MAX BOOT is saying I told you so to Jacques Chirac. Or something like that. But he finishes on a hopeful note:

The outlook for the Continent may appear hopeless, but it’s not. Britain faced an equally severe crisis in the winter of 1979, when a series of strikes left the dead unburied and the garbage uncollected. Things got so bad that voters tossed out the Labor government and brought in free-market firebrand Margaret Thatcher. Today, Britain is the envy of Europe. France and its neighbors could make a similar rebound. Perhaps the flames emanating from Clichy-sous-Bois will illuminate Europe’s problems and burn down some of the barriers to change.

If we’re lucky.