Revised Copy

The Permanent French Crisis:

Implications of Mob Violence and the Failures of Socialism

By Andrew P. O’Meara, Jr.

French apologists shed alligator tears for urban rioters as if the plight of unemployed immigrants was somehow divorced from the larger crisis facing the nation. French explanations of the riots raise more questions than answers. The untold truth is that France could sustain the burden of unemployed immigrants as long as state run industries operate at full capacity. As arms contracts with client dictators have dried up and the lucrative oil contracts negotiated with Saddam Hussein for expansion of the Iraqi oil fields became worthless with the demise of the former Ba’athist Regime, the French economy has contracted. Production has slowed, workers have been laid off, and French unemployment has reached destabilizing levels.

So what's the problem? Is it unemployed and unassimilated immigrants? Or is it something much larger? Is it the fact that the socialist state is dependent upon government owned and operated industries that are in turn dependent upon client dictators who are unable or unwilling to subsidize the French economy. And workers are laid off, while immigrant workers doing menial labor are taking the heaviest hits.

A spate of recent publications have exposed the corruption of the authoritarian French State, prompted by the French betrayal of America in the days leading up to the war in Iraq. The Conservative press has highlighted The French Betrayal of Americaby Kenneth Timmerman, Our Oldest Enemy by John Miller and Mark Molesky, and Vile France by Denis Boyles. All of which have illuminated the problems facing France.

More enlightening than the critiques of French diplomacy and corruption in government owned industries is Gertrude Himmelfarb's comparison of the British, French and American cultures: The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. Gertrude Himmelfarb’s book reveals the character of the core problems confronting France. The French Enlightenment evolved from faith in reason articulated in the form of theoretical treatises advocating radical change with no basis in practice, which spawned violent class warfare to eliminate unfortunates identified as enemies of the people. The Jacobin revolutionaries demolished the monarchy, banned the Church, and trashed the existing political culture in return for radical change based upon unlimited faith in the perfectibility of man. The French revolutionaries disavowed the existing political culture, outlawed religion and launched a revolution in the name of equality through the mass murder of class enemies and redistribution of wealth. The French approach to modernization became the prototype for two centuries of socialist revolutions to achieve utopian societies built on faith in unproven, radical theory.

In sharp contrast to the French totalitarian approach, the American and British enlightenments looked for the betterment of mankind through gradual progress based upon private and public works built upon the existing institutions of society. Moreover, the British and the American Enlightenments preserved their deeply rooted political cultures, religious institutions, as well as their convictions regarding the imperfect nature of man. The result was alternative routes to modernity; the French approach was violent and totalitarian, whereas the British and American alternatives were conservative and remained rooted in the traditions of Western Civilization.

Consistent with their differing approaches to modernization, the British and the French took dramatically different approaches to management of their colonies over the last two centuries. The British prepared their colonies for the transition to democracy. The French did not. The British integrated native public servants into the administration of their colonies, while introducing democratic institutions in their colonies, easing the transition to independence. The British encouraged native owned and operated industries, whereas the French controlled production through French owned industries and agriculture, especially rubber in Indochina. More harmful to the French colonies than Gallic resistance to colonial reforms was the reliance upon police power, as well as military forces, to stamp out political opposition. The results were telling. Whereas Great Britain assisted their colonies in the peaceful transition to democracy, the French colonies produced widespread revolutionary warfare and in the end authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships.

Socialist dictatorships, under various names provided by French revolutionaries, Karl Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, or Pol Pot, seldom progressed beyond revolutionary myths, wars, and death on a scale never seen before. Socialist dictatorships ignited world wars and world socialist revolution. The list includes German National Socialism, the Soviet Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Mao’s People’s Republic and multiple uprisings of colonial surfs reacting to the excesses of Colonial Empire. And a century later France is now confronted by the party line that all are equal within the culture produced by the French revolutionary experience, the ploy used to mobilize the revolution. It is the same falsehood used by French diplomacy to promote arms sales to and economic exploitation of state sponsors of violence, while opening France to immigration from their former colonies.

And now the hollow note has come due on French promises of equality with immigrants from their former colonies; while socialism, the speculative fabrication of the French Jacobins, still governs supreme in scores of countries in the U.N. General Assembly including beleaguered European states that struggle with stagnant economies. And today as French cars burn in the night, Europeans must come to grips with the failure of socialist economies and secular cultures, while unassimilated Islamic zealots recruit émigré malcontents to commit acts of violence in the night.

