On Lawfare, Daniel Severson covers as a news item (vs. an opinion piece) recent French political activity occurring in reaction to recent terrorist events:
On March 30, President François Hollande announced that he was abandoning a constitutional amendment that would have enshrined state of emergency powers and stripped French citizenship from convicted terrorists.
Just days after the November 13 attacks in Paris, President Hollande promised to amend the constitution in a speech to Congress assembled at Versailles. The speech met with applause from across the political spectrum, but political divisions have since dealt a blow to Hollande’s project.
As Le Monde reports, the controversy over the amendment sprang less from constitutionalizing the state of emergency than from the proposal to strip convicted terrorists of citizenship. The original version announced by the government on December 23 would have allowed the government to strip only dual nationals who are convicted of terrorism of their French citizenship.
Hollande defended the provision as a signal that French citizenship entails a commitment to fundamental democratic values [bold added]. But opponents on the left worried about creating two classes of French citizens and alienating French Muslims.
The bolded text initially won my approval as an important political statement. However, upon contemplation, it seems to me that terrorists do not hold French citizenship to have any value, as they are actually seeking to disrupt the French, or indeed any democratic state, as a perceived enemy of their preferred system of government; and for those who are not terrorists, it is an obvious statement.
As to whether immigrants understand the importance of understanding and conforming to societal norms, surely there are more direct and legible approaches than this.
