I would...I guess I would sum it up as just absolute bafflement. It's almost as if don't these people know that in the abstract, we help Hamas? Don't we know that we appease the Arab world? And why in the world since we are so pro-Arab, would they care whether they have a job in Paris or not? We are beyond criticism, because we're against the United States, and here they are attacking us, of all people.

I also like this line: "You do not want to go back to the country, an hour or two away by air, that you praise in the abstract, but you surely want to stay in a country that you want to burn down to the concrete. It doesn't make any sense, other than this strong, psychological urges of envy, jealousy, wanting something you can't have. " That about nails it. But the thing is, after it's burnt to the ground and the French have abandoned it... they'll still be there occupying it.

Hope like hell we aren't about to see another Dunkirk - with the French evacuating to England and letting the Arabs have France.

J.