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France continues to burn

This is the tenth night of general rioting in France, with the BBC reporting 900 cars burned in this story, though their banner update cites the higher number of 1,300. Violence has spread to central Paris, Toulouse and Nantes. Al Jazeera is reporting on this as well.

Tim and I were discussing this yesterday. This violence appears to be a direct consequence of failure to integrate, or care about integrating, people into society in a meaningful way. There are people in the United States who believe they can force integration by mandating English as the only language and other "cultural laundering" procedures. Far better, I think, to take the route that has been demonstrated to be effective in our first two centuries and integrate people by adapting to include their culture.

The San Jose area features Spanish-language adds for Korean-brand instant noodles. This is what we want, not mandating that people abandon their roots. In time, all roots grow together anyway.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 06, 2005 12:47 AM.

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