Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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Ill made comparisons
[Read the article: "Hillary equals France"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The American attitudes toward religion and nationality are preferable. The French notion of laïcité has a great deal to do with the poor assimilation of Muslims into French society, and is not terribly freedom-loving. While the seemingly unbreakable association of citizenship with ethnicity (you can only be French if you were born French) furthers the isolation of immigrants."
You comparison is in fact ill made. First the assumption that French attitudes towards laïcité would be a bad thing in the US -- really! Laïcité would stop GWB invoking his religion as why he should be in the White House. Laïcité would preclude the appalling mawkish and hypocritical National Prayer Breakfast. Laïcité would have stopped Ashcroft holding Bible study every morning at the Justice Department and noting attendance.
As for American attitudes to religion -- moved anywhere lately, gooten that "have you found a church" yet question. In almost all of Europe asking someone had they found a church would be considered an appaling faux pas. In America it is commonplace.
You then cite the "the seemingly unbreakable association of citizenship with ethnicity (you can only be French if you were born French)," the day after the son of Hungarian refugee, with a foreign name, with a grandfather a Greek Jew was elected President of France, a country that has also had as President Marshall McMahon, an ethnic Irishman. France has historically assimilated waves of immigrants from many nationalities, Moroccan, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Italian, Sephardi-Jews, Spain, Ireland, etc. The large question for France is why assimilation is proving so difficult for the recent arrivals, and probably the single larges factor is the economy and slow growth, which drives resentment and racism.
It is a nasty little detail, but when hiring someone is effectively for life, economically rationale hiring decisions tend towards low risk, which means hiring someone who looks just like already successful employees. The result, if there are not employees with black or brown skin, or muslim names to compare a new hire with, is that racist outcomes can become a perverse side effect of ostensibly rational hiring decisions. Moreover, in the low growth economy, with many applicants for every job, the person who gets the job usually has an inside track, and hears of the job before it is even advertised; this disfavours those who are not part of the established group.
The biggest implied falacy in the argument is the failure to understand why laïcité and its Anti-Communautarism are bedrock principles of French political life. The reasons go back to the Dreyfus case and a broad belief held in France, reasonably justified, that it was the intrusion of the Church into the state, particularly the majority Catholic church (a major backer of Vichy), combined with racism and crazed anti-semitism and the division of groups in society including the existence of a distinct and seperate Jewish community that led to France's defeats in the Franco-Prussian War and 1940 and the near defeat of 1914. It is also driven by the belief that it was the fact that in 1914-18 if was the coming together of France and all of its ethnicities and religions that saved the country. The objection to headscarfs is not predicated on laïcité but rather anti-Communautarism and a view that head scarfs set Muslim women apart as a seperate, unintegrated and unassimilatable group. Like it or not, the principle argument of the French state is that the headscarf fosters racism.
If the United States had the history of anti-semitism, religious bigotry and church meddling France has, you would think laïcité a great thing, but come to think of it, with George Bush in office?
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Pay cash, use a false name and tell no-one
[Read the article: Should I tell my daughter about her mother's two abortions?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am [a] pro-choice [man] and I do not believe any woman should be stigmatised or harrassed in any way for choosing to have an abortion. But the real world is different -- there are lot of people for whom the fact that a woman had an abortion is a BIG issue, including the thundering asshole who wrote this letter. He obviously knows that society treats having an abortion as a big issue, he obviously knows that the corollary of a woman's right to choose is that he can say "but hey, it was her choice, that bad woman, your mother, I was just a bystander with no right to open my mouth." In his mind he knows that if the fact that his ex had an abortion came out, in many eyes he would be a 'victim' of the woman who 'killed his child' and 'his daughter's siblings' and he is just aching to take advantage of that opportunity, the creep.
My advice to his daughter is:
1. Your father is a narcisist and you cannot trust him, tell him nothing;
2. If you get pregnant and choose an abortion, pay cash and use a false name, and be very careful to only tell people you can trust.
3. The man who gets you pregnant may not be someone you can trust.
What as total asswipe this "father" is, that he demonstrates why the advice above is correct and reasonable, if appalling to give.