The French demoralization

A reader has kindly e-mailed us the link to Mark Steyn’s column contrasting the conditions in Iraq and France: “Iraq may be on the edge, but France has hit the rock bottom abyss.” Steyn is on his usual roll in this column: “In Paris this spring, a government official explained to me how Europeans had created a more civilised society than America – socialised healthcare, shorter work weeks, more holidays. We’ve just seen where that leads: gran’ma turned away from the hospital to die in an airless apartment because junior’s sur la plage. M Chirac’s somewhat tetchy suggestion that his people should rethink their attitude to the elderly was well taken. But Big Government inevitably diminishes its citizens’ capacity to take responsibility, to the point where even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the state should do something about.”
“Meanwhile, Maggie Pernot wrote the other day to chide me for my continued defence of the Rumsfeld Death Camps at Guantanamo. The prisoners, she complains, are ‘kept in tiny, chainlink outdoor cages where they were likely to be rained upon’. In fact, they have sloping roofs and cool concrete floors, perfect for the climate. If they had solid walls rather than airy wire mesh, they’d be Parisian sweatboxes and everyone would be dead. By contrast, if those thousands of French pensioners had been captured by the Marines and detained by Rummy in Cuba, they’d be alive today.”

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