Why is Paris Burning?

I've given this a lot of thought. Most of the right wing blogs are operating on the theory that the rioting is a result in the breakdown of the socialist stratification in French society. The ethnic French get the benefits and the immigrants to France pay for it. I've never seen the words "dirigiste economy" used this much before.

But I'm not sure they're right about this. One of the things you have to understand about the rightosphere is that they are all libertarians. Well perhaps not all, but the vast majority have those tendencies. So the opportunity to blast the French not just for being cheese-eating surrender monkeys, but for being socialist collectivist cheese-eating surrender monkeys is too good to pass up. In the end though I think we're really discussing a symptom not the underlying disease.

Where am I going? Well lets stop looking at France for a moment look at ourselves, ourselves meaning the US. The US had a massive spike in crime and related social unrest starting around 1960s. For over a century previous to that, we had done things a certain way. We liked industry and making things. We oppressed black people and anyone else we didn't like. But that all changed and we really didn't know what was going to happen. Crime skyrocketed as did other less than legal coping behaviors. Then at some point in the late eighties the Cold War ended, we realized that the color of someone's skin doesn't really matter, and everything started to look alright again. The crime rate plummeted accordingly.

Great now lets look at Europe. Their crime rates are taking off. Their societies are undergoing massive social change. Immigrant populations are moving in as the birth rates of the nationals are dropping off. The European Union trying to break down the old national borders. Things are changing quite quickly.

Honestly, Europe doesn't know what to make of this. Most of France, with the exception of Alsace and Lorraine, have basically been French since the Vikings got tired of invading and Jeanne d'Arc kicked the English back across la Manche. Even relatively young countries like Germany and Italy have been that way for quite a while now. Unlike the US which has been a melting pot for most of our history, the Europeans really don't know how to handle immigrants from place they don't like and even immigrants from places they do like. As a friend of mine who taught at universities in Scandinavia once said:

Jeff, they are a very nice people. They're polite and they don't mine a Czech like me living down the street, working hard, and keeping to myself. But everything changes if I start trying to marry their daughter...

And that is the long and short of it. At some point France will come up with an answer for how to be France when you aren't even French. I expect to see lots of social tension in Europe for a generation or so just like it happened over here.