French Students Still Revolting

It's time to recycle the old joke.

De Villepin: Jacques, the students are revolting!
Chiraq: I'll say they are!

The French students are still rioting in opposition to capitalism. I posted something funny about it before.

Perhaps this is the best argument for reforming the public education system that there is. An entire generation of the French, fresh from the classroom, is protesting in favor of an economic system that has been proven to be a failure with statistical certainty. Common Folk has a good post about this, too.

Where to begin on this one? What kind of education did these students get that history, mathematics and economics all failed to teach them about socialism? Any one of those subjects should have been enough to convince them. These aren't dimwits, either. These are college students, so they've had years of French education to prepare them for this.

Mark Steyn convincingly argues that demographics will be the downfall of Europe. I would suggest that even without the millstone of an aging population, the place is in big trouble. Passing this very mild reform to allow employers to fire people in the first two years of employment won't solve much of the problem. The problem is that the French still believe in socialism. They vote for it, they riot for it, they preach it. It's a deeply-held belief. Imagine what it will take to convince them otherwise.

Ouch.

Unrelated Subjects

Prayers and sympathy for Glenn Reynolds on the passing of his grandmother. It was an unexpected death which makes it doubly hard.

Haloscan is awful. I'm trying to post trackbacks to No Pasaran and the Haloscan window won't pop up on hs trackback link. Argh!