November 16, 2002
A GLIMPSE OF EUROPE'S FUTURE:
The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris (Theodore Dalrymple, Autumn 2002, City Journal)Reported crime in France has risen from 600,000 annually in 1959 to 4 million today, while the population has grown by less than 20 percent (and many think today's crime number is an underestimate by at least a half). In 2000, one crime was reported for every sixth inhabitant of Paris, and the rate has increased by at least 10 percent a year for the last five years. Reported cases of arson in France have increased 2,500 percent in seven years, from 1,168 in 1993 to 29,192 in 2000; robbery with violence rose by 15.8 percent between 1999 and 2000, and 44.5 percent since 1996 (itself no golden age).Where does the increase in crime come from? The geographical answer: from the public housing projects that encircle and increasingly besiege every French city or town of any size, Paris especially. In these housing projects lives an immigrant population numbering several million, from North and West Africa mostly, along with their French-born descendants and a smattering of the least successful members of the French working class. From these projects, the excellence of the French public transport system ensures that the most fashionable arrondissements are within easy reach of the most inveterate thief and vandal.
Architecturally, the housing projects sprang from the ideas of Le Corbusier, the Swiss totalitarian architect--and still the untouchable hero of architectural education in France--who believed that a house was a machine for living in, that areas of cities should be entirely separated from one another by their function, and that the straight line and the right angle held the key to wisdom, virtue, beauty, and efficiency. The mulish opposition that met his scheme to pull down the whole of the center of Paris and rebuild it according to his 'rational' and 'advanced' ideas baffled and frustrated him.
The inhuman, unadorned, hard-edged geometry of these vast housing projects in their unearthly plazas brings to mind Le Corbusier's chilling and tyrannical words: "The despot is not a man. It is the . . . correct, realistic, exact plan . . . that will provide your solution once the problem has been posed clearly. . . . This plan has been drawn up well away from . . . the cries of the electorate or the laments of society's victims. It has been drawn up by serene and lucid minds." [...]
A kind of anti-society has grown up in them--a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, "official," society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust
Though most people in France have never visited a cité, they dimly know that long-term unemployment among the young is so rife there that it is the normal state of being. Indeed, French youth unemployment is among the highest in Europe
Everyone acknowledges that unemployment, particularly of the permanent kind, is deeply destructive, and that the devil really does find work for idle hands; but the higher up the social scale you ascend, the more firmly fixed is the idea that the labor-market rigidities that encourage unemployment are essential both to distinguish France from the supposed savagery of the Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal model (one soon learns from reading the French newspapers what anglo-saxon connotes in this context), and to protect the downtrodden from exploitation. But the labor-market rigidities protect those who least need protection, while condemning the most vulnerable to utter hopelessness: and if sexual hypocrisy is the vice of the Anglo-Saxons, economic hypocrisy is the vice of the French.
It requires little imagination to see how, in the circumstances, the burden of unemployment should fall disproportionately on immigrants and their children: and why, already culturally distinct from the bulk of the population, they should feel themselves vilely discriminated against. Having been enclosed in a physical ghetto, they respond by building a cultural and psychological ghetto for themselves. They are of France, but not French.
The state, while concerning itself with the details of their housing, their education, their medical care, and the payment of subsidies for them to do nothing, abrogates its responsibility completely in the one area in which the state's responsibility is absolutely inalienable: law and order.
Unless [France] assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order. [...]
A profoundly alienated population is thus armed with serious firepower; and in conditions of violent social upheaval, such as France is in the habit of experiencing every few decades, it could prove difficult to control. The French state is caught in a dilemma between honoring its commitments to the more privileged section of the population, many of whom earn their livelihoods from administering the dirigiste economy, and freeing the labor market sufficiently to give the hope of a normal life to the inhabitants of the cités. Most likely, the state will solve the dilemma by attempts to buy off the disaffected with more benefits and rights, at the cost of higher taxes that will further stifle the job creation that would most help the cité dwellers. If that fails, as in the long run it will, harsh repression will follow.
