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Vosne-Romanee, France - It is important to visit France now, especially a wine region like Burgundy, before that country becomes an Islamic Republic and the new authorities uproot all the vineyards. Over the last century or so, at least since L’Affaire Dreyfuss in the 1890’s, Europe has traded some six million Jews for some 20 million Muslims. This must be the worst trade since the Kansas City Athletics traded Roger Maris for a handful of scrubs to the New York Yankees after the 1959 season.
Rioting and Looting
Last month the police, at a road checkpoint near Paris, stopped an Algerian immigrant youth driving erratically on the bus lane in an unregistered delivery van with foreign license plates. He was driving without a license or insurance, and he attempted to drive away while talking with the officers. That was when he was shot and killed by the police. The victim was well-known to the police, as he had previously been arrested a dozen times for various offenses, including four counts of resisting arrest.
The local prosecutor has charged the police officer who fired the shot with voluntary homicide, concluding that “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” Over US$1.6 million was raised in less than a week by a crowdfunding campaign to support the accused officer, which was four times the amount raised for the victim. The officer defended himself by saying that he fired in order to prevent a dangerous chase. His lawyer has argued that he did not intend to kill the victim. At the victim’s funeral, his mother and grandmother appealed for peace, but his father was absent.
The shooting occurred in Nanterre, an immigrant suburb a short way southwest of Paris, and led to rioting and looting there and in other housing projects and immigrant suburbs. This occurred not only in the suburbs around Paris like L’Hay-les-Roses, Aubervilliers and Saint-Denis, but also in cities like Lille, Nantes, Bourdeaux, Lyon and especially Marseille. The rioters vandalized a monument to victims of the Holocaust and fighters in the Resistance, and also rammed a burning truck into the house of a local mayor, injuring his wife and children.
The rioters also set fire to schools, libraries, police stations, city halls, post offices, bus depots and other public buildings, erected barricades, and threw fireworks and stones at police officers. Observers in India compared the destruction to the burning of the Nalanda library in Bihar around the XIIth century, also by Muslim immigrants. Most rioters were teenagers wearing black clothes and masks, and some 45,000 riot police were deployed nationwide. The looters targeted such retailers as Louis Vuitton, Zara, Orange cellphone stores, Aldi, Nike and Apple. In one Paris suburb, a truck was used to break down the doors of a shopping center in order to facilitate the looting of stores inside. By far the most common name among the over 2,000 arrested was Mohamed.
During the first night of riots, President Macron partied in Paris with Elton John while France burned. The entertainer appropriately played “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” and “Burn Down the Mission.” President Macron observed that the violence has been directed against the institutions of the French Republic. He blamed it on social media, which is creating flash mobs, and video games, and he asked youths to stay home. What does a childless man know about that?
In response, although they are disarmed by gun control laws, most French citizens rallied to support the police and firemen. The president of the Paris region declared: “The Republic will not yield and we will fight back.” A local police chief interviewed by Sky News said that these were not ordinary rioters, but that the police felt like they were fighting a civil war.
This is what happens when you import unassimilable aliens into a welfare state. Both sides are barbarians; both those who came and those who let them in. Mister, they could use a man like Charles Martel again.
Wedding in Wine Region
Last weekend my wife and I attended a wedding at a medieval church in Burgundy, with the reception following in Chateau du Clos de Vougeot, Cote-d’Or, a museum and working winery. The groom’s mother was tutored in English by my wife 45 years ago, right after my wife graduated from college. We have stayed in touch with their family, and have exchanged several visits. Once their children visited during our summer vacation in Oregon, and my wife cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, so that they could experience authentic American cuisine.
The Burgundy region, of course, is a delight for food and wine, so after the wedding festivities, we explored the provincial cities of Dijon and Beaune, and the wine-growing towns around them. As far back as Gregory of Tours, writing a History of the Franks in the VIth century, the food and wine of Burgundy have been considered awesome. The new revolutionary regime in France, however, would ban pork and wine from the local cuisine, which is certainly something worth fighting for.
We had croissants (crescent rolls), slathered with preserves made from local raspberries (framboises), and café au lait (coffee with milk) for breakfasts. Thereafter during the day we had: soupe a l’oignon (onion soup), salade verte (green salad), boeuf bourguignon (beef stew braised in red wine), boeuf Wellington (filet mignon coated with pate and duxelles, then wrapped in puff pastry), steak frites (steak & fries), coq au vin (chicken braised in red wine), pommes de terre (potatoes), haricots verts (green beans), baguettes (bread loaves), charcuterie (cured meats), plats de fromage (cheese plates), and, of course, the regional wines. No snails (escargots) or sausages made from pork intestines (andouillettes) for your correspondent. Walking around afterwards was essential for digestion.
The top red Burgundy wines are made from the pinot noir grape, and they are unequaled around the world. This grape also grows well: in the Willamette Valley of Oregon; along the Russian River and Carneros Creek in Northern California; and on the Central Coast of California near Santa Barbara. See the movie Sideways, 2004. The white Burgundy wines are made from the chardonnay grape, which grows well in many parts of the world, especially in California.
Deep France
This expression, Deep France (La France profonde), represents the existence of a deep and profound French national culture, found in provincial cities and towns, and closely tied to agricultural production, such as in the Burgundy region. This culture escapes the “dominant ideologies” of the large cities, and especially the “hegemony” of Paris in national culture. See: Michel Dion, La France Profonde, 1988, and Celia Brayfield, Deep France, 2004. Almost every town in France, even the smallest, hosts a monument to the local men who died in the First and Second World Wars, 1914-18 and again 1939-45. The monuments proclaim that they gave their lives defending La France (in effect, Mother France)>
This culture is the source of the recent demonstrations against President Macron’s policies, demanding more regard for the interests of ordinary French citizens. The protesters often use their vehicles, such as tradesmen’s vans and trucks, in going about their business. This requires that they carry a yellow safety vest, which they must wear outside their vehicles in case of breakdown on the road. Thus, theirs were known as the “yellow vests” protests, conducted against the so-called expert technocrats with little accountability who govern France and most of the countries in the European Union. We saw some signs for “Frexit,” that is, supporting the exit by the French Republic from the European Union and the suffocating regulations of its bureaucrats.
In 1962 President Charles de Gaulle asked: “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” Well, Mr. President, the answer from the citizens of a free republic is: “With a light touch, applying the principles of laissez faire.” See Frederic Bastiat, The Law, 1850. The glory of the French Republic resides not in its so-called expert technocrats administering the affairs of its citizens, but in the entrepreneurship of its citizens innovating to create so many varieties of cheese, and so many other innovations for which the French are world famous. These innovations occur not only in cheese, but also in wines, food, fashion (couture), perfumes, and the like. See LVMH. These innovations are created by artisans and entrepreneurs who set and maintain the highest standards in their field of endeavor, despite the heavy dead hand of the French administrative state.
One and Indivisible
Over the last 40 years or so, mostly French Socialists led by the likes of Presidents Mitterrand, Hollande and Macron, have encouraged Muslim immigrants from former colonies to come to the French welfare state, without requiring cultural or economic assimilation. Today there are some 750 “no-go” zones (zones urbaines sensibles) for French law enforcement. This statistic was not disputed by a young civil judge that I spoke with directly. Similar situations exist in other European countries.
The expert technocrats operating the administrative states, in France and other European countries, have betrayed the interests of their own citizens, by allowing massive immigration without requiring assimilation and compliance with the rule of law. As a result, the French Republic now contains two nations and two jurisdictions, even though the French Constitution proclaims that the French Republic is one and indivisible (this is the Fifth Republic since 1789). As President Lincoln observed, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
