Tag Archives: Muslims

Muslims announce they’re leaving France – “Not worth conquering”

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In truth, the Muslims have not announced they are leaving France. But you couldn’t blame them if they did.

France is rocked by mostly peaceful protests these days. Numerous stores, schools, office buildings, cars, trash cans, and other things that will burn, have been burned.

The culprits, er, I mean the mostly peaceful protestors, are mostly bored college and high school kids, as is typical in France. A requirement for graduation since the 60s has been to burn a trash can. Post-graduate degrees require that you burn a car.

It’s the tame, modern equivalent to that age that France looks back upon fondly: The Reign of Terror. Americans shoot off fireworks to commemorate the War of Independence; the French burn government buildings to commemorate the storming of the Bastille.

The putative reason for the protests is as predictable as the identity of the protestors. As always, they want more money and less work – free stuff.

That’s not the way they say it, of course. The signs they carry don’t say “MORE FREE STUFF.” The signs instead protest the government’s attempt to limit the welfare state.

That limit is long overdue. France has run budget deficits far beyond the 3% allowed by the EU, due largely to a sprawling welfare state and the burden of an extravagant government pension program. They began spending even more during Covid, and never stopped, even after Covid stopped. The government has proposed very modest reductions in the rate of growth of that spending.

In view of the fiscal troubles of France, the market refuses to buy its bond debt unless they continue to raise the interest rates on the bonds, which adds yet more to the debt. It’s a vicious cycle.

Tax rates could be raised, but the rates are already punitive. In any event, there aren’t enough rich people that taxing them even more would make much difference in the fiscal woes of France. “Tax the rich” is more a slogan for the left’s hatred for people who are willing to work, rather than a way to balance the budget.

Printing more money is not the answer. France uses the Euro, not French currency.

Even if it still used the French franc, and could print more of them, the paper money of a society is not its wealth. The paper money is merely a reflector of that wealth so that society can function without a barter system. Printed dollars allow you to go to the grocery store without carrying gold bars or pieces of your house on your back to barter for your food.

Doubling the paper money does not double the wealth. Rather, it halves the value of the paper.

As for the true wealth of France, it’s not increasing fast enough to pay for the never-ending free stuff that the kids demand. It might even be declining. France is a laggard in computer technology, its work ethic stinks (at least in the large cities), it’s not a player in AI, it lacks Switzerland’s pharmaceutical industry, and it’s not the financial powerhouse that London used to be and New York City still is.

Most of this is known to the leftist leaders, apart from these naïve, spoiled college kids indoctrinated by their loony professors.

While they hide behind the promise of more free stuff, what the leftist leaders really want is to destroy nations. They’ve learned that they cannot gain power over a healthy nation – it never happens – but only over a crumbled one. Once in power, they insist that they will fix things (after having destroyed them) but what they really do is to loot what’s left.

We saw that in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, Cuba, and, more recently, Venezuela. In fact, we’ve seen that everywhere – everywhere! – that socialism has been tried.

The way to produce prosperity in an economy is to incentivize people to produce prosperity. People produce prosperity in the form of products and services; governments take it away in the form of taxes.

As for the mostly peaceful protests in France, I suspect that the coming cold weather will douse the fires in the heart of the cities and in the bellies of the protestors. The protests will not kill France.

But inflation might.

Back to the Muslims. Some of the protests include Muslims among the college kids and professional agitators. After all, Muslims are not immune to this sport, and many of them have an abundance of grievances against their adopted home.

But Muslims are not more than a fraction of the protestors. There could be zero Muslims in France, and they’d still have these protests. France has always had this streak of violent leftism, and always will.

Some of you have asked about my recent trip to Tuscany, the latest of many months that I’ve spent in Europe over the years. My answer is, it was grand. As always, the Italian countryside was beautiful, the food was great, the people were disorganized, and Rome was chaotic, dirty and magnificent.

Muslims are the least of Europe’s problems

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Europe has problems. The economy is moribund. Taxes are high but insufficient to pay for an addictive and ever-growing welfare state which leaves defense budgets so underfunded and reliant on America that Europe is vulnerable to a military invasion.

Europe’s infrastructure is crumbling. They lag America and East Asia in critical technology, especially computer and AI tech. They made a bad bet on alternative energy. Their birthrate is far below the replacement rate.

Rather than confronting these problems directly, the Europeans blame others, specifically the Muslim immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon and Jordan.

The invasion to worry about, goes the typical European narrative, is not from the east, but from the south. It’s not Russian or Chinese armies of millions they should fear, says the narrative, but Muslim families of six.

It’s understandable that the non-Muslim 94% of Europe blames the Muslim 6%. It’s always tempting to blame another person for your problems, especially if that person has another skin color, another religion, another language, and another mode of attire. It’s human nature.

