The ongoing unrest in France is as numerous others have pointed out the tragic but likely inevitable outcome to the systematic exclusion of immigrants from French politics, the economy, and society. It also presents us with a feast of delicious ironies that tell us perhaps more than we cared to know about contemporary American conservatism.
I tend to be a fan of brutal honesty, and from what I can tell the more truthful American commentary on the riots has tended to come from liberals and moderates rather than from the right. Whatever our admiration for the French health care system, and some of the more generous benefits of the French welfare state, I think many of us recognize that France's labor markets are excessively regulated, favoring older white (often male) workers over younger workers - especially those with not-so-pale skin. Add to this the failure of France (not to mention other Western European nations) to properly integrate its immigrant populations, and some kind of mass explosion of rage was probably inevitable.
All this is an implicit recognition by American liberals that in some respects the American system is superior to the European system. We have certainly failed (thus far) to provide universal health care, and a more mobile, flexible system of benefits in the global economic age, although to be sure that "bridge to the twenty-first century" was never quite constructed because the electorate decided to hand the congress to hard right Republicans in 1994. On the other hand, the American model of labor market deregulation and citizenship (based upon shared values and opportunities rather than on shared ethnicity and history) has been far more successful in democratizing opportunity (and risk) and fully integrating immigrants (our treatment of African-Americans not withstanding). There is in short a reason the riots have been taking place in Paris and not in New York.
Which brings us to the response from the American right. Almost everywhere one turns in the news media and blogosphere, American conservatives have taken time to completely and mind-numbingly misunderstand the civil unrest throughout France, blaming not overly-regulated labor markets and a failed model of citizenship but some kind of budding Islamist movement throughout the country. However richly represented young Muslims may be among the rioters, and however unfortunate it is that they have chosen to incinerate Renaults and primary schools rather than engage in mass demonstrations and peaceful, civil disobedience, their frustration is of couse about the lack of integration and economic opportunity, not the lack of Sharia. They are rebelling against a failing populist-nationalist system, and while perhaps not all of them may recognize it, they are more objectively Reagan/Thatcherite or Blair/Clintonite than objectively Bin Ladenite.
Given the strange and paranoid response of the American right to the riots (I saw one poster - I'm forgetting where - wonder aloud if Zarqawi was funding the rioters), one has to wonder if labor market liberalization and American-style citizenship are core Anglo-American conservative values anymore. Given the staggeringly widespread sense of victimology among middle aged, white, heterosexual, often Christian male conservatives in this country, one has to wonder if they wouldn't prefer some kind of French-style entitlement system that favors middle aged white men, brings less than 1% growth per year and double digit unemployment, and excludes brown folks from full citizenship. One wonders if today's American conservatives aren't in their hearts creepy populist-nationalists, rather than free marketeers and meritocrats.