Socialist centralized planning and colossal social and industrial experiments, including the gulag, have proved unsuccessful in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam. And today intelligent, communist leaders are attempting the transition to free market economies as rapidly as they can accommodate change. Despite the failures of socialism, French society still looks to an authoritarian government to make good on the socialist party line, while tolerating autocratic rule that sharply curtails the press and eschews transparency in government. And once again France finds herself victimized by her ruinous enlightenment theories.

Where to now for the French Enlightenment as cars burn in streets across France? America saved France from German National Socialism in World War II; and we saved them from the aggressive Soviet Empire that threatened to overrun all of Western Europe during the Cold War. We even attempted to bail them out of their disastrous colonial debacle in Indochina, where the Soviets and the Chinese Communists exported wars of national liberation. But the time has come to call a halt to saving France from itself. The time has come to mark all debts to Lafayette: Now and forever paid in full.

And the American Enlightenment? It is working still, even if the liberal academic community in America, which bought into French Enlightenment theories early in the Last Century, fails to admit the triumph of freedom and democracy. The American Enlightenment has spawned no dictatorships. It has encouraged the growth of democracy in the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea, and Afghanistan. And today Americans are encouraging a fledgling democracy in Iraq, a society formerly ruled by the murderous Saddam Hussein – a French supported dictator and leader of a socialist Ba’athist Party.

It is sad that Lenin did not live to see this day. Lenin wrote that the collapse of capitalism predicted by Marx was averted by colonial holdings of the Imperialists, which artificially stimulated industrial growth and produced

earnings at the expense of hostage colonial populations. Yet today capitalist economies, without colonies, are booming around the World. It is socialist economies that are in crisis. It is socialist France that is dependent upon corrupt client dictators to provide jobs and illegal contracts in violation of U.N. sanctions to fuel a wasteful socialist industrial base. Lenin had it all wrong. It is socialism that is dependent upon colonies. Joining France in opposition to U.S. demands for military action in Iraq were socialist regimes in Russia, China and Germany that embraced neo-colonialism in the form of illegal trade with Saddam Hussein to shore up stagnant economies.

Today capitalism flourishes in a global economy; whereas, Socialist economies have become dependent upon protectionist policies and new colonies ruled by client tyrants and dictators. So Lenin had it wrong. And France, the primary proponent of socialist theory, is trapped in a quagmire of stagnant, corrupt and inefficient industries predicted by Marx and Lenin as the fate of the American industrial giant. And today radical socialist zealots rail against the global economy and the free enterprise system that raises the standard of living of entire populations in democratic states. 

Gloating may be inappropriate, but righteous indignation may be in order at the demonization of American workers and entrepreneurs by the Marxists over the last century. And pride in a free enterprise system that still provides widespread prosperity is in order. Regrettably, the government controlled press in France, China, Cuba and North Korea still produce virulently anti-American propaganda that has fueled an anti-American rage that continues to do violence to American interests in the international community of nations.

Despite socialist propaganda, the success of the American free enterprise system is legendary, bringing immigrants of all nationalities to our shores. It is seen in the flourishing of the American culture and economy reflecting the vitality of the American Enlightenment, while the French Enlightenment has entered a period of widespread decline. The collapse of socialist economies is global in scope causing pervasive economic stagnation. It is seen in the massive unemployment rates in socialist welfare states. It is the cause of French cars burning in the night. All of which point to the culmination of the French Enlightenment in a macro failure demonstrating that hubris and utopian theory are no substitutes for hard work by free people based upon free enterprise, private ownership of property, and the protection of individual liberties under a government that is both transparent and responsible to the people.

While Americans are dismayed by the plight of self-professed enemies of the American Enlightenment, we must not return to the pattern of our past mistakes. The French brought this disaster upon themselves. And this time we cannot save them from the evil they have loosed upon themselves. This is a French crisis created by hubris, corruption and massive bloodshed orchestrated by the French State over many years. France must reform by relinquishing state control of the press, by accepting openness in government, and by taking responsibility for their long history of criminal conduct. And they must repudiate their radical tradition that paved the way for two centuries of bloodshed leading to failed economic systems and rogue states.

What Americans can do is recognize the problem and salute Gertrude Himmelfarb for her brilliant analysis of the French, British and American Enlightenments, which identifies the grave obstacles on the road to modernity that are inherent in the French experience. And it may be appropriate for Americans to permit themselves some satisfaction in this moment of truth in appreciation of the vindication of the American Enlightenment.