Every few years, Americans watch French cities burn and reassure themselves it couldn’t happen here. That is the premise of a new American Thinker commentary by Jerry McGlothlin, published October 18, 2026, under the headline “Paris is burning. Is America next?” The piece runs through the pattern — hundreds of cars torched, police stations besieged, town halls attacked, shops looted from Marseille to the Paris suburbs — and argues the United States is repeating the mistakes that produced it.
McGlothlin points to 2005 and again to 2023, noting that each time French politicians promised reform while the underlying problem kept growing. His warning is built on the claim that the French political class has consistently failed to learn from its own recurring crises.
The argument: it’s not immigration, it’s assimilation
The commentary is careful to draw a distinction that matters to its larger case. The problem, McGlothlin writes, “isn’t immigration as such.” He notes that since its founding, America has absorbed wave after wave of newcomers and been strengthened by immigrants who embraced American values. What troubles him is something narrower: admitting large numbers of people without asking whether they share, or intend to adopt, the civic values of the country they are entering — and then failing to insist on assimilation once they arrive.
That, in his telling, is precisely what France did. Over decades, he argues, it allowed parallel communities to form in its suburbs, where French law competes with clerical authority, where Islamist preachers and networks fill the vacuum left by a timid state, and where young men are taught that the republic is an enemy to be resented rather than a home to be thankful for.
To support that claim, McGlothlin leans on France’s own leadership, invoking President Macron’s talk of “separatism” and of enclaves where the republic has retreated. His reasoning: when a head of state concedes that parts of his own country have slipped beyond its civic reach, Americans ought to pay attention.
Three policy choices, and a claim that America is making all of them
From there the piece identifies what it calls the predictable result of three policy choices. The first is weak screening that fails to distinguish ordinary religious believers from adherents of a political ideology hostile to liberal democracy. The second is what he describes as a willfully ignorant elite culture that treats any demand for assimilation as bigotry. The third is a reluctance to enforce the law evenly in neighborhoods officials fear to offend.
McGlothlin’s central assertion is that America is making all three. He argues that under Biden, vetting of immigrants was virtually nonexistent, and he credits President Trump with greatly stemming the tide — though he adds that the damage done to the Republic, in his words, will be felt for years to come. He also faults universities for teaching that national identity is oppressive, and political leaders for too often excusing disorder when it comes from favored constituencies.
Underneath it all sits a question of sovereignty. A nation, McGlothlin writes, has every right to ask whether those seeking entry accept free speech, equality under the law, and the separation of mosque and state.
The proposed fix: ‘not cruelty, but seriousness’
The commentary’s prescription is explicit: rigorous ideological vetting; mandatory U.S. Constitution tests; a ban on Sharia law; an end to what he calls the taboo against expecting newcomers to learn English, American history, and American norms; swift, even-handed enforcement of the law; and the confidence to say that American civic culture is worth preserving.
He frames the whole program as “not cruelty; it is seriousness” — a line that reveals the piece’s intended audience as much as its argument. The closing appeal is to timing: France waited too long to say these things, McGlothlin concludes, but America still has time and should not waste it.
What the piece is, and what it isn’t
This is an opinion essay in the advocacy tradition, and it should be read that way. Its factual anchors are broad and widely reported — the recurring French riots of 2005 and 2023, Macron’s public use of the term “separatism” — but its causal claims about screening, assimilation, and elite culture are the author’s own interpretation, offered without citations or supporting data.
Readers will also notice the essay’s rhetorical temperature shifting between policy analysis and sharp partisan framing. It moves from measured passages about civic values and constitutional tests to charged language about “hostile hordes” and political leaders excusing disorder for favored constituencies. The strength of the argument rests on whether one accepts its premise that France’s experience is a direct preview of America’s rather than a distinct national story with its own history, geography, and institutions.
The commentary ends as these pieces often do, with a pitch to its own readership: a note that the ability to speak one’s mind is crucial to the republic, followed by a request for donations to keep American Thinker’s “ideas heard and our voices strong.” It is a reminder that the essay is doing double duty — making a case about immigration and assimilation, and rallying a community that believes that case is being suppressed elsewhere.
Whether America is next is, of course, unknowable. But McGlothlin’s bet is that the question will be answered by choices made now — about who is admitted, what is expected of them, and whether anyone in authority is willing to say out loud that the country has a culture worth insisting upon.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/paris-is-burning-is-america-next/