Charles Krauthammer Bets on the Rioters

Here Krauthammer makes a number of points that have been made by other writers, but with more memorable bits than most:

"With current trends," Professor Bernard Lewis has said, "Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the 21st century." The future? "Europe will be part of the Arab west, of the Maghreb [Muslim northwest Africa]." Today's rioting youth are just a bit ahead of their time in claiming their upcoming patrimony.

The ethnic underclass, jobless and futureless, warehoused in sterile and isolated block housing, has been seething for decades. France has responded with willful blindness (even before this intifadeh, France was experiencing dozens of car arsons a night, but you did not hear about it because official France just accepted this as the norm) and pacification, creating a lavish welfare system to keep its angry youth well clad, well fed and well provided with cell phones.

But they want more than cake for eating. They want a future. The rest of France has for decades been wanting only a present--just a few more years of fine wine and steady work in a superregulated, 35-hr.-workweek, cozy social compact that makes it almost impossible for a worker to be fired and almost impossible for the offspring of immigrants to be hired.