Apr 24th, 2007, 03:25 PM
I think a good Western European politics thread would be nice once in a while. The central issues I see are where to go from here with social democracy, and what is to be thought and done about the incredible influx of North Africans.
I had a friend who was the son of wealthy Russian expatriates to France, and he was very frustrated that there was so little difference in quality of living between his doctor parents and the average worker. I've talked to a lot of people happy with socialism, but his perspective was unique in that he was so rich. I read a very good article once talking about how to improve socialism without making it less social, and I really agreed with its premise that communal self-reliance is the best goal. That is, keep the market heavily socialized, but move toward gradually smaller and smaller markets so that the same alienation Marx warned to be inevitable of any post-IR market doesn't happen.
While Fox news will label European parties "conservative" and "liberal", in my experience these labels have no relevance except where one applies them to how big a dick a party is to immigrants. So, I really don't know which party would be better to really make socialism as ideal as possible, but I suspect it'd probably be Les Verts. Except on the southern coast where most municipal signs were bilingual Spanish/Arabic, I saw not nearly as much African culture in Spain as I did in France. While heavily social, the New Spain seems to be pretty conservative, but this is probably related to it having only recently awaken from the Franco nightmare.
On European immigration, though, I really have no idea how I feel. Obviously most North Africans in Europe move for a reason, and I don't harbor bad feelings for them as if they were trying to destroy European heritage. But that being said, I doubt most Europeans understand the true level that this is taking place. I lived a short while in a major French city, and when it came to daily transactions I spent the mast majority of my money on immigrant-run/oriented businesses. This wasn't even intentional, it just happened that they were the most accommodating to a poor foreign student (not to mention their take on French was much easier to understand). Even though Fallaci, a horrible dead bitch, strongly lied about the statistics it is still overwhelming how much of France isn't French. I'm not worried about this from a cultural Darwinism point of view, but I can definitely see how the economics behind it could be rather bleak. Many Americans assume it's the same story as Mexicans in the United States, but in my experience North Africans in France have had very little relative trouble with social mobility. (Speaking of which, I read an article that may have been posted here about how the American ideal of social mobility is less a reality here than the rest of the industrialized world.)
It's not about how to screw the immigrants, it's about how to make life as best as possible for all people in Western Europe. I suspect that there is something special about France that makes it desirable for North Africans, and my guess is its lenient laws. (Yes, many if not most North Africans already speak French, but I doubt this is very strong of a factor.) Germany has enormous immigrant populations, but it's my understanding that they're still subject to extremely difficult hurdles to obtain representation. I remember my German professor saying that German citizenship laws were flagrantly racist when were reading a book dealing with Balkan refugees back in 2003, although a German friend of mine insists that this has changed. Die Toten Hosen have more than one song about German anti-foreign policies and attitudes.
I think it's true that whether one wants to embrace or scourge the immigrants, the worst thing to be done is to ignore them. The principle reason is that the more the situation allows them to sponge of the social resources of France, the more cheated the working Frenchman feels regardless of how true it is. If people have nothing in a sane tone to read about millions of North Africans living in Europe, they're going to read La Forza della Ragione then vote Le Pen instead.
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