The burial of a murdered child in France this week should have been a moment of quiet grief. Instead, it has become a howl of public rage. The case is horrific enough: a young life extinguished by a predator known to the authorities.
But the real scandal is the pattern of systemic failure that allowed it to happen. Police failings, bureaucratic inertia, a judicial system more interested in the rights of the accused than the safety of the innocent. We have seen this playbook before.
In the 1970s, the so-called 'permissive society' unleashed a wave of crime that took a generation to reverse. Now, we are witnessing the second act. The British response has been telling.
Commentators who usually tut-tut at French 'authoritarianism' are now demanding similar reforms here. They sense the same rot at the core of our own institutions. The death of a child in a provincial French town becomes a parable for the decline of the West.
When the state cannot protect its weakest members, the social contract is broken. And what replaces it is not liberty but fear. The fall of Rome was not a single event.
It was a thousand small failures, one of which was the imperial police's inability to keep the roads safe. We are living in the sepia-toned end of an era. The question is not whether reform will come, but whether it will arrive before the barbarians are at the gate.
The murdered child is a symbol. We ignore the lesson at our peril.
