Fjordman on France: Can a Wounded Nation Heal Itself?

Below are excerpts from Fjordman’s latest essay at the Brussels Journal:

Here is a quote by Nicolas Sarkozy from 2006, before he became French President:

[S]ecurity is the responsibility of the State, I am against militias, I am against the private ownership of firearms, and I’m trying to make you think about that. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he’ll use his weapon more effectively than you anyway so you’re risking your life. If the criminal is not armed and you are and you shoot, your life will be ruined, because killing someone over a theft is not in line with the republican values that are mine. The private ownership of firearms is dangerous. I understand your exasperation for having been burglarized two times, I understand the fear that your wife and daughter may have but the answer is in the efficiency of the police and the efficiency of the judiciary process, the answer is not in having guns at home.

Yes, but what happens when the state neither can nor wants to protect its citizens, which is clearly the case in France and in many other Western countries today? Here is another quote by the same man, this time as president, in July 2008, when he announced the creation of a new “Mediterranean Union” in a huge meeting between European and Arab leaders: “The goal of this summit for the Mediterranean, of this Union for the Mediterranean, is that we learn to love each other instead of continuing to hate each other and wage war,” Sarkozy told a news conference. That same month he also declared that Ireland will have to hold a second referendum after Irish voters rejected the EU Constitution, the same Constitution which French and Dutch voters had previously rejected but which was implemented anyway under another name, the Lisbon Treaty. In saner times we would have called this a coup d’état, committed not just in one country but in many countries simultaneously.

The European Union is an organization of corrupt parasites and power-grabbing traitors, mixed up with some dangerously naive fools. EU leaders are intent on flooding their countries with even more Muslims at the same time as immigrants commit countless acts of violence against native Europeans. The greatest organized betrayal in history is celebrated as a victory for peace and tolerance. Our so-called leaders open the floodgates to people who are, always have been, and always will be hostile to everything we hold dear, and tell us to love them. Unfortunately, others have rather different plans for us.

Iranian writer Amir Taheri explains how al Qaeda’s chief theoretician, Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji, in his new book Governance in the Wilderness suggests that low-intensity war should be extended to anywhere in the world with a significant Muslim presence, creating parallel societies resembling “liberated zones” set up by Marxist guerrillas in parts of Latin America in the twentieth century. The Jihadis are to begin by giving areas where Muslims live a distinctly Islamic appearance, by imposing special styles of dress for women and beards for men. Then they start imposing Islamic law. In the final phase, they should create a parallel system of taxation and law enforcement. This is already being implemented in many European urban areas.

- - - - - - - - -

[…]

In July 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy, while laying the foundation stone of new rooms for the Arts of Islam at the Louvre in Paris, stated that “France is a friend of Arab countries. Islam is the bearer of one of the oldest and most prestigious civilizations in the world,” and the new exhibition is “an opportunity for the French and all visitors to the Louvre to see that Islam is progress, science, refinement, modernity.” Prince Alwalid Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah’s nephew, is an important donor to the project. “France wants peace, France does not want the clash of civilizations between East and West,“ said the French president. “France says to the Arab countries that it will help them acquire the energy of the future, nuclear energy used for peaceful civilian purposes.”

So, France wants peace, and since we all know that Islam is peace, does that mean that France wants Islam? Probably not all the French, but their political elites certainly seem to want it or else have resigned themselves to that prospect.

[…]

Things went seriously wrong with Europe starting with World War I in 1914, which radicalized the continent, paved the way for the totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and in the long run perhaps the European Union. But you could argue successfully that some of the seeds of our current problems were planted as far back as in 1789. In my book, the French Revolution is one of the worst disasters ever to befall this continent, and I simply cannot understand why so many people celebrate it as something positive. France is a wounded nation, a nation that worships its wounds and wants everybody else to share them, too. Until a sound and healthy French culture has been restored, if that is indeed still possible, others should forcefully reject any claims to French moral or intellectual leadership.