Old Otto Van

Truett points out that if anyone really hated France they should support the society’s present course when it comes to the troubles faced by the state. He points out the potency of The Otto Effect:

«One minister's suggested cure for Parisian riots? Remove all law enforcement from the area. That, coupled with this article, reminds me of a certain episode in the mid-nineteenth century.»

Leftist, like everyone else in history who adopted a self-destructive ideology seem to uniformly prefer a lack of public decency laboring under the illusion that this will bring about public safety.

Sorry Charlie:

«So, the Germans go bash Paris for a while, but then they get this great idea: why waste soldiers on Paris, when what's left of the French national government doesn't like these barricade-raising, commune-forming Parisians either? Therefore, Bismarck takes his army out (and does various insignificant things like unifying Germany and building up a huge military machine), and what do you think happens? Yes! France turns in on itself, and the French army goes and attacks Paris, much like a scorpion with sunstroke. Bismarck's solution, in short: leave France alone, and it will destroy itself. Seems to be a lasting truth.»

The NY Sun also has a long memory, and points out another aspect of the hubris of thinking that a different kind of cultural exception confers another sort of insurance:

«Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs." President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."»

That, together with this make me think about social policies that resemble the ravings of a brutal overseer who wants to be loved:

«It's a barely kept secret that Mr. Chirac led the opposition to the Iraq war out of fear of how his Muslim population would react. This fear is a big part of why France portrays itself as America's counterweight and why it criticizes Israel at every turn and coddled the terrorist Yasser Arafat right up to his death. This doesn't elicit thanks from Muslim radicals in France. It turns out to project an image of weakness. Unsurprisingly when faced with some unhappiness they believe they can pressure the French state into submission.»

..only to look flummoxed and helpless when it comes to dealing with people.

They can't be engineered to spec.