November 08, 2005 -- Pat Buchanan describes it in terms of the fall of the West.  "Rome conquered the barbarians, then the barbarians conquered Rome."  Pat often dons his twenty league boots, these days, but it is he, not the West, who has seen his best days.  Rome, whose senate from time to time officially declared this or that caesar a god, will never select Buchanan for the pantheon.

Paris is a tourist destination, these days, nothing more.  Eastern liberal college students traditionally spend some time there, casting about for culture and trying out their skill with the lingua franca. Painters pay homage visits to the Louvre, and places made famous by impressionists.  Some writers try to be there as young men, and to feel the bad weather come in so they can rise in the night and close the shutters against the wind and the rain, for Paris is a moveable feast.  

For all that, Paris is a wedding cake -- baked flour covered with fancy icing.  Since fashion is important only to dilettantes, the only significant thing that happens in the entire nation is the production of wine, and the cuisine which has developed to accent the craft of the vine.  Both are ephemeral, like the butterfly.  Beautiful and briefly here, then gone.  So, nothing happens in France.  It is a nation of the senses, like a summer afternoon.  The last time it had any gravitas on the world scene was when Rick Blaine's train pulled away from the station.  Ilsa had not come.

Nukes in the hands of kooks

So, other than simple human compassion for injuries to the innocent during these riots, why should anybody care about the fall of France?  Well, France has the Bomb.  If the rioting Moslems from North Africa burn their way to power, or quiet down and breed their way to power, people whose loyalties lie elsewhere than with the West will have access to everything they need to prove that the chapter known as Revelations in the Christian bible was right all along.  And, some writing in Indian (India) scripture, as well.

I wish I could credit the nuclear physicist who watched an explosion, and saw what he had wrought, but I just cannot recall the man's name.  I'll guess it was Neils Bohr, but don't quote me on this one.  Anyway, as the hellish fireball expanded into the sky, the physicist in question said, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Riots seem to prove the human tie to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which describes the natural processes operating in any field of energy, including the form known as matter -- that is, the inevitable decline of organization in such a field.  The direction is eventually always toward more disorganization.  Some people call it an increase in chaos.  Cars are made shiny and then begin to rust.  A woods is cleared and made into a productive farm, and sooner or later begins to return to its wild roots.  A thing, like a nation, is built, and then begins to lose coherence.  Google the term "entropy," which is a term for more of less, to grasp the physics of this.

To battle entropy in anything requires the application of energy to create or maintain the stability of the systems which provide the framework for order.  You must apply the right amount of energy in the right way, to do this.  That's where judgement comes in.  Is there any judgement left in the heads of the people who control the energy needed to fix France?

Stormin' Norman nailed it

I am the last man anybody should ask about that.  Decades ago a bit of a fan of the place, I have over time come to agree with General Norman Schwartzkopf, who said, "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordian."

Even when things were quiet in France, I didn't hold out any hope for the place.  Now that fifth columns of smoke are rising in and around its historic districts, I look for Hemingway at Harry's Bar, and see an empty bottle of Bloody Mary mix.  Buchanan is probably both right and wrong.  France will fall.  It's been falling for a long, long time.  But, the question is, is the fall of France the same as the fall of the West, as Buchanan seems to imply?  That depends on what is done, or not done, in the capitol of the West in the next few years.  Europe, except for the former Soviet slave states, is sitting on a park bench, talking about the events of its youth.  The only energy for freedom left on the planet is right here, in the U.S.A.

I heard somebody say (if memory serves, to local radio conservative, Victoria Taft, KPAM 860 AM, weekday evenings), that he hoped Paris would burn to the ground.  Obviously, this fellow believes entropy (rust, if you prefer) can reach a stage where the only way you can build a car is to melt down the metal and pour yourself a new one from the lava of the liquified steel.

Apparently, this caller to Miss Taft's show thinks there will be a new Marshall Plan which will bring about the rise of France, and the rest of Europe, from the ashes of jihad.  In this scenario, America, the world repository of freedom, finally cleans the decks of liberals and firing a broadside into the Sons of Mohammed, sends them to their Virgins in the Sky.

It's an idea with some merit, I think.

(LL)

© 2005 Oregon Magazine