The French Mayhem: Why It Hasn't, But Could, Happen Here
Unlimited illegal immigration is a time bomb. So is abandoning the Melting Pot.
by Rod D. Martin
December 2, 2005
The Germans call it schadenfreude, the delight some people feel when a disliked person gets his comeuppance. And more than a few Americans experienced just that last month as France convulsed in riots.
For decades, France's elite, combining disdain with glee, castigated America on everything from Vietnam to Iraq, from race relations to inner-city poverty, from culture to the Cold War.
Never mind the many hypocrisies, on each of these points and more. America was France's whipping boy for all the world's ills, and nary a French bureaucrat nor intellectual saw fit to look in the mirror.
Then came the riots; and suddenly, mirrors of every size and shape were thrust into France's haughty face.
That's at least how it looked from our perspective.
The comparisons between America and France were just too irresistible to forego.
France is a country based on blood and soil, while America is an idea, founded on a shared belief in ordered liberty.
France is a class-based …