Before they had the Muslims, the Germans blamed the French, the French blamed the English, the English blamed the Scots, the Catholic Irish blamed the Protestant Irish, the Basques blamed the Spanish, Denmark blamed Sweden, and everybody blamed the Jews.

Americans have joined in this anti-Muslim crusade. After all, Europeans are the ancestors of most Americans and look like most Americans. Muslims aren’t and don’t.

Besides, if Americans were to blame Europeans for their self-inflicted problems, that hits too close to home – especially when America itself seems to be on the same road with regard to problems such as the welfare state. It’s easier for Americans to blame Somalian fraud for the malignant welfare budget of America – and Europe – than to blame America itself, even if the actual Somalian fraud is only a tiny fraction of the overall welfare budget.

(By the way, give the Somalians some credit for entrepreneurialism. Can anyone doubt that the Italian, Irish and Jewish immigrants would have done the same thing in their time if given the chance by idiots like Minnesota’s Governor Walz?)

Ah, you say, with an attempt to change the subject, Islam is a religion of war and Judeo-Christianity are religions of peace. Therefore, Europe should be reserved for peaceful Europeans and America should be reserved for peaceful Americans (but not native ones). In other words, America and Europe should be reserved for Christians and a few Jews.

To that I say: Have you read the Old Testament lately to see what this so-called religion of peace says about war? They seemed to be engaged in war all the time.

Indeed, this Judeo-Christian “religion of peace” produced two millennia of war within itself over the narcissism of small differences like whether we should eat meat on Fridays.

War is not a religious thing. It’s a species thing. Humans do it, and always have. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and before that pagans and earth worshipers, commit war. You name it, we’ve fought over it. Don’t tell me that Islam uniquely is a religion of war.

Nor are Muslims less law-abiding than other immigrant groups. The first generation of Muslim immigrants – the immigrants themselves – tend to be very law-abiding, more so than native-born Americans. In part, this is because they fear being deported upon conviction of a crime.

The law-abiding status of Muslims declines in the second generation after immigration. They tend to be much more criminal. It’s theorized that this is because they are as American as you or I, insofar as citizenship goes. Thus, they can be punished for a crime, but the punishment cannot include being deported. Once the deterrent of deportation is removed, they’re more criminal.

In addition, they are ostracized and discriminated against, and therefore live in poor immigrant communities with limited upward mobility. Frustration brews in them in a way that didn’t in their parents, who were just happy to be here, wanted to fit in, and were afraid of being deported.

I was skeptical about this rationale for second-generation crime among immigrants until I read the studies.  It turns out that this was the pattern of the Germans who immigrated to the Midwest in the 19th century. It was the pattern of the Scandinavians who immigrated to the upper Midwest and the pattern of the Irish who immigrated to New England later in that century. It was the pattern of the Italians who came to New York City early in the 20th century and started Little Italy. It was even the pattern of the Jews. In each case, the initial immigrants were very law-abiding, and their children were not.

The only exception was among the East Asians who came in the late 20th century. They tended to be law-abiding in both the first and second generations, due, apparently, to strong community and cultural connections.

By the time of the third generation, all groups of immigrants are essentially assimilated and match the crime rate of Americans at large (except the Asians, who continue to lag in criminality).

Muslims follow the same pattern; the criminality of third-generation Muslims matches the criminality of third-generation Irish, fifth-generation Italians, fourth-generation Greeks, and so on. By the time they reach the third generation, they all cheat, lie and steal, and occasionally rape, assault and murder, to pretty much the same degree as the rest of us.

(Although off the subject a bit, it bears mentioning that the pattern is the same among Latin Americans. The first generation is very law-abiding, the second generation is much less so, and the third generation matches that of the rest of us.)

None of this is intended to suggest that Europe has no Muslim problem. It does. So does America. A good case can be made that in both continents the immigration by Muslims has been too many and too fast. The same is true of Latin Americans.

But the Muslim problem of both continents is typical of the problem of assimilating an immigrant group, and it is likely to resolve over time. As in America many times in the past, the immigrants – this time Muslim – may ultimately be our salvation and resurrection. 

In the meantime, blaming Muslims for the self-inflicted problems of Europe and America has the effect of ignoring the real source of those problems.

The real source of those problems is that the European descendants of the greatest civilization in history, the Roman Empire, now piss on the ruins. Europeans and, increasingly, Americans have been taken in by populist socialism. We need to reject the promises of freebies, and make good on the promises of merit and investment.

Since we’re talking about Muslims, and economics, it’s worth considering what the great religions have to say on the subject of socialism. While casual feel-gooders might have you believe that spirituality is at war with economics, it was David who said, “When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.”

Jesus proclaimed, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”

Muhammed said, “No one ever ate a meal better than that which he earned with his own hands.”

The Buddha praised, “by energetic striving, gathered by the strength of their arm, earned by the sweat of their brow, a righteous wealth righteously gained.”

Milton Freidman couldn’t have said it better.