Paris Burning - A Warning For America

As of this post, it is the 12th night of riots in France. The trouble has now spread to over 300 towns. Over 3,000 cars have been burned, along with a school, parking garage & other buildings. Amazingly, only one person has died so far.

The trouble started after 2 boys were accidentally electrocuted when they hid in a transformer, avoiding police. The surrounding area is largely Muslim - predominantly North African. The rioters are unorganized so far, but we expect some opportunists to change that. The rioters are predominantly young Muslim males. The French government has been an abysmal failure in curtailing the riots thus far. Additionally, there is underreported news that there has been rioting by Muslims in Denmark, too.

There are 5 million Muslims living in France. Unemployment is significant in their population. The French welfare system has entitlements for those who are unemployed. The Muslim population lives mostly in large, poor enclaves in French cities & towns. Some attribute the rioting with the unemployment situation amongst Muslims. To a point, maybe so. But why now & not sooner. Afterall, conditions have been the same for years now.

We think there is a more direct reason for the rioting. If true, it does not bode well for America: lack of assimilation, coupled with a Muslim population which rejects all things not Islamic. We think Muslims have a disdain for their host country, France, because it exhibited weakness & corruption before & after the Iraq War.

In America there is an on-going, quick shifting of demographics due to the large number of legal & illegal immigrants coming into the country. They are primarily Hispanic/Latino, but there are also large numbers of Chinese, Vietnamese, Somalians & others. We are talking over 2 million a year coming into the country to live. That is a large challenge to any society. Rather than a slowed down immigration policy that gives the immigrants, & the communities they settle in, time for assimilation, we have instead communities being overrun by the sudden influx. We have immigrants settling into one area of a city or state. Enclaves of culture-specific immigrants are thus created. They become separate & apart from the rest of the city or town. There is no need to assimilate into the culture of the host country - America - because they are a de facto nation within a nation. The language, the culture, the businesses, the schools are all within their culture. There is no inducement to expand themselves into the greater American culture. And we detect a distain for most things American amongst some of the immigrants.

What has resulted in America is a mutli-cultural mindset that not only celebrates diversity, but caters to the unassimilated. Drivers license tests are in 10 languages, report cards are sent out in 6 languages, press 1 for English...2 for Spanish...3 for Mandarin.. & on & on. Rather than celebrating diversity, we are purposely celebrating isolation of cultures.

America is great when its people share a common thread. As it stands now, we are becoming so many spools of thread that there may indeed come a time when the French riots will have been seen as a warning to the United States - a warning that not only should our states be united, but so should our people. Without serious reduction in legal immigration & without serious efforts to stem the invasion of illegals, without giving immigrants the time & chance to assimilate into the country, we will have not learned the lessons of the French riots.