Mind you now, this is the same France that bars the use of American words and that burns down McDonald's restaurants, for fear of being tainted culturally. Tell me then how this story ends except in the eventual violent repatriation or extermination of what will soon be a majority Muslim population? Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2002 7:32 AM
Majority Muslim population "soon"? The article suggests that descendents of African immigrants will form a third of the French population "before this century is out," and only 60% or so of the current African population is Muslim. I think you overstate.
Posted by: Peter Caress at November 16, 2002 7:51 AMGreat article, by the way. Good catch.
Posted by: Peter Caress at November 16, 2002 7:53 AMExcept that they're about 5 years away from the point where they can't afford their retirement system, so they're going to have to crank immigration way up and keep cranking as their "French" population ages. And these new immigrants reproduce at very high rates while the "French" are about 1/3 below replacement level. Eventually the process starts feeding on itself.
Posted by: oj at November 16, 2002 10:34 AMMost of Western Europe is a demographic disaster. And I don't think France needs a Musim majority to see staggering racial unrest. I lean Orrin's way on this - I have a hard time seeing a happy ending.
If you think back to the last election, part of the LePen appeal came from at least talking about law and order. Now, his vote total has held roughly steady for several years, so this may not be a huge trend.
However, the reaction to Le Pen is of deep concern - his issues are ignored, and he is dismissed as a racist kook. Well, he may be, but the issues are real, and are currently beyond discussion in France.
And it's pretty openly acknowledged in diplomatic circle that one of the reasons France and Germany are so wifty on Iraq this time is for fear of their own immigrant populations.
Posted by: oj at November 16, 2002 12:37 PMI commented in the "Goodbye to the Boot" piece from yesterday, to the effect of "Do you really believe it will happen". I said the prospect filled me with dread & disgust, and boy it really does.
The "disgust" part is the notion that whole nations, in such a short period, could completely collapse in on themselves like this.
The europeans have, as it were, lost the will to live. They must not think their own culture is worth preserving, if they're willing to invite in an immigrant replacement population to sustain their rotten pension system.
And having more children is apparrently too distasteful a notion to pursue as an answer, which is even more disgusting. Aside from losing the will to live, they must also be so dependent on their luxuries that the prospect of giving some up for the support of more children is unnacceptable. And they must be whistling past they graveyard if they think the immigrants will become "french" (or "italian", whatever).
As it starts to go under I don't see how Europe will be able to avoid massive violence, which is also depressing. After a point I don't think Joe Frank is going to keep quiet about an obvious disaster in the making. Other than putting a firm lid on immigration & working like crazy to truly naturalize immigrants who're already there , I don't know what the answer is, but I can think of plenty of unpleasant responses if the natives (the real ones) get restless.
It's amazing how this problem gets so little press play. Whistling past the graveyard, indeed.
Belgium has the same problems, and some suggested massive immigration to keep the retirement system affordable. The National Institute for Statistics debunked that piece of nonsense.
Immigrants can only keep the current system going if they're immediately employable in fairly high level jobs, with according salaries (and taxes, of course). There are insufficient low-paid jobs in the European economies (at least in the official economies) and low-paid workers don't pay enough taxes and social security contributions to finance the rather high pensions of the future (the baby boomers have earned more during their careers than the previous generation ever has, and pensions are based on your earnings during your working life).
Massive immigration would only be useful if all other aspects of the bloated welfare states were to be cut down (unemployment benefits, rigid labor laws etc). Those laws drive out low-paid jobs from the official labor market. Either you can "earn" more collecting a welfare check or businesses don't hire people because it's too difficult to fire them when the economy cools. And somehow, I don't believe the EUnuchs are going to implement such reforms.
Whack:
Take a look at how quickly Japan has folded in upon itself. People seem to think demographic changes happen over incredibly long periods, but they are often rather rapid.
