Eleanor Beardsley, NPR, December 28, 2009
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a series of town hall-style debates on the question of French identity. He says the meetings will help to clarify and reaffirm the nation’s values in an age of mass immigration.
But critics say the debates are divisive and call them a thinly veiled ploy to win over right-wing voters.
{snip}
Ultimately, the government plans to produce a handful of policy proposals from the outcome of these meetings. And Sarkozy says he hopes the national soul-searching might help answer questions such as whether people should be obligated to sing the national anthem and how to share French values with immigrants.
But if Sarkozy thought an examination of Frenchness would bring people together, the debates are having the opposite effect. They have ignited controversy and exposed both fears and raw nerves. The opposition Socialists accuse Sarkozy of whipping up xenophobic sentiment.
It wasn’t long before hints of such sentiment arose during the gathering in Nanterre.
“I feel like the French republic is retreating in certain areas,” said one man who stood up to speak. “Our kids aren’t even served pork in school cafeterias anymore.”
The speaker, David Racheline, turned out to be a member of France’s far-right National Front party. Most French people think the debates are a political stunt by Sarkozy to garner votes from the far right. But Racheline said the tactic won’t work.
“Mr. Sarkozy got elected on certain ideas, and he’s betrayed them all. We’ve never had more immigrants than now. The economy is in shambles. We have no national security, and we’re the lap dogs of the Americans once again. That is why he is so unpopular,” Racheline said.
{snip}
Many Muslims showed up at the debate. France has Western Europe’s largest Muslim population and has long searched for ways to accommodate Islam without undermining its cherished separation of church and state. But Muslims say they are stigmatized by these debates, which they say highlight who is not French rather than underlining a common identity.
{snip}
A schoolteacher got up to speak about the importance of secularism. The separation of church and state seems to be one point everyone at the debate in Nanterre agreed upon. A Muslim headscarf ban in public schools has largely been accepted because most Muslims also embrace the French republic’s secular ideals.
While the debate on national identity is raging in parliament, the French public looks on in amusement and horror as every day brings a new and more outrageous revelation from some corner of France. The mayor of one small town was caught on camera making an anti-immigrant remark.
“We’re being eaten alive,” he said. “There are already 10 million of them who are getting paid to do nothing.”
{snip}
“France was built by immigrants, and people who come here are welcome,” Sarkozy said. “But they have to respect our values. This is a noble debate that will help us to avoid what happened in Switzerland with the minarets.”
{snip}
Original article
(Posted on December 31, 2009)
Comments
The french have already settled this issue.
France is a muslim state, ruled by a muslim minority. The rest dhimmi slaves to islam, a large number of whom will be put to death.
By not fighting back against this, the french have chosen this fate for themselves. Timing is the only issue.
I take it that these mythical muslim immigrants of days past (if you listen to the inference) who ‘built France’ were of sturdier stock than the 10 million listless muslims who are on welfare that they have now?
Another exercise in building self esteem that’ll turn into feelings of jealous anger and righteous entitlement by a group whose ancestors contributed little (or none), but who’ll now wonder where their Riviera Villas are?http://tinyurl.com/yed29ar
Sigh.
“France was built by immigrants,”
Just how far back in history must liberal politicians go to attempt to make a point? Since “everyone” emerged from Africa, is the entire world is made of immigrants? Why are some peoples recognized as indigenous only because we have little or no record of their movements and only a little concerning their oppression of others. Why are European nations (or their cultural extensions) exclusively (as opposed to China or India) considered the domain of the immigrant?
Modern France was built by indigenous white populations. To term them immigrants is nothing but a political foil for the dismantling of the genuine French identity. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that like other Germanic tribes were pushed west by Atilla - a non white invader who seemed to revel in nothing less than destruction and mayhem. He was defeated by an alliance of Romans, Gothic tribes, Burgundians, Saxons, and Celts in the fifth century. All this occurred in the pre-modern epic. The language and other cultural basics were settled or modified then by other Europeans with similar values and SIMILAR DNA. After that time, Christianity came from the East, as well as other things such as the Arab Expansion that utilized Islam as its justification. Islam still sees Europe as the natural continuance in its expansion.
So the struggle still continues today. Sarkozy is an unwitting political opportunist. I hope that more of the French population will refamiliarize themselves with their heritage and rid themselves of the politicians and One World Socialists who really only want power in the state. It’s the old story; they just want the land and its wealth.
Built by immigrants? That is the same lie used by US politicians. Difference being that you can use twisted logic along with the lie to convince portions of the American public of this dubious fact. But the French? France? No! No! No! The French built France. There may be some minor internal regional differences but the French built France. The French died to prevent the Germans, the Austrians, the English and the Italians from eating their territory.
