Stones Cry Out

The money graf is here:

"Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it 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psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order."

Conservatives in America are hellbent to do the same thing here. France has no citizenship by birthright, and soon, probably, so it will be in the USA. We are throwing away our best tools for assimilating new immigrant populations by accommodating the idiots in our midst who want to treat our own immigrant populations the way the French do today, by turning them and their descendants into a permanent underclass.

Handing someone citizenship paperps does not magically make them assimilated. Joel Kotkin, writing on OpinionJournal today (free registration required) makes a much better case that France's welfare state is the main cause of non-assimilation.

Since the '70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.
To make matters worse, the elaborate French welfare state--government spending accounts for roughly half of GDP compared with 36% in the U.S.--also forces high tax burdens on younger workers lucky enough to have a job, largely to pay for an escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients. In this system, the incentives are to take it easy, live well and then retire. The bloat of privileged aging blocks out opportunity for the young.

Conservatives are most certainly not "hellbent" on expanding the welfare state. A permanent underclass is created by giving away "free" money to those who illegally scoot across the border. Welfare isn't made primarly to live on but tide over. Thus this policy entices people to cross the border, especially illegals who then can't get a better job because they're illegal, leaving them to live on welfare.

Democrats are creating the "permanent underclass" and cry "racism" when Republicans try to discourage this irresponsibility. We have a better economy and can handle legal immigration just fine, but it's when we elevate illegals (i.e. felons) by offering them the same things as legals, that's what could foment something similar here.

To join with Doug, France's problem has been unrestricted immigration, resulting in more immigrants than jobs. That's a bad situation, and it's not conservatives who are creating it in America.

Conservatives are hellbent on eliminating citizenship by birthright. Basically, they've never liked the whole fourteenth amendment, and if they can't repeal it outright, then they'll nullify it the same way they've nullified the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments, i.e. by simply ignoring it and packing the courts with ideologues who will supply convenient rationalizations for them.

Blaming the French riots on the Euro welfare system is putting the cart before the horse. The Euro welfare system wouldn't be producing the distorting effects on the French economy if it weren't for the other idiocies the French have done to keep their "immigrant" populations repressed and economically powerless, things that begin with their refusal to treat immigrants as what they are, newly arrived French people.

What's more: conservatives don't really want to do away with welfare. They want to privatize it, and yes: once they do that, they will happily expand it. Expansion of churches and private enterprise = GOOD; expansion of government and the state = EVIL. Don't try to sell me any of this folderol about conservatives not wanting to expand welfare, because it's baloney.

Conservatives love welfare. They just hate it when it's run by a democratically elected government with an open, transparent policy-making process.

Conservatives will happily make America into a carbon-copy of France. Watch closely those riots in Paris, guys— that's the future you're trying to create.