The Wall Street Journal

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural "understanding" of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country's grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France's economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for such American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of The European Dream, and others on the left.

In the past four weeks we have seen two different governmental responses to disaster, one efficient, the other, frankly, disastrous. Providence has spared Houston and much of urban east Texas, but that city's response to Hurricane Rita--and the comparison with New Orleans--should give us pause in thinking not only about how we deal with the mess left behind by Katrina, but also the future of the Gulf Coast.

To the water-soaked citizenry of New Orleans, short term issues--water, power, even surviving--are no doubt paramount today. But over the coming weeks, months and years, this city must come to grips with issues that have determined whether urban areas thrive despite tragedy, or simply decline in its wake.

Patricia Jones remembers when, as a 20-something aspiring actress, she first arrived in Southern California from Michigan. Her friends urged her to move to the bright lights of Hollywood or the hip, arty precincts of Santa Monica. But Ms. Jones, seeking "peace and quiet" instead, chose Thousand Oaks, a bedroom suburb then a 30- to 40-minute drive northwest of Los Angeles.

The U.S. military, with help from Kurdish-dominated Iraqi national guard units, has done its part in taking Fallujah. But the war against the insurgency will not be won by military means alone. The ultimate objective is political: drawing Iraq's Sunni Arabs into elections and the constitutional process that will follow. The only route to a peaceful Iraq runs through negotiations -- and those must include all the country's major groups, not only those who have already agreed to attempt federal democracy.

This city known for makeovers is getting ready to try a big one for its downtown. On Grand Avenue, near the much ballyhooed Disney Hall and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, city leaders earlier this month announced plans for a $1.2 billion redevelopment project complete with massive retail, residential and commercial space. The goal, as seen by billionaire Eli Broad, the plan's biggest booster, would be to transform now doughty Grand Avenue into something of an Angeleno version of Paris's elegant Champs Elysees.

Trying to understand American society without grappling with the idea of assimilation is a little like studying the cardiovascular system while ignoring the heart. Assimilation has been central to the American experience since the first European colonists arrived on these shores. And for just as long its definition has been a source of contention and confusion. In 1782, the Frenchman J. Hector St.

The ultimate test of success in Iraq will be the creation of a stable constitutional democracy: government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. If the Iraqis emerge from the coalition occupation with the building blocks of just and effective self-government, the war and occupation will be forgiven. The presence -- or absence -- of weapons of mass destruction will become a historical footnote. Muslims who today remain deeply skeptical of U.S. motives will grudgingly have to acknowledge that the American commitment to freedom can be actual, not just rhetorical.

It was announced last week that the Catholic Church would canonize an Aztec peasant who saw visions of the Virgin Mary near Mexico City in 1531. The decision is not startling in itself -- Juan Diego's miraculous accounts have long been known and credited among believers -- but it is likely to have a wider, symbolic meaning for American Catholics. Their church is changing, and Mexico's "Brown Virgin," Our Lady of Guadalupe, is likely to play a bigger part in it.

It is odd that so much of the national debate over immigration is driven by nostalgia, given how pressingly urgent the subject is right now, and how important to the nation's future.

From certain people we hear the yearning for an idealized era when shop stewards met radical immigrant workers on loading docks. From this group come the researchers who would rather lament the loss of well-paying, unionized, blue-collar jobs than discover new paths of upward mobility.