The French Unlearn a Valuable Lesson

Now that the riots in France have subsided a bit (down to a "normal" level of 90+ automobile arsons per night}, have the French become introspective, trying to see what lessons may be learned from a crisis that very well may have toppled a republic?

Er...no. From Eurosoc:

"France's 742 lawless towns" screams the headline of the popular tabloid Le Parisien. Coming hot on the heels of France's worst riots in decades, what could this mean?
An investigation into how numerous French communes became no-go zones for police? How political correctness, lazy civil servants and crooked officials allowed gangsters and thugs to create a reign of terror in French housing estates, eventually exploding in the riots of recent weeks?
Wrong on both counts. No, the "communities outside the law" that are upsetting Le Parisien's editorial staff are those 742 towns in France who have failed to respect a law guaranteeing a level of "social housing."
{link: http://www.eursoc.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/904/Another_Planet.html}

And what of our friends across the pond, the Brits - have they learned anything from the Paris intifada, what with their teeming Islamist subculture setting off bombs in subways and scorning British law?

Er....no. From Melanie Phillips:

Britain’s state of denial continues to deepen. We saw it after 9/11, when people said America had brought the atrocity upon itself — mainly through its ‘uncritical’ support for Israel. Then after Britain’s own human bomb attacks last July, the media became gripped by fear not of Islamist terrorism but of Islamophobia, or fear of the fear of Islamist terrorism.
Now we are told that the riots in France by Muslim and Arab youths from the banlieues — the city suburbs — have nothing to do with Islam but are the result of poverty, unemployment, racism and discrimination. Those who say, au contraire, that Islam is at the core of the disorder are being vilified as far-right racists and crazed reactionary demagogues.
Such a view surely displays a pathological refusal to connect to reality, which is given a vicious edge by the crude attempt to shut down debate through smears and demonisation. Denying the Islamic element of these riots is to deny the obvious...
{link: http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001492.html}

Sounds like our own Democratic party; demanding a withdrawal from Iraq ASAP, pretending the horrific consequences of such an action simply do not exist.

Nobody believed Hitler would really launch his full-scale war, either...