Day 19: Orange Méchanique
Via Políticamente incorrecto, Tim Cavanaugh’s article explores how A Clockwork Orange was prophetic,
The clash-of-civilizationists have one important point: The London bombers, the murderers of
Theo van Gogh,
and the banlieu rioters are all Muslims, and it’s vain to deny this connection. (Then again, it’s not clear that anybody is denying it: After about the fiftieth
media story berating the media for ignoring the story, I’m starting to smell a rat.)But there is an even clearer pattern of a welfare structure that sings the praises of the nation while discouraging recipients from feeling any connection to the nation — a one-size-fits-all style of governance that cultivates, if it doesn’t actually breed, anti-social behavior. The French government makes a particularly choice target for schadenfreude: With one hand it fails to make cité residents to feel like full citizens (by, for example, ensuring an
Arabic-sounding name is not a barrier to a good job), and on the other it enforces fake national unity on pointless matters (by banning headscarves in public schools). But the pattern repeats itself everywhere the state provides for the basic needs of its outsider groups while standing in the way of their pursuit of happiness.
Cavanaugh asks,
Is Europe ready for such a radical shift in attitudes toward individual rights and responsibilities? One hopeful story turned up in
Grigny,
where local residents took the defense of their neighborhood into their own hands. That approach is unlikely to get much of a national hearing. In A Clockwork Orange, the same politician who subjected Alex to “Ludovico”
behavior modification — a
slick minister of “interior or inferior” — ends up publicly embarrassed by the treatment’s results, and has to buy Alex off with a cushy patronage job and friendly photo opps. Don’t be surprised to see Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, after a few months of stewing in opprobrium over his promises to “clean out” the “scum,” shaking hands with a celebrity rioter. What’s it going to be Nic, eh?
In a linguistic turn worthy of Burgess, here’s today’s headline: Paris ‘almost back to normal’
The number of car-torchings dropped again overnight, with youths setting fire to 215 vehicles – compared to 284 the day before – France’s interior ministry said on Monday.
The figures showed a “return to a nearly normal situation”, the ministry said in a statement that revised a tally released earlier in the day.
Cavanaugh might be prophetic himself.
