T<\/span>he three weeks of Muslim rage across France during autumn 2005 brought\u00a0Schadenfreude\u00a0<\/i>to many Americans. They saw a thin scab of French hypocrisy scraped off \u2014 revealing a deep wound of invidious religious and racial separatism festering in Muslim ghettoes. As during the August 2003 heat wave that killed nearly 15,000 French elderly in stifling apartments while their progeny enjoyed their state-subsidized vacation at the beach or mountains, French talk of solidarity and moral superiority proved spectacularly at odds with the facts.<\/p>\nSo for much of last October and November, Americans congratulated themselves that French-style rioting could, of course, never happen in the United States. After all, their economy is moribund. Ours is growing at well over 3 percent per year. French unemployment hovers near 10 percent; America\u2019s is half that. Fifty-seven million jobs were created in the U.S. during the past 30 years, only 4 million in all of Europe. Our minority youth, as a result, are much more likely to be working than idling in the streets. And sure enough, in France, about 25 percent of youths between 15 and 24, regardless of race or religion, are out of work.<\/p>\n
After the unrest in our cities during the 1960s and 1970s, Americans increasingly sought through assimilation, intermarriage, and integration to fulfill the ideal of an interracial society. As emblems of our success, Americans can point to cabinet members like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, or Alberto Gonzalez. By contrast, it is almost unimaginable that anyone of Arab-French ancestry would head a major French ministry. We long ago jettisoned the notion that proper citizens should necessarily look like Europeans. The French apparently still have not. Second- or third-generation spokespersons of the American Hispanic community, for instance, are often successful, affluent, and integrated. By contrast, imams who barely speak French after decades of living there, and who from their 1,500 mosques decry the decadence of French culture, were often the only intermediaries between the French government and youthful rioters.<\/p>\n
The accepted view is not just that the American melting pot differs from European separatism, but that the largest bloc of our immigrant residents is itself quite different \u2014 Christian Mexicans who trek across a common 2,000-mile unfenced border, eagerly looking for work. France\u2019s Muslim immigrants bring with them age-old, clash-of-civilizations baggage dating from Poitiers in the 8th century to the 20th-century French colonial war in Algeria. In contrast, Mexico was colonized by European Christians \u2014 and we have had more or less stable relations with the Mexican government for over a century. Moreover, even illegal-alien drug smugglers and gangbangers are not terrorists; we do not fret about their potential sympathy for radical Islam. And the rioters outside of Paris were almost all males, apparently embracing strict gender separation \u2014 antithetical to French culture, and utterly foreign to Mexican immigrant men and women, who cross our border indistinguishably.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All\u2019s Not Well<\/strong><\/p>\nY<\/span>et such contrasts are not the entire story. For despite the many differences, America is not immune from\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0the destructive social and cultural forces now tearing at the seams of French society. Hundreds of thousands of first-generation illegal aliens currently live in Los Angeles and rural California in what are, in effect, segregated communities. In many cases, they are no more integrated \u2014 and no less alienated \u2014 than those in the French suburbs. Instead, these immigrants comprise an entire underclass without sufficient language skills, education, or familiarity with their host country to integrate successfully into society, much less to pass on capital and expertise to ensure that their children are not condemned to perpetual menial labor.<\/p>\nSpanish has become the de facto language for many communities in the southwest U.S. in the same way that Arabic dominates the French suburbs. Mexico City newspapers air the same sort of historical gripes and peddle the same kind of myths as Arab fundamentalists, who drug their poor, uneducated expatriates with stories of al-Andalus and a restored caliphate that will spread once again from southern Europe to the Euphrates.<\/p>\n
In some respects, our situation is worse than France\u2019s. The United States has some 8-12 million illegal aliens \u2014 a population of unlawful residents larger than that of any other country in the Western world \u2014 not France\u2019s 4-7 million mostly Arab-French\u00a0citizens<\/i>. Ten thousand Muslim youths rioted outside Paris; but there are nearly 15,000 illegal-alien felons from Mexico in the California penal system alone, incarcerated at a cost of almost a half billion dollars a year. Portions of the Arizona and California borders have devolved into a Wild West \u2014 a no-man\u2019s-land of drug smuggling, shoot-outs, environmental desecration, and random death. Mexico responds by publishing comic books with safety tips about crossing the border, so that its departing citizens can more safely violate U.S. immigration laws. Meanwhile, Hispanic groups in America complain that increased border surveillance near San Diego has cruelly diverted human traffic into the desert.<\/p>\n
