At least the french are aware of the principles of freedom

In many European countries, natural rights include positive rights, including a "lowest living standard". This means that some needs must be fulfilled, else the state pays them for you. This include stuff like hygiene, food, a place to live, means of transportation etc, but it also includes access to a phone and a television. There are also public access to stuff like internet for those who are searching for a job and if you are in school you can usually hire a computer at a very low cost to be able to fulfill your education.

Basically no one should ever get so poor, or so deep down, that they cannot function in society, or have a way to get out from their situation.

Right, but say Europe decided tomorrow that it would ban all use of cars and the internet and rebuild the society to function without them. That would be perfectly "fine", legally speaking. It might be a pretty crappy society, but they wouldn't be depriving anyone of their 'natural rights'.

It's like the Saudi Arabia thing. Women don't have a natural right to drive a car, but they have a natural right to be equal with men, thus they should be allowed to drive cars. If *no one* was allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia then it wouldn't be a rights issue.
 
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Volokh, a blog written by several law professors, has an entry on this French law. I encourage reading it if you're interested in a more detailed/technical point of view. My comments there were submitted under the username Hervé.
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1244798471.shtml
 
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_sarkozy_burqa

I'll apologize for the functional off-topic, but the irony of the thread title demands that I put this here.

I understand the theory behind not subjugating the women, but this seems like a rather blatant infringement on religious freedom. I seem to remember a few Euros scoffing at our petty pigdog provincialism when a couple of us get in a tizzy over the waving of Mexican flags to celebrate their heritage at the immigrant rallies a couple years ago. Well, as the French stomp on Muslims expressing their religious identity, I give you a big "Back Atcha!"
 
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Yup, the French are a bit touchy on that topic. They're what you might call aggressively secularist; they often treat all of their citizens in exactly the same way, i.e., as ethnic Frenchmen or -women. (Back in colonial days, this led to rather absurd situations, such as Senegalese schoolchildren memorizing passages from history books that started with "Our ancestors, the Gauls...")

They also don't gather any demographic data on religion at all. This makes it difficult to see, let alone address, any problems related to immigration -- one of France's social problems is that parts of the recent North African immigrant population are poorly integrated, but because of this policy, it's plumb near impossible to find out exactly how bad the situation is, nor what should be done about it.

I strongly believe that religion should be a private affair -- but I also believe that it's counterproductive to pretend that it doesn't exist in society. IMO this is a stupid policy, and one likely to lead to trouble. Muslim immigrants should (and do) integrate over time, but this ain't the right way to speed up the process.
 
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