Pessimism om Frankrike/Europa mm via blogg

Bloggen Veritas Universalis tipsar idag om en artikel av Guy Millière i Hudson New York, Riots, Looting and Chaos in France -- How Societies Perish, om upploppen i Frankrike. Den inleds med beskrivningar av de våldsamma demonstrationer som blossade upp i bl a Grenoble i somras. Några stycken en bit in i artikeln:

In Lyon, in the Nanterre suburb of Paris and in other French cities, scenes resembling a nascent civil war occurred. Self-styled "commandos" armed with Molotov cocktails and other instruments of destruction launched assaults on shopping areas and government buildings. Policemen were ordered to proceed with caution: the authorities feared that any serious incident would likely aggravate disorder and lead to widespread uprisings, as in 2005.

At that time I wrote that France was no longer a "western country" and that rule of law had nearly ceased to exist. Since then, the situation has worsened. Approximately 700 "no-go zones" pepper France: enclaves ruled by gangs, drug traffickers and imams. Firefighters and doctors venture into these places rarely and only with extreme caution, when they have no other choice. Graffiti on the walls read: "French out!" or "Jihad."

Subjects like the Holocaust are no longer taught in many classrooms, and the word "Jew" has become an insult in many playgrounds. The burqa ban was passed, but will probably never be enforced. In a growing number of communities, young women without the Islamic veil risk assault or rape if they walk unaccompanied in the street.

France is a country in disintegration. A small minority of the population still lives comfortably in the more affluent neighborhoods, striving to maintain the property they purchased or inherited, while at the other end of the social spectrum, the ranks of those living in dire poverty are swelling fast. 15% of the population subsists exclusively on government welfare benefits. Unemployment has reached 25% among the 18 to 25 year old age group, while figures are far higher among young men of Arab or African descent.

More than half the diplomas issued by higher education are worthless in the real world, offering no career path, no opportunity other than signing onto a long list of job seekers going nowhere. Many counter staff in fast food chains hold doctorates or masters' degrees, yet prefer demeaning work to begging on the street. The French middle classes are disappearing and observe with anxiety the irrepressible growth of an underclass of immigrants increasingly marginalized and marinating in degrading frustration that's highly conducive to all sorts of radicalization.

French education is in the hands of communists, socialists and greens, who disseminate anti-capitalist doctrines and distorted views of history. The media echo these inept and fraudulent ideas, never offering a means to actually understand how the world works and the basic rules of economics. This encourages dangerously stupid and divisive slogans such as "The solution exists. The rich must pay," to achieve wide support. More than twenty years ago, French jurisprudence was usurped by radical groups proclaiming that a criminal is primarily a victim of society, and that the duty of those who have more is to share with those who have less. Today, many French judges make rulings on ideological grounds, with little regard for the law.

Finns beträffande utbildning inte samma tendenser hos oss senaste decennier? Mot rättsväsendet har vi sett påfrestningar i Malmö, som om de bröt ut i större skala väl skulle hota vårt rättssystem.

Millière beskriver vidare att Sarkozy efter försök med auktoritära medel återgått till mjuk eftergiftspolitik, att socialister sprider orimliga löften och xenofoba högerextremister samt nihilistiska extremvänstern sprider hat. Han hävdar även att statsskulden ständigt ökar och att landet går mot bankrutt.

Artikeln, som publicerades dagen före kongressvalet, jämför Europas situation med USA:s och har denna uppfordrande och för Europa pessimistiska avslutning:

After two years of Obama presidency, growing numbers of Americans want to get up and scream, "Stop!" There are actions that must be stopped -- before the threshold of irreversibility is crossed. In Europe, and particularly in today's France, that threshold appears to have been already crossed. Who wants to use recipes guaranteed to lead to decay and chaos?

Barack Obama. Nancy Pelosi. Who else?

You?

Amerikanerna röstade iofs hyfsat i går, i synnerhet till representanthuset.

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Bloggen Veritas Universalis tipsade i veckan även om artiklar där historieskrivning tas upp. Dels denna Robert Redeker-artikel, översatt av Bruce Bawer, och dels en av Bruce S. Thornton som börjar så här:

In 1984 George Orwell described how the abandonment of belief in objective truth makes possible a politicized history that legitimizes tyrannical power:

“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death . . . . And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

...

Denna inledning fick mig spontant att tänka på dagens förnekande av sträng åsiktsregim kring invandring (nämnde idag Gudmundson och förnekade Medievärlden), men artikeln behandlar historieskrivning om islam från dess unga år till senaste seklet.


Relaterat i media: SvD, Exp, Barometern
Andra bloggar om: samhälle, historia, korstågen, islam, kristendom, religion, invandring, krig, USA, Europa, Frankrike