Bruce McQuain writes, regarding Tony Blair’s recent j’accuse regarding the role of the black subculture in spiraling crime in England:

Unlike the French, who prefer to pretend by using the general term “youths” for a very specific group of young men who seem to delight in torching cars, Blair has decided to name names – specifically.

It’s a good point. Blair is a centrist, frequently out-Clintoning Clinton in what the cynics call, perhaps justifiably, triangulation. Like Clinton, he frequently frustrates and is, at the end of the day, a soft centrist. But at critical moments, and far more than Clinton ever did, Blair has taken principled stands and, of course regarding Iraq, spent political capital in a way that would have been utterly unthinkable in the ultra-left-wing Labor party that preceded him.

But I demur regarding the comparison to the French. They may pussyfoot around when it comes to nomenclature, but it was they who outlawed the hijab and stuck to it, despite the howls of many Muslims and others (the law would certainly be unconstitutional here, where religious freedom and lack of state and endorsement — not only the separation of church and state — are the rule). That would be unthinkable in England, home of “Londonistan.” In fact, researching this piece, I found that the redoubtable Daniel Pipes agreed with me before I even said anything — four years ago:

The British government won itself the reputation for being tough because it joined with the U.S.-led effort in Iraq, quite in contrast to France. But when it comes to domestic counterterrorism, the French are far ahead of the hapless, head-in-the-sand Londonistanis – as I have noted earlier. Indeed, one can handsomely fill a blog with evidence of British multicultural lassitude and counterterrorist ineptitude.

It’s all the more credit to Blair, then, who is in his swan song as British Prime Minister, for at least saying it. Yet it’s hard to imagine what could be better down the road, given what’s become of that once-great country — much of which happened during, and because of, the extended Blair Era.

Whereas regarding France, well, what all was there to decline from, exactly?

UPDATE: More lassitude — the kind multiculturalism usually ends up descending on — from Meryl Yourish.

Don Surber writes about the belief system of today’s Germans:

A poll by der Stern showed that 48% of Germans think the U.S. is more dangerous than Iran. Only 31% think the other way. Hmm. Are they sure San Francisco wasn’t included in that poll?[snip]

The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They’ve believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front.

Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people.

Harsh. But here’s what I snipped: “Claus Christian Malzahn, online political editor for der Spiegel takes this apart.” Yeah, he’s one of them. More:

We’ve known just what they’re like for a long time. The 19th century German author Karl May taught us about the American Wild West, and Karl Marx warned us about unbridled capitalism.

Besides, we’ve all been there at least once — on vacation, of course.Be it in California or Florida (that’s where you get the best deals on rental cars, you know), we can see right through the Americans.For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.

Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945. (Well, with German help, of course — from Einstein and his ilk.) There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil. Just look at President Bush, the man who, as some of SPIEGEL ONLINE’s readers steadfastly believe, “is worse than Hitler.”

Ironically, they wouldn’t really know. Maybe if they read more of Malzahn — who is quite the contrarian voice there, and has a powerful perch from which to observe and declaim — they would. But don’t count on it.