We're here tonight to talk about two young kids...

The words of the ever clueless French aristocracy - spoken by Dominique de Villepin last Tuesday on the TF1 news at 8pm.

I can’t do an entire history of this thing. I started and it is too complicated. So I am going to focus on what I think:

This country is messed up. Where to start. I think the above statement (that for honesty’s sake, what only part of his introduction to his little speech) sums up a big part of the problem. They (the French aristocracy) can not accept that there is any sort of institutional problems in the country.

The “French way” of accepting immigrants has always been: Come, and be like us. Really. Starting in the mid- to late- 19^th century different groups of people have come to France. There were Poles, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese who all came, and became French. Here in the south there are as many Fernandezes and Reyes as there are Martins and Duponts. But you wouldn’t know that they are first or second generation French because they all act “French.” This is how it is “supposed” to be. I have been talking about this for the past few years, the current societal make up is not conducive to a “conform to us” ideology. Why? First, since the fall of the French empire…umm, ok, since the end of WWII…there have been a huge influx of immigrants from the former colonies of France. France’s way of dealing with them is; give them cheap housing and welfare and other help and basically sweep them under the rug. Creating a society that allows people to go for years and years without working and forcing them all to live in the ghettos will only cause problems.

These people simmer in these areas. They are harassed by an arrogant and irrespective police force. They are marginalized and called scum by their government.

I do not for one moment think that they are innocent in this. They talk about how there is no jobs; how selling dope is the only job they can get; how it's all the government's fault for their position.

I don't buy all this crap. When you can sit on your duff all day long and do nothing, you do. When you can suck at the teet of the others, you do. No job, find one. They have trains, they have buses. When you are under 26, you usually have great deals. University education is FREE here. Get a diploma. Get another. The government pays you to go to school. They'll help you pay for your apartment. You can get help to buy food, stuff like that.

It's a question of a government (and a people) who are too used to giving and/or taking that they can not do anything to give people motivation to work.

Slate has an article today, "The French Eat Their Young" taht discusses some of this, but I don't think the author goes far enough. She fails to discuss the fact that the social system allows some of the people to have received welfare (or other similar things) for 10s or 20s of years. How do you expect people to work when they don't have to?

It's hard to believe the people that they interview who say, "Yeah, I'm looking for work, but because my name is [fill in name of stereotypical northern Africaner], no one will hire me." I know a few people who are 'looking for work.' They've sent five resumes in the past year and damn it! they can't find anything.