Granted, Americans have proved far more adept at assimilating the Other than have the French; we have not suffered widespread racial or ethnic violence since the 1992 Los Angeles riots. And we do not have a religious or terrorist overtone to our internal tensions. But there are still enough similarities with the French experience to give us pause.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Immigration and Its Discontents<\/strong><\/p>\nI<\/span>n the first place, poor Mexicans come to the U.S. for largely the same reasons that Arabs settle in France (and both were initially welcomed by their hosts). Mexicans and Arabs alike flee corrupt Third World societies and grinding poverty. At least in the beginning, they trust that unskilled and often menial employment in the West \u2014 under the aegis of a far more liberal welfare state and the rule of law \u2014 are better than anything back home. Perhaps at first such jobs are considered an improvement. But by the second generation, the paradox becomes apparent: employers hire migrants and their children expressly on the premise that they will work for lower wages than the natives would accept. If employers were to pay competitive compensation and provide full benefits, there would be little need for immigrants, since in many counties where illegal aliens reside there are enough unemployed non-immigrants to fill such jobs. In America as in France, the society eventually must pay the difference through greater state entitlements to subsidize an (often persistent) underclass.<\/p>\nSo the reasons that Mexicans\u2019 and Arabs\u2019 rates of poverty, alcoholism, incarceration, reliance on entitlements, and high school drop-out are far higher than those of the host population are similar: in a globalized economy, manual labor in the West is now rarely unionized, respected, well-paying, or lasting. Nor are such jobs often looked upon, as they once were, as a sort of entry-level apprenticeship in which character and discipline are inculcated, in which young people gain education and experience before moving up the employment ladder.<\/p>\n
Much of the work offered to immigrants remains in the service sector \u2014 cooking food, making beds, cutting lawns, cleaning toilets \u2014 jobs that become galling for the perennially second-class citizen in constant proximity to his more affluent host, whom he must serve while never quite receiving the compensation or respect he believes is warranted. Such jobs tend to come and go without breeding loyalty on either side. This is why the French-Arab unemployment rate (nearly 20%) is twice the national average, and why nearly one-third of California\u2019s Mexican immigrant households are on public assistance. In each case, foreigners are welcomed in due to a perceived shortage of labor, but their families eventually end up either unemployed or on public assistance at much higher rates than non-immigrant households.<\/p>\n
Many in the second generation lap up their parents\u2019 bitterness, but without the consolation that things are still better in the West than back home. This is one reason that nearly four out of every ten Hispanic high school students are not graduating from high school in four years. Of those that do, only 22.9 percent meet the minimum entry requirements of the California State University system, the less competitive of the state\u2019s two systems. Of Latinos of all statuses in California, less than 10 percent of those over 25 have bachelor\u2019s degrees \u2014 a legacy of their parents who in many cases came to the state without English, without education, without lawful entry, and without well-paying, secure jobs. In some sense, the anger of the tattooed gang member who ends up in San Quentin is not that different from the rage of the car-burning Muslim in the Paris suburbs. Both are resentful, have sufficient entitlement aid to indulge the appetites but insufficient skills to earn a good living; and are eager to blame society for their frustrations.<\/p>\n
In short, the absence of fluency in the host language, little or no education beyond high school, and retention of much of their home country\u2019s culture all conspire to keep millions of unassimilated immigrants \u2014 in both France and the U.S. \u2014 stuck in ethnic enclaves and static jobs that usually don\u2019t pay enough to ensure a middle-class existence for larger-than-average families. This is true even without the specter of prevailing racism and undeniable discrimination. And by middle age their physically demanding jobs often leave such workers injured, ill, or disabled.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Politics of Resentment<\/strong><\/p>\nT<\/span>he problem is not that it is impossible for thousands of maids, street sweepers, fruit pickers, and gardeners to move up to become electricians, small contractors, and government officials, in either France or the U.S. But the pool of newly arrived young immigrants who cannot advance quickly is so large \u2014 and growing \u2014 that our failures in upward mobility overshadow our successes. In postmodern societies, the number of immigrants is a force multiplier, inasmuch as near-instant parity for all is taken to be the only benchmark of success. Therefore the collective failure of millions is far more relevant politically than the individual success of thousands.<\/p>\nIf Islam bolsters resistance to assimilation on the part of French immigrants from the Maghreb, illegality alienates Hispanic immigrants whose cars, taxes, and official documentation exist in a netherworld off the books. Hence many Hispanic youths \u2014 like the Arab population of France, but unlike the Cuban, Korean, or Sikh populations in the U.S. \u2014 embrace varying degrees of ethnic chauvinism to decry de facto inequality.<\/p>\n
Consider, for example, the radical agenda of some of the most vocal ethnic separatists. The slogans of MEChA (El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan<\/i>) \u2014 \u201cEverything for the race. Nothing for those outside the race.\u201d (Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.<\/i>) \u2014 do not differ much from Islamic nationalists\u2019 sentiments in Europe.<\/p>\n
