Gallic disruptions.(on the right)(riots in France)

THE French turmoil is explained, by many who have trained their eyes on it, as a reaction to continued French discrimination. To give evidence of this, the critics cite preferences shown by employers to applicants whose names are indisputably French, with no Algerian or Muslim overtones. One story cited resumes with straightforward French names receiving 50 times the presumptive hospitality shown to applicants with Muslim surnames. And every third stow cites what continues to be thought the matrix of French political life, which is the revolution. There are those who hoped that Charles de Gaulle would take advantage of his historical eminence to jettison the revolution. Not a chance. His farewell toast to the nation that finally rejected him was, "Vive la France. Vive la Revolution." A few years earlier he had contributed to the pacification of Canada, by saying, while visiting Montreal, "Vive le Quebec libre. Vive le Canada francais."

One is perhaps grateful that, in the modern mode, the execution block dispatches automobiles, rather than dukes and failed politicians. But if it is true that the protesters in the year 2005 are inflamed by the tradition of a revolutionary past, then we have at least one reason for resistance to upward mobility among second generation French with parents born in Algeria. Such young men inherit not only the tradition of French revolution as the answer to life's shortcomings, but also Algerian revolution. First, against French colonialism; second, against victors over French colonialism; third, over victors over the victors over French colonialism. Round and round it went in Algeria, more than a million bloody victims of dissatisfaction and irresolution. If the Algerian tradition is invoked in order to understand the French-Algerian community, there is some clarity at both ends--French who are suspicious of the second class French-Algerian citizen, and French-Algerian citizens who resent the long hard road of integration.

President Chirac announced that he would not discuss the unrest until after it had been quieted. That is the sensible course to take, but it does not automatically quiet the fervor. If the ...