Re: Your comment

Submitted by Jonathan Keiler (United States), Aug 29, 2016 at 17:23

Thanks for your comment to my AT article, and let me add, apropos of nothing, your dad's book "Russia under the Old Regime" which I had in college, was one of the best straight history books I've read.

That said, I don't see how your argument undermines mine, that a avowedly secular state must combat avowedly non-secular provocations. As a pure matter of politics and social media the French response to the burkini has failed.

If France were a healthy secular state, as is the United States (at least for now) I would agree with you. However, France is not. The lashing out over the burkini, even if futile in the end, is a natural and I would say healthy response to a a teenie weenie aspect of a potentially fatal phenomenon.

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