Those embarrassed by such racist mottos argue that ethnic triumphalists in the U.S. are ossified relics of the 1960s, and have tempered their rhetoric in the 21st century. Yet ponder the following essay from Ernesto Cienfuegos on the website\u00a0La Voz de Aztlan<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cThe Voice of Aztlan\u201d) in the wake of the French rioting:<\/p>\nToday, here in Los Angeles, we are already seeing ominous signs of an impending social explosion that will make the French rebellion by Muslim and immigrant youths seem \u201ctame\u201d by comparison. All the ingredients are present including a hostile and racist police as in France. In fact, we came close to having major riots on three separate occasions just this year alone\u2026. There is a strange feeling here in Los Angeles that something sinister is about to happen but no one knows when. All it will take is for a \u201cbird-brain cop\u201d to do something stupid and all hell will break loose. If another major rebellion breaks out here in L.A. it could rapidly spread throughout the USA as it has spread in France\u2026. The social and economic conditions that exist in France that adversely affect its immigrant and Muslim populations also exist here in the USA\u2026. The rebellion that is occurring in France can and will most probably happen here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The largest Hispanic grievance association is still called the National Council of La Raza (\u201cthe Race\u201d), a well-meaning organization that nevertheless appeals to racial solidarity and purity and therefore separatism \u2014 a clear repudiation of the idea of American multiracialism. Its nomenclature would hardly be tolerated were it not for the enormous size of the growing Hispanic community.<\/p>\n
In a 1997 speech before this activist group, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo bragged that \u201cthe Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders\u201d and that Mexican migrants were \u201can important \u2014 a very important \u2014 part of this.\u201d A Zogby poll of Mexican citizens conducted in late May 2002 showed that 58 percent believed that \u201cthe territory of the United States\u2019 southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.\u201d The national newspaper of Mexico,\u00a0Excelsior<\/i>, agreed: \u201cThe American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot.\u201d No wonder then that 57 percent of Mexicans in that same Zogby poll believed that they should have the right to cross the border freely and without U.S. permission.<\/p>\n
In a recent Pew poll, 40 percent of all Mexicans expressed a desire to immigrate to the U.S. That presents an Orwellian dilemma: almost half the population of our southern neighbor wants to leave home and enter our country, while claiming that this promised land ought to be part of the very system that has made their own country uninhabitable. A parallel phenomenon exists in Europe: radical Islamists who dream of Eurabia fail to realize that, without assimilation and adoption of their hosts\u2019 culture, they would only recreate the same discontents that prompted their departure from home in the first place.<\/p>\n
Even if we accept that some Mexican-American leaders occasionally indulge in rhetorical excesses, their appeals to notions of race andreconquista<\/i>\u00a0still echo in mainstream politics. Consider the remarks of Richard Alatorre, a former member of the Los Angeles City Council: \u201cThey\u2019re afraid we\u2019re going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They\u2019re right. We will take them over.\u201d Mario Obledo, former California State Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Jerry Brown \u2014 and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton \u2014 once infamously remarked, \u201cCalifornia is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn\u2019t like it should leave.\u201d Speaking at a Latino gathering in 1995, Art Torres, then Chairman of the California Democratic Party, decried the passage of Proposition 187 denying entitlement benefits to those here illegally: \u201cPower is not given to you. You have to take it. Remember, 187 is the last gasp of white America in California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such pronouncements tend to be encouraged by contemporary group-rights liberalism. Both the French and American governments embrace multiculturalism, which exacerbates the problem and empowers racial chauvinists. Multiculturalism teaches that there is nothing really choiceworthy about the economic, social, and political core values of Western culture, given its historic sins of racism, class exploitation, and sexism. At its worst, multiculturalism can end up, as in France, allowing de facto polygamy among immigrants from North Africa (perhaps 15,000 such families), or, more mildly in the U.S., extenuating or even embracing Chicano student manifestos like this one from a MEChA website at San Jose State University:<\/p>\n
Chicanismo involves a personal decision to reject assimilation and work towards the preservation of our cultural heritage\u2026. By all means necessary, we Chicana\/Chicano estudiantes of Aztl\u00e1n, dedicate ourselves to taking our educational destiny into our own hands through the process of spreading Chicanismo, in the spirit of carnalismo\u2026. As Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztl\u00e1n, we are a nationalist movement of Indigenous Gente that lay claim to the land that is ours by birthright. As a nationalist movement we seek to free our people from the exploitation of an oppressive society that occupies our land.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Second-generation immigrants often take away from this student activism, multicultural school curriculum, government bureaucracy, and popular culture a mixed but mostly pernicious message: that long-standing prejudice intrinsic to a corrupt system is what keeps newcomers down; and consequently that self-esteem and self-confidence can only be imparted by a therapeutic course of study, airing past grievances and proposing new group compensation. Shunned is the idea that traditional education alone allows immigrants to master the host language, gain familiarity with the host country\u2019s traditions and customs, and acquire enough science, math, and liberal arts to compete with long-standing natives.<\/p>\n
