Au Revoir, les Enfants

As we learned again from stories of the rioting in France, you absolutely cannot lament the destruction of a beautiful old building lost to civil unrest, because you’d be prioritizing mere stone over the needs of flesh-and-blood humans who cry out for justice.

You have to phrase it thus: “It’s a pity that the structure was lost to an expression of high spirits, but the real issue here is the students’ complaints of under-heated classrooms and dog-eared textbooks. Lamenting the building’s unscheduled demise only gives fuel to the far right, which believes that historic structures should take precedence over the needs of youth.”