France Is Burning!

The French government has recently discovered that melting pot societies often lead to meltdowns of a sort. Three hundred of its towns are in turmoil as French youths riot over the accidental deaths of two teenagers who hid themselves in a power substation to avoid the police. The two criminal masterminds were electrocuted as a consequence of their unfortunate choice of a hiding place, and ever since, France has been gripped by a youth rebellion primarily composed of North African and Muslim teenagers.

The French government has revealed its ineptitude and total lack of comprehension in the process of its response to the rioting. Consider the statements of Jacque Chirac, French president and domestic leader extraordinaire: "[France] has not done everything possible for these youths, supported them so they feel understood, heard and respected." Well, it is doubtful that they feel respected even now, but they are certainly aware of the power that they have achieved through fear. Close to 2, 600 automobiles have been firebombed, buses have been torched, hospitals and kindergartens have been set ablaze, all by the youthful misunderstood cherubs who apparently emote their angst in tongues of fire.

They have thrown rocks and gasoline bombs at the police, who might have justifiably discharged a firearm or two to protect themselves, but there is no evidence that the French police have been empowered to take such action to combat the extreme lawlessness that they and their countrymen are imperiled by. The issue here is one of cause and effect, action and consequence: if you hide in a power substation, you might be electrocuted. If you hurl incendiary devices at the police, thereby threatening their well-being and lives, you might be shot, injured, or killed for doing so. That would be the reasonable conclusion to draw, but France is a society that has suspended reason for the time being.

Why has France suspended reason and surrendered to the consequence of its illogical policy of appeasement in the face of teenage anarchy? It has done so because it is a liberal society, founded on humane ideals that forbid reaction against even the most vicious and destructive forms of human behavior, lest one be compromised morally by the reaction. The French government can rightly say it has the moral high ground by repeatedly turning the other cheek to the rioters and brigands who set the streets ablaze each night, but with the high ground comes millions of dollars in property damage and the dangerous precedent that lawlessness is a means to an end.

Sociopaths have a curious tendency to disregard moral overtures because they ultimately respect one thing only: power. If you exercise greater power than they can exercise, you can subdue them and manage their behavior. If you exercise greater negotiation skills and superb diplomatic dialogue, you do not stem their behavior or its destructive results. You will never reach someone who has indicated a wanton disregard for moral or secular law with appeals based on moral or secular law, because they do not care. Their lack of caring is a prime indicator that they might be criminal in intent and purpose.

The teenagers who have taken to the streets in France to senselessly destroy schools, buses, hospitals, and businesses do not care to be understood. They do not care to make a point. They care for one thing: destroying without consequence. The French government's policy of appeasement and containment has empowered young thugs to boldly go forth and pillage. If the French government were to actually send out police and military forces who used force in the form of tear gas and rubber bullets (and possibly even genuine bullets), the unrest that has paralyzed the French countryside in fear each night would come to an abrupt end.

There would be those who erected graffiti memorials to the dead and eulogized them as martyrs and casualties of an unjust and uncaring society, but the French government would provide its citizens with the things that governments are supposed to provide their citizens: order and civil peace. Jacques Chirac can plead endlessly with the miscreants who burn and pillage nightly in his country; he can reason eloquently with them if he wishes to do so, but he will find that their characters render them incapable of hearing such speech. The character of the average rioter can be moved to cessation of destructive action by one thing only: a display of force that is greater than any he can muster, a force that could imperil the one thing he truly values, which is his life.

It remains to be seen if the French government has the willingness to muster up such a force in response to the chaos that has held its country captive in the past week. Perhaps negotiation is the answer and Chirac needs to request an audience with the rioter's potentate, whomever he may be, in order to set the terms for a peace. In the meantime, how many schools and hospitals will be burned, and how many French citizens who respect the law so much that they actually abide by it will be put at risk by their government's indecision?