The politicians made a dreadful mistake at the end of empire. To attempt to keep a “French Community” they inadvertently allowed their former colonies to colonize France. The politicians who in the 1960s who allowed this immigration no doubt felt that the newcomers would either 1)become “French” or 2)remain a manageable minority. It is hard to believe that anyone would wish the horror that awaits the real French a few years hence was really what they intended.
France will be dragging behind even England in realizing the horrible mistake they made in importing third worlders. But, make no mistake about it, learn they will.
France is as much affected by the worsening world economy as any other nation in the West. And, they already have a home-grown insurgency nestled within their borders whose rioting and violence costs the country billions per year.
Look for geurilla warfare against the government to begin by 2011.
whiteplight gives a good history lesson on the origins of France. I will add that the native ‘Gallo-Romans’ who ended up under the control of the Franks were not only not destroyed, but largely assimilated the conquerors into their own Latin culture.
And it should be also remembered that the same Franks in AD 732 repelled the Islamic Moors at Poitiers/Tours. A battle that the politically correct have downplayed in importance.
Where is the Charles Martel of the 21st Century?
Christianity burns out every other stalk, every other leaf in the field, until nothing is left but Christianity.
Then Christianity self-destructs, burning up in a conflagration of dubious history and questionable doctrines.
What is left in the field then is liberalism, which is the universalism and altruism of Christianity writ large, minus the supernatural.
France is just a few years ahead of most Western nations.
You know it would be really wonderful if people began holding politicians truly accountable for their actions. Even if it didn’t stop the absolute destruction of Western Society it would certainly be just.
“france was built by immigrants”,,,,,,
That may be the single most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. Even with the most pro non-White spin, such revisionism is absolutely ludicrous.
“France was built by immigrants”,,,,,,
I guess Julius Ceasar and his Roman legions were “immigrants”….
France was built by white people- the gauls and the romans.
“The opposition Socialists accuse Sarkozy of whipping up xenophobic sentiment.”
“Difference being that you can use twisted logic along with the lie to convince portions of the American public of this dubious fact. “
One thing to note is that immigration to the US is more recent and the US is a much younger country than France.
‘France was built by immigrants’.
The fact is this:
Just how long does the US have before the obama/democrat machine pushes their next project, “Immigration Reform”? They see how splendidly it’s working for Europe, that is in the destruction of a white, Christian Europe. Is it no wonder that the two mightiest Asian nations, China and Japan, refuse any immigration. Even Mao kicked out the small number of Africans attending university there. They just plain got tired of all the rapes, thieving, and murdering by blacks. So, as a white, Christian citizen in the US we are a target, much like the hapless French, in our own country, of our own hands.
It is looking more and more that China will rule the whole world without having to do much except wait.
Maybe the future Chinese rulers will appreciate white culture and history more than our current rulers.
“France was built by immigrants”
Our “liberal” politicians use a similar line on us: America is a nation of immigrants so how can a “good” American be against immigration? The late 19th and early 20th Century saw mostly white Europeans with cultural values not much different than those of native Americans. These folks helped to build this country and their children and grand-children assimilated into Americans. The black and brown immigrants coming in the late 20th and early 21st Century have no similar cultural values to ours, will never assimilate even after many generations and are tearing the country down. If not stopped our fate will be no different than that of France.
Here’s the new party line: Black slaves and semi-indigenous mestizos built the United States, immigrants built France and the rest of Europe, and whites are to blame for the hell holes that are Zimbabwe, South Africa, and every other failed state you can name.
The comment about France being settled by immigrants is absurd. A majority of the white population of France can trace its ancestry back many hundreds of years. Nor is America a country “built by immigrants” in the commonly accepted understanding of that phrase. Anyone who came either from the British Isles or elsewhere in the B. empire to the American colonies, prior to 1775, was simply relocating.They were already either British citizens or subjects, not immigrants. The 1790 federal census revealed that 90% of the American population was from the B. Isles. Even if one’s ancestors came to America say, during the 19th or early 20th centuries, I would consider them settlers, not immigrants. They helped build the country.There were no government case workers waiting for these folks when they got off the boat. It is a favorite ploy of the open borders lobby to use the “we are all immigrants mantra”to establish a moral equivalence between a legal settler and an illegal alien. Don’t be deceived by these fallacious arguments.
“France was built by immigrants, and people who come here are welcome,” Sarkozy said…”
Sarkozy is both an idiot and a liar. He is also the puppet of Canadian billionaire Paul Desmarais, a man who is quite simply anti-democracy.
Sarkozy himself was born in France to Hungarian immigrant parents.
France was never built by immigrants. In fact, immigrants are trying to destroy France.
