By presenting the West as repugnant and the other civilizations as our prey, we encourage such social pathologies as jihadism

Now the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has joined the chorus

writes R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

The other day he said, "My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure." The "it" was multiculturalism, and he was on French national television. In pronouncing multiculturalism defunct, the French president joins German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard, Spain's ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar, and, most recently, British Prime Minister David Cameron in heaving a failed policy into history's dustbin. The question is, what will replace it? Or actually another question: how did multiculturalism ever become a policy of these European countries anyway?

…Now the European leaders are giving this sort of tolerance of intolerance a second look.…

…So how did the Europeans end up with multiculturalism, a multiculturalism that seems to favor Islam over other cultures? … I think it started with the way they teach their history. Militarism, colonialism, and racism are all prominent ingredients of European history books, particularly British history. For that matter, American history stresses these ingredients also. I have been reading American college history texts and they present an alarmingly ugly view of the Western past.