Peter:
But note France is already trying to create artificial job growth by things like the 35 hour week.
How is this different from France at{pick any
back to 1750}?
The revolution of '89 was never completed,
the revolution preceded the nationalization
of the country (only 6% of residents of France
spoke French in 1870), they're on their 5th
republic, they are split three ways (four if you count
freethinkers) religiously.
They've staggered on, despite having Germany
(even worse in every way) for a neighbor. I
think they'll muddle along but never attain
self-government.
But they're no longer a Western nation--they're post-Christian and therefore have no ideological basis for reviving themselves.
Posted by: oj at November 16, 2002 2:52 PMThey invented the Enlightenment, a much
better basis than Christianity for erecting
a popular and free self-government. (It's
the model we used.)
I don't expect the French to re-embrace
Christianity, and it might be a stretch for them
to re-adopt the Enlightenment, but it could
happen.
If all the people who think Islam is capable of
functioning in a modern world are right, even
an Islamic France could embrace Enlightenment.
I don't agree with them, so I ain't holding
my breath, but the modern world either has
a future or it hasn't.
Time for everybody to get aboard who's goin'
ahead.
Harry -- The French hardly invented the Enlightenment as it was practiced and understood in America. America's enlightenment was a fusion of the orthodox Christianity of such as John Witherspoon, John Locke's Christian libertarianism that was inspired by Richard Baxter and other Christian liberal theorists, and the Scottish Enlightenment of Hume and Adam Smith and others. This 'Christian liberalism' of Madison, Adams, Washington, and other leading founders was far more profound than the silly French Enlightenment.
The French Enlightenment inspired the totalitarian utopianism of the French Revolution and the Terror. It has no record of ever providing a basis for a free society.
So-called Post-Christianity fails every time it is tried - every time well brought up, privileged and enlightened people turn against the Truth that carried their own kind like a galleon bearing refugees out of the dark times. Good enough for the ancestors, the Truth meets only contempt from the descendents in their brief sojourn before the deluge.
Posted by: Paula R. McIntyre Robinson at November 16, 2002 11:23 PMA little documentation -- from the NYTimes review of Herman's How The Scots Invented the Modern World -- "...He makes much of the work of John Witherspoon, the minister...who became president of Princeton Seminary in 1768. During his twenty-six year tenure, he numbered among his students a future President of the United States (Madison), a vice-president (aaron Burr), six members of the Continental Congress, nine cabinet officers, twenty-one senators, thirty-nine congressmen, three Supreme Court Justices, twelve governors, thirty-three state and federal judges and thirteen college presidents. Witherspoon exposed all of them to the Scottish Enlightenment. James Madison in particular fell under the influence of David Hume ...whose ideas are apparent in the tenth of the Federalist Papers, the key to the new constitution, in which Madison argued that countervailing public interests, federal, state, executive, legislative, economic -- would guarantee private liberty...."
Posted by: pj at November 16, 2002 11:24 PMI never expected anybody to insert Hume
into any form of Christianity. Have you read
him?
The "Truth" is not something I want to return
to. I agree that the French Enlightenment
did not have staying power. The Americans
version did. But not because it was so
Christian. The key point was that the U.S.
was the novel example of a nation inhabited
almost entirely by Christians establishing in
law and in fact the right of anybody to take
part.
Napoleon, the naughty old boy, forced Europe
to grant civil rights to Jews. The holders of
"Truth" began rescinding the Jewish
emancipation laws as soon as Napoleon left.
It may be -- history offers no counerexample
-- that free institutions can grow only out of
a Christian background. It does not follow
that Christianity itself is compatible with
freedom. It never has been.
Harry:
That final point makes no sense. Freedom prospers only in Judeio-Christian nations, yet Christianity is incompatible with freedom? And yet the freest nation in Man's history is likewise its most Christian--America.