Uncertainty in France, A Prediction

Paris suburb burns

(Christophe Ena – AP)Update: Earlier Your Business Blogger suggested that France was a poor venue for business. Paris is now terrible even for tourists.

France will be slow to deal with the Muslim Jihadists.

Markets hate uncertainty. France has a future which is most uncertain — which is another (real) reason not to do business there.

France is beginning to pay citizens to have children because their birthrate is far below replacement. But this may matter little — Islam is quickly encroaching on French culture.

In early summer in the God-fearing USofA George Weigel gave a talk about the decline of European civilization and his new book, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God. He uses the post-modern architecture of the monstrous “cube” that is the Great Arch of La Defence in Paris and the ageless cathedral of Notre-Dame as metaphor.

I bought the book. Read it. Saw the future.

The Cube

Weigel writes about a possible outcome for Europe:

Then there is the nightmare scenario…Europe fails to reverse its demographic decline; its finances … perilous, its native populations … demoralized, and recent arrivals …assertively Islamic.

…it has happened before. The once flourishing Greco-Roman-Christian civilization of North Africa… within eight decades…disappeared into the sands… destroyed by advancing Islam.

Notre Dame

In significant parts of Europe, the drama of atheistic humanism would have played itself out in the triumph of a thoroughly nonhumanistic theism.

The crisis of civilizational morals that Europe is experiencing today would have reached its bitter end in a Europe in which the muezzin summons the faithful to prayer form the central loggia of St. Peter’s in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine

— a great Christian church become an Islamic museum.

Weigel’s prophesy is coming too soon, and so close.

Here’s the business angle. As in any relationship trust is necessary between individuals to bind contracts. And business can be done with trusted individuals of Muslim faith. But seldom Muslim countries.

Under current French leadership it is easy to predict instability for France. A poor venue for strategic investment except for tourism.

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Thank you (foot)notes:

QandO has fire in France.

Mark in Mexico predicts French surrender.

PeakTalk has French basket case.

Captain Ed reports on the French Cancer.

Dean’s World has irony.

Outside the Beltway has analysis.

Drezner questions press accuracy.

Mudville Gazette has Open Post and a terrific shot of the Tower.

Update: 15 November; Below the Beltway has analysis of bi-culture.