Mark Lilla has written a series of three articles that appeared in the New York Review that shed a lot of light on how very seriously the recent attacks have be

Mark Lilla has written a series of three articles that appeared in the New York Review that shed a lot of light on how very seriously the recent attacks have been taken in France, and incidentally predicted such a law would be passed. From the first article, written in February (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-on-fire/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-...): "[After the Prime Minister's speech], to the nation’s surprise, the deputies [in the French National Assembly] broke spontaneously and unanimously into the Marseillaise, the first time this had happened since the signing of the armistice ending World War I in 1918. "On the question of security, this unity is likely to last. There is a solid consensus that more resources will have to be devoted to tracking suspected terrorists and monitoring the Internet for signs of trouble. Legislation will be required to give the government sufficient legal leeway to accomplish that, which it will get, since all parties recognize the deficiencies yet none wants to reproduce the American Patriot Act." I had to read the article twice to begin to understand the French situation. There are parallels to the American case, but the French situation is unique, and in some ways more genuinely pressing than the American case. I urge the mostly American commenters here to not just draw the crude parallel and stop there. One point of difference is the special role the schools have, in France, of imparting a republican ideal. Another is the traditionally strong centralizing role of the national state in French schools, and culture more generally. And finally, there is the proximity, in all senses of the term, of France to North Africa.