Globe Trot: France issues plan to fight extremism

FRANCE: Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced today sweeping measures to combat terrorism in France. But according to polls, the French are taking new interest in the National Front and its leader, Marine Le Pen. She takes a hard right position on immigration and wants to limit social spending for immigrants, says William J. Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition. Americans watching insecurity in Europe should take interest in how Europe’s expansive social spending umbrella drives unchecked immigration.

SAUDI ARABIA: It’s not that King Abdullah’s death comes at a sensitive time; it’s that perilous times in the Middle East mean anything destabilizing—including the death early today of a 90-year-old monarch who already had passed day-to-day power to others in the House of Saud—can be the match that lights the fire. King Abdullah took power from King Fahd in 2005, nine years after King Fahd suffered a stroke, and became a shrewd reformer as Arab Spring revolts erupted around him.

Fourteen U.S. secretaries of state have met with the Saudi head of state in the same time frame there have been five kings of Saudi Arabia, which says something about its authoritarianism. Interesting in that trivia is the 18-year gap between 1953 and 1971 when no one in the U.S. executive branch bothered meeting with a Saudi head of state.

AMERICA: The United States historically has set itself apart from the European example, but no more. George Will writes persuasively on how the modern welfare state is changing America’s character. He alludes to an important new study entitled “American Exceptionalism and the Entitlement State” by Nicholas Eberstadt, who argues:

“The qualities celebrated under the banner of ‘American exceptionalism’ are perhaps in poorer repair than at any time in our nation’s history. There can be little doubt (to return to our medical metaphor) that the grafting of a social-welfare system onto our body public is in no small part responsible for this state of affairs.”

WORLD: A new issue of the magazine is up, with extensive coverage by Jamie Dean of terror unfolding across three continents this month, all springing from the same ideology. For my part, I “connect the plots” showing the terror ties of the Paris gunmen back to 9/11, and highlight why 2015 should be the start of a serious alliance against Islamic jihadist terrorism.