Root causes of the Paris riots

The new hot topic is, of course, the Paris riots. Reactionary forces, predictably, blame “Muslim extremism” and immigration.

While the religious differences are a factor, the riots in Paris have far more in common with the recent riots in Toledo (or in Watts a generation earlier) than they do with events in the Middle East.

The prevailing social democratic model of the nation state, embraced by both conservatives and liberals in the US and France alike, is fundamentally flawed.

Even merely nominally free-market conservatives have long paid homage to Bastiat. Here’s some of what Bastiat had to say about the nature of the State:

“The oppressor no longer acts directly by his own force on the oppressed. No, our conscience has become too fastidious for that. There are still, to be sure, the oppressor and his victim, but between them is placed an intermediary, the state, that is, the law itself.”

The modern nation state requires, and typically creates, a violent urban underclass. The growth of that underclass is a result of state socialist / state capitalist / fascist public policy. The existence of that underclass provides a low-grade internal threat to the middle-class that serves to bolster the mythology the State promulgates to apologize for its own existence.

While I don’t believe Muslim extremism is the cause of the Paris riots, it may very well end up being its beneficiary. The inherent instability of the status quo makes that status quo no longer an option. The world is at a crossroads — one path leads to an orderly, peaceful, prosperous and free stateless society. The other leads to a new global caliphate.

Relevant links:
“Riots in Paris: The continuing crises of statism”
“Here is what is REALLY happening in France!”