James Lileks is making the virtual coffee table book tour, but he still has time to provide us with interesting links. This is from Theodore Dalrymple, in City Journal. He writes a lot of articles there, and the site has earned "straight to blogroll" status, for Dalrymple's fascinating article on crime in France.
I have been to Paris twice -- once in 1989, and earlier this spring. I have always loved the city; to me it contains a perfect balance of art, religion, and history that makes it unique on the Earth. Oh, I like London just fine, and there are neighborhoods of New York that rival Paris, and Boston will always for me be a shining city on a hill (provided I don't have to drive in it), but Paris is special.
Which makes Dalrymple's story all that more disheartening. Consider:
I first saw l’insécurité for myself about eight months ago. It was just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in a neighborhood where a tolerably spacious apartment would cost $1 million. Three youths—Rumanians—were attempting quite openly to break into a parking meter with large screwdrivers to steal the coins. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; the sidewalks were crowded, and the nearby cafés were full. The youths behaved as if they were simply pursuing a normal and legitimate activity, with nothing to fear.
Eventually, two women in their sixties told them to stop. The youths, laughing until then, turned murderously angry, insulted the women, and brandished their screwdrivers. The women retreated, and the youths resumed their “work.”
A man of about 70 then told them to stop. They berated him still more threateningly, one of them holding a screwdriver as if to stab him in the stomach. I moved forward to help the man, but the youths, still shouting abuse and genuinely outraged at being interrupted in the pursuit of their livelihood, decided to run off. But it all could have ended very differently.
Several things struck me about the incident: the youths’ sense of invulnerability in broad daylight; the indifference to their behavior of large numbers of people who would never dream of behaving in the same way; that only the elderly tried to do anything about the situation, though physically least suited to do so. Could it be that only they had a view of right and wrong clear enough to wish to intervene? That everyone younger than they thought something like: “Refugees . . . hard life . . . very poor . . . too young to know right from wrong and anyway never taught . . . no choice for them . . . punishment cruel and useless”? The real criminals, indeed, were the drivers whose coins filled the parking meters: were they not polluting the world with their cars?
Another motive for inaction was that, had the youths been arrested, nothing would have happened to them. They would have been back on the streets within the hour. Who would risk a screwdriver in the liver to safeguard the parking meters of Paris for an hour?
This is a city in need of a Rudy Giuliani -- and direct election of judges. And removal of rent controls and establishment of a concealed-carry permit law -- but let's not ask for too much at once, shall we? Read the whole article -- it is beautifully written and well researched -- as well as being frightening.
UPDATE: The dilemma is that the solutions I mention above could never be put in place by the French elites, as they seem unspeakably barbaric to them. Which is the problem. When the officials of the government refuse to enforce the law, people will --eventually -- take matters into their own hands. You want to know what is behind the rise of Le Pen and the proto-fascists even further to his right? It is that the government has abidcated its responsibility. Once it does so, then the people, for their protection, turn to those who will offer them the formulation "outside the law but safe". So you have the rise of reactionaries who have no respect for the law -- and once they assume power, you have a country that is capable of anything. Fascists can only assume power in a vacuum. The French need to build some large prisons and start taking the violent criminals off the streets. They start doing that, and the people will respond, and help the police. Crime will fall dramatically.
UPDATE 2: Dalrymple also notes the lack of jobs in France, due to the tight economic controls and high taxation. This just adds further fuel to the fire -- people who are disaffected and unemployed have no opportunity to fit in with society. Along with Rudy Giuliani, this is a country that needs to embrace capitalism. Really, what they need is a Margaret Thatcher. If they don't find her, perhaps not even Joan of Arc can save France.
UPDATE 3: Rioting continues, for a sixth night.
UPDATE 4: Wretchard has more thoughts here and here. I too, am skeptical of Fukuyama's thesis, which to me is too geneous to Islam. Certainly Western societies have encouraged radicalism where they have not resisted it. But Islamic countries on their own are not open and tolerant societies. Walk down the street in Riyadh as a woman wearing a modest sundress and cross on a chain around your neck, and you'll be hauled in front of a religious court in seconds flat. The problem is not either/or -- we're great, and they're screwed up (or, "they're ok and we're screwed up"). It's both/and -- we're sick, and they're screwed up. I see the sickness of the West every day when I read the appeasement and defeatism emanating from the left-hand side of the blogosphere, or read articles like Dalrymple's about the sad state of Paris. But the bigger problem is still the Middle East itself. While rioters can burn Paris tenements and unemployed Muslim men are ripe for carrying a bomb onto a tube, these are, at some level, small problems. Tehran having an atom bomb and a means of delivery that can hit Jerusalem is a direct, immediate and large-scale problem. Certianly the defeatism, apathy, and decadence of the West must be fixed. But we can live with that provided there aren't atom bombs raining down. We must ask ourselves -- do we have the courage to solve that problem? If we don't, then reform of the West probably won't save us.