EEuro,
france has always been very good at assimilating talent (picasso, stravinsky, derrida, kristeva ionesco, etc.).
like everywhere else in europe, they have found muslims to be utterly unassimilible, a new criminal welfare class, and instead of facing the fact, have begun emiting US style gibberish.
but they might have learned from us that rivers of PC gibberish do not cure ethnic conflict…
“France was built by immigrants, and people who come here are welcome,” Sarkozy said.
Sarcoma appears to be saying that because France was built by immigrants people who come to France are welcome. But even if France (or any country) was built by people who arrived from elsewhere it doesn’t follow that people from elsewhere should be endlessly welcomed. In any case, France, even if it was built by immigrants (let’s humor him), was not built by Islamic immigrants; indeed, it was built by white immigrants, so his own logic would require only white immigrants to be welcomed.
“Druid Among You” (#7) makes the salient point: Western (Christian) civilization has neither the doctrine nor the will to mount a serious self-defense.
Before the Reformation, the public was protected from the Bible and a Charles Martel was possible.
Today we are drunk and drowsy with the wine of meekness.
Druid spoke rightly when he said that Christianity devolves into mere do-good-ism and “tolerance.”
If there is a backbone in the Christian religion, we had better find it. And use it.
Calling into account the value Christianity places on traditional masculinity…..Is a logical calling… The ideal man is supposed to Resist yee not evil… but instead allow his neighbor to strike his face on both sides then follow up with praying for the violator of his dignity if not health. Thus martyr’s were praised for volunteering to undergo the most horrid deaths so to enter heaven all the sooner. This does’nt say much for self respect or individuality or the zest for life in this magnificent world. Christianity is all about love and kindness and sharing….roses whithout thorns…yin without yang…Am I wrong? Is it a better world that has no room for competition or individuality? There is a massive difference in old testament repeated God ordained genocidal war and new testament comandment to love everyone as your very self! To me love is actually a very rare thing that is of the gem category… one of the rare things possible in a life well lived… To be commanded to love every person indiscriminately… does not seem to leave much room for individual taste or free thought , I can’t see it leaves much meaning to the word love either. In fact if I had to Psycho analyze the two testaments.. the first seems hyper masculine the second hyper feminine..possibly reaction.
Every terrorist attack that occurs in the Western world acts as a catalyst of sorts for others to join in. I suspect, besides martyrdom, they love the publicity they recive afterwards.
France has one of the most contentious, violent, group of ingrates from the Muslim world than any other. How many cars burned on an AVERAGE NIGHT did the government say occurs? I think it is something like 100 vehicles. That should compute to around a couple of million dollars per day. The insurance rates must be astronomical.
But worse than that, these people are encouraged by the lack of any real complaints against them by the radical leftist French media and government. In fact, after each outbreak of violence these fools in authority and the media wring their hands with worry, wondering what they can do to make things right with their third world hordes. It reminds me of this country and the way blacks do as they want without being criticized as a group as they should be.
I think what the blacks in this country, and the miscreants in France, don’t realize is that THEIR chickens just might be coming home to roost in the next year or two and they will learn all to well how heavy handed repercussions can be for them.
Sarkozy is an outrageous liar: “France was built by immigrants, and people who come here are welcome,” Sarkozy said. “But they have to respect our values. This is a noble debate that will help us to avoid what happened in Switzerland with the minarets.”
The Goth immigrants of the early Christian era were the immigrants who built France, you ignorant fool! You yourself are descended from Humgarians and Jews. Muslims would kill these immigrants if given a chance.
A few Jewish, East European and Polish immigrants helped France through the years, very few. France was built by the French and by men like Louis XIV and Napoleon who would have crushed and expelled the Muslims. Will the anniversary of Tours be a national holiday? France must revert to an official Christian state to survive.
France was built by Frenchmen, but it’s being torn down by immigrants:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60010D20100101
Druid spoke rightly when he said that Christianity devolves into mere do-good-ism and “tolerance.”
If there is a backbone in the Christian religion, we had better find it. And use it.
The United States was built by settlers and immigrants, but Western Europe was built by indigenous people. One of the most pernicious myths exported by American multiculturalists is that all white countries are countries of immigration. This is a bald-faced lie. Why aren’t India or China countries of immigration? Could it be those countries don’t need or want immigrants. Does France, Holland, Germany, or Britain really need or want them?
To Anonymous #29: criticism of Christian meekness is not equivalent to “neo-pagan nonsense.”
As to Isabel and Ferdinand, remember, I was critiquing Christianity since the Reformation.
I suppose Yeats said it best: “The worst are full of passionate intensity; the best lack all conviction.”
How can you look around you and not see that our culture requires a wholesale critique? Otherwise we will suffer a wholesale destruction.
