Liberal Talk Radio

On the anniversary of Theo van Gogh’s vile, disgusting dismemberment and murder, the suburbs of Paris are burning:

“My brother paid the price of zero tolerance with his life,” Adel Benna, brother of one of the dead youths, said in an interview, referring to Sarkozy’s anti-crime mantra.

According to Benna, his brother and two other friends had been playing a game of pickup soccer and were on their way home to break the daily Ramadan fast last Thursday when they spotted a police checkpoint. Officers there were demanding identity papers, a common tactic in the high-crime neighborhoods of the Paris suburbs.

One of the boys had left his papers at home, Benna said. Hungry and fearful of being dragged into the police station after a day of fasting, they tried to dodge the checkpoint, Benna said.

Witnesses told the family that police began chasing the boys, according to Benna and other relatives. French officials have given several versions of the incident, with some officials saying that although the youths were not pursued by police, they believed they were being chased, and panicked. The teenager who survived, the son of Turkish immigrants, is undergoing surgery for severe burns, according to family members.

In 40 years, perhaps it will become an interesting plot point in a movie about the bad, tragic old days when no one could get along. Provided civilization still exists.

But speaking of Fukuyama, I wish I knew someone who had online access to the Wall Street Journal, because this op-ed he wrote sounds good. Thankfully it’s excerpted liberally elsewhere:

Fukuyama’s conclusion: Democracy is desirable for its own sake, but it is not a solution ? at least in the short term ? to the problem of Islamic radicalism. Moreover, in the West, where democracy already reigns supreme, there is no peace without assimilation.

Is there any way out of this for Europe? I don’t see one. Do you? What’s more, the idea directly refutes one of the best, most noble reasons the U.S. had to invade Iraq, and if we’re doing anything important there, that has to be front and center. Troubling stuff, for sure.