The result is often psychological chaos. Too many second-generation Hispanics in the U.S., and Arabs in France, romanticize their \u201cmother\u201d country, which often they have never seen and would never return to if they had \u2014 while deprecating their parents\u2019 adopted society. This schizophrenia is similar to what the polls reveal about the wishes of Mexican citizens themselves. Large numbers believe that the southwest U.S. belongs to them, yet they don\u2019t want to stay in their own country. If Mexico were to absorb the American Southwest, would Mexicans still wish to emigrate there?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hard Choice<\/strong><\/p>\nW<\/span>ith millions of illegal aliens already here, borders wide open in a time of war, and the ideal of assimilation under assault, there really are no more painless choices. Mexico is under no compulsion to reform its corrupt system when millions of its disaffected simply head north and send precious dollars south (some $10-15 billion annually in worker remittances). For Mexico to change the present system would be a lose-lose proposition: more social tension at home, less money coming in from the north.<\/p>\nAn end to cheap, industrious labor in the U.S. would cause initial hardship to the American economy, raise wages and costs, and redefine the American attitude to physical and even menial labor \u2014 positive in the long run, painful and easily demagogued in the short term. Yet because the U.S. has a far better record of assimilation than Europe, it makes no sense for us to continue to emulate European racial separatism, which offers immigrants neither the economic opportunity nor the cultural discipline to succeed.<\/p>\n
We should start by letting in far fewer immigrants from Mexico. An allotment of about 100,000 legal entrants \u2014 reasonable people could differ on the numbers \u2014 would privilege Mexicans (in recognition of our historic ties) but still ensure that those who came would do so legally and in numbers that would mitigate their ghettoization. Rather than predicating entry into the U.S. mostly on family affiliations, we should try to use sensible criteria to assess suitable Mexican immigrants \u2014 knowledge of English, education levels, familiarity with American laws and customs \u2014 to ensure that they are competitive with other newcomers and do not perpetuate an unassimilated underclass.<\/p>\n
Tripartite border enforcement \u2014 a permanent and systematic barrier of some sort, increased manpower for apprehension, and employer sanctions \u2014 is crucial to ensure that immigrants arrive legally and in numbers manageable for assimilation. On this the public \u2014 in a Zogby poll 68 percent of Americans favor stationing troops along the border to curb unlawful entry \u2014 is far ahead of either political party.<\/p>\n
Guest workers are a bad idea, as we learned in the 1950s and \u201960s from our own bitter\u00a0bracero<\/i>\u00a0experience (\u201cgood enough to work for you, but not good enough to live beside you\u201d). Temporary laborers, as we see in the suburbs of Germany and other parts of Europe, will inevitably create a permanent helot class. Moreover, these workers would continually depress wages for entry-level jobs for legal immigrants and our own poor, who find it hard to compete with young Third World illegals who are in no position to be choosy about work or to complain to authorities about employer treatment. There is nothing in the American or European experience with guest workers to suggest that they would willingly leave when their tenure expired, that their sense of exploitation would not create and perpetuate social tension, and that they would not need welfare assistance in times of health crisis or unemployment. Nor is it clear that millions of immigrants would cease coming to the U.S. illegally when they found that they were not accorded guest worker privileges.<\/p>\n
Amnesty is perhaps the most contentious issue in the present immigration debate \u2014 in some polls 70 percent of Americans oppose it. We have had six prior reprieves of various sorts since the notorious blanket amnesty of 1986. These accomplished little other than encouraging more immigrants to come across the border illegally on the logical assumption that in a few years their lawbreaking would be ignored, or rewarded with citizenship. And yet because the problem has mushroomed over four decades, there are now literally millions of Mexicans in their old age who are here illegally, have forgotten life in Mexico, and have lived essentially as Americans. Deporting long-time residents would, if nothing else, be a humanitarian and public relations nightmare.<\/p>\n
