“THE FRENCH,” wrote journalist James Cameron, are “an erratic and brilliant people, who have all the gifts except of running their country.” By the time French officials tease out just why gangs of disaffected “youths” have been torching cars and attacking policemen, large swathes of the Paris banlieues may recall Dresden circa 1945.

The Gallic chatterati have no shortage of explanations for the rampaging: discrimination, poverty, dismal economic prospects, bleak living conditions, insensitive French law enforcement, provocative “anti-Muslim” statutes, the de facto segregation of Muslim and North African immigrant families from native Frenchmen. No doubt some–perhaps many–of these factors have stoked the anger.