[BRIEF NOTE] The Breakdown in France

[rfmcdonald]

In the National Post, Mireille Silcoff has a series of articles (1, 2, 3) examining the emigration of French Jews to Québec after the breakdown of Muslim-Jewish relations in France and growing Muslim anti-Semitism. Alain Finkielkraut, in a recent interview in the pages of Ha'aretz, argued that there is a general impoverishment of citizenship at work in France as elsewhere, linked particularly to the process of education. Unfortunately, he goes on to argue that, in fact, French citizenship is meaningless, and that social exclusion--high unemployment, low incomes, little mobility--doesn't exist, thereby creating an irresolvable problem.

"The problem is that they need to regard themselves as French. If the immigrants say `the French' when they're referring to the whites, then we're lost. If their identity is located somewhere else and they're only in France for utilitarian reasons, then we're lost. I have to admit that the Jews are also starting to use this phrase. I hear them saying `the French' and I can't stand it. I say to them, `If for you France is a utilitarian matter, but your identity is Judaism, then be honest with yourselves: You have Israel.' This is really a bigger problem: We're living in a post-national society in which for everyone the state is just utilitarian, a big insurance company. This is an extremely serious development.

"But if they have a French identity card, then they're French. And if not, they have the right to go. They say, `I'm not French. I live in France and I'm also in a bad economic state.' No one's holding them here. And this is precisely where the lie begins. Because if it were the neglect and poverty, then they would go somewhere else. But they know very well that anywhere else, and especially in the countries from whence they came, their situation would be worse, as far as rights and opportunities go."

Mishandled immigration and integration policies have endless potential for havoc, it turns out to no one's surprise.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?