There are a handful of media stories that truly frighten me and this is one. The most recent issue of The American Enterprise paints a dystopian vision of Europe’s future. I thought that it was maybe in a couple of decades or toward the middle of the century.

I am not saying that this is le deluge, but days of spreading civil unrest is not good. AlexC points out that they cannot stomach defense, they surely cannot stomach the tough economic and political steps needed to address the underlying causes.

I see the same things in continental Europe as JK and AlexC do, but my reaction is opposite from JK's. I'm relieved that the inevitible consequences of socialism and multiculturalism will be played out on the other side of a great ocean. What WILL frighten me is if voters don't continue, even hasten, to repudiate such policies in OUR country.

Mark Steyn's sobering view is not to be missed:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html

It is a sobering view, and an interesting article, but I am left wondering about Steyn's analogy to 8th century Moors and conclusion about government weakness. The geography and the ethnicity are correct, but what else? Did he overlook the racial riots of the late 1960's encompassing major cities in this country from Detroit to Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, or should I claim a conservative media bias? Racial tensions between police and youth would seem to have a direct comparison here or even more recently to the 1992 riots in LA. Had Lyndon Johnson or George H.W. Bush showed some sort of weakness that led to these outbreaks of civil unrest? Would he not have investigated or given any credence to African American grievances for fear of appearing weak and instigating more violence? It almost seems as if he is about to touch on the racial and economic factors and then lets them slip away unanalyzed. Fair enough to use these riots as evidence against the economic stagnation of socialism but to leap to government weakness upon the international stage seems to miss the mark.

Rioting should be a wake up call, but we should answer the right alarm. Now, before you put me in the liberal pacifist column know that I am not advocating we sit down on Oprah's couch with Islamic militants. I do believe force is required to restore order. My personal connection to the two LA riots is quite close. In August 1965 my mother was 10 months pregnant with me and my father was on the east coast to attend his mother's funeral. My uncle, a marine colonel drove up from San Diego in the middle of the night, his service revolver on his belt, to drive my mom and brother safely away. It turns out we were 20 miles away from the closest trouble spots, but it is a memory my mother will never forget. Same for me in 1992. I was a field engineer and covered east LA, Compton, Lynwood, and Southgate. I arrived home that Thursday evening to watch Reginald Denny be beaten on live television and violence spread to blocks where I had been hours earlier that day. Sobering to say the least. Then as now in France the first order of business is to restore order with force. But the job doesn't end there, unless actions are taken to repair the underlying problems all it will take is a small spark to reignite the wildfire.

The '92 LA riots scared me as well. I was in Minnesota and was worried about driving home, worried that the whole fabric of the nation was being rend in twain. Sugarchuck took me to Northridge, MN, and things didn't look so bad.

Looking back, it does not appear that there was enough fuel to keep them alive. There is/was turbulence in the African American community but it was not enough to sustain or spread violence.

I have to watch for schadenfreude here. I do not want Western Europe to fall. I do not want my most dystopian predictions to occur.

But these rioters seem disaffected in a way that the LA folks were not. They are a lot less assimilated into the mainstream culture and they have far less opportunity.

I think Steyn's point is less about Socialism than about what he sees as a permanent conflict between East-West, or Islam vs. everybody else. The multicultural, socialist, apologetic state does not seem capable of fixing these things it has broken.

My civil unrest story is that my dad packed us up and fled our Denver neighborhood when Dr. King was killed. My siblings laughed about this for decades, yet I found there was extreme rioting and violence about a mile away. The newspapers back then believed it best not to publish it for fear of fomenting more.

I don't know JK, are they less assimilated and more disaffected? Perhaps somewhat, in many cases we are talking about at most 2nd generation folks so they have had less time to assimilate than some of our own rioters. I am not sure who that speaks worse of, the French for the magnitude of their current problem, or us who have disaffected folks after many generations. Basically I see this more as racism and lack of economic hope and thus more in tune with problems we face here in our cities than with Islamic radicals. It's about discrimination (real or perceived) and lack of employment opportunities not some grand East-West or Islamic struggle. Malcom X preached Islam and African identity but the reality is that these youth share much more in common with their adopted countrymen than they do with those who live in their ancestral courtiers.