Yet some sort of one-time amnesty, as opposed to the old rolling and periodic reprieves, could only be discussed in the context of closing the border, precluding guest worker programs, and returning to assimilationist policies, so that the present pool of millions of illegal aliens would vanish rather than being perpetually replenished. Very rapid assimilation might work if the pool of those who come illegally, without English or education, to work largely in low-paying service jobs, would be vastly curtailed. In some sense, guest workers are far more destabilizing than a one-time amnesty. The former constantly enlarges the number of exploited and soon to be disillusioned aliens; the latter ends it. The prohibition of bilingual government documents and services, and of a racially chauvinistic and separatist curriculum in our schools and universities, would also send a powerful message that one should not come north unless he is willing to become a full-fledged American in every linguistic, cultural, and political sense of the word.<\/p>\n
And, of course, there must be radical change in our own minds and hearts. When encouraged by Americans to adopt the customs and language of citizens, immigrants are more easily accepted; intermarriage and integration naturally follow. We must not forget that it is far easier for a Mexican or an Arab to become part of American or French society, than it is for an expatriate African-American or European-American to be accepted as a Mexican citizen, or a Frenchman to be considered a true citizen of Islamic North Africa.<\/p>\n
America could easily end up like France without sharing all of French society\u2019s pathologies. Alienated populations in both countries have immigrated for similar reasons. And both groups often have passed on their frustrations and disappointments to a subsequent generation who did not fully assimilate or prove competitive with the non-immigrant populace\u2014and were allowed by their hosts to remain separate from society. Nonetheless, contrary to tendentious and inflammatory predictions, the rebellion in France is not likely to happen here. But there is no reason to tempt fate, and every reason to ameliorate our own problems before they worsen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson Claremont Review of Books [This piece appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of the\u00a0Claremont Review of Books.]\u00a0 The three weeks of Muslim rage across France during autumn 2005 brought\u00a0Schadenfreude\u00a0to many Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[775],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-12J","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4015,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-to-eliminate-irans-nuclear-weapons\/","url_meta":{"origin":4013,"position":0},"title":"How to Eliminate Iran’s Nuclear Weapons","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Claremont Review of Books [This piece appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of the\u00a0Claremont Review of Books.] \u201cBad and worse\u201d is now the conventional wisdom regarding our choices in dealing with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2019s efforts to obtain the bomb. We are told that Western air\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2006"","block_context":{"text":"April 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/april-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7914,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-ideal-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":4013,"position":1},"title":"Obama\u2019s Ideal Revolution","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"America\u2019s current revolutionary inspiration seems to derive more from Robespierre than Madison. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online At the end of the 18th century, there were two great Western revolutions \u2014 the American and the French. Americans opted for the freedom of the individual, and divinely endowed\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-ideal-revolution\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"(President Obama: Pool Photo\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/pic_giant_100914_SM_Obama-Robespierre_0-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4132,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-european-awakening-against-islamic-fascism\/","url_meta":{"origin":4013,"position":2},"title":"A European Awakening Against Islamic Fascism?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Real Clear Politics Over the last four years Americans have played a sort of parlor game wondering when \u2014 or if \u2014 the Europeans might awake to the danger of Islamic fascism and choose a more muscular role in the war on terrorism. But after the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2006"","block_context":{"text":"February 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/february-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4059,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rocks-and-ripples\/","url_meta":{"origin":4013,"position":3},"title":"Rocks and Ripples","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Playing it smart in the Middle East. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Fear in the U.S. of Russian nukes made strange bedfellows during the Cold War, like our relationship with the shah of Iran, Franco, Somoza, and Pinochet. The logic was that such strongmen, unlike Communist thugs, would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2006"","block_context":{"text":"March 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/march-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4139,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bad-taste-and-freedom\/","url_meta":{"origin":4013,"position":4},"title":"Bad Taste and Freedom","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sparks sure fly when the premodern world of religious piety and the postmodern world of Monty Python collide. Middle Eastern Muslims have demonstrated, threatened, boycotted and burned in their fury over European newspapers republishing months-old distasteful cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. 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