I’ll give you the big picture: America has been living under two constitutions since 1964. The Civil Rights Act began as a ban on segregation. Then Griggs made unequal group outcomes illegal, Bakke locked race preferences into college admissions under the diversity banner, and Title VII and the EEOC grew into a permanent legal apparatus that can override private contracts, hiring decisions, and free association whenever the numbers look uneven. Christopher Caldwell’s point in The Age of Entitlement is that one constitution protects individual liberty, while the other enforces group equality. So, at which group’s expense, specifically, has this “equality” been happening in schools, universities, corporations, and government?

The Bataclan attackers who murdered 130 people in Paris were already known threats, but the European authorities still let them operate freely. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader, had a conviction in absentia and an international arrest warrant yet moved between Syria, Greece, and Western Europe for months without being stopped. Samy Amimour was under formal judicial supervision after trying to join jihadists in Yemen, slipped it, traveled to Syria, returned to France, and helped carry out the massacre. Two more attackers entered through the Greek island of Leros on fake Syrian passports, riding the same migrant routes used by hundreds of thousands of real asylum seekers. France’s own Fiche S terrorism watchlist flagged thousands of people as security risks, including several connected to the attackers, but the designation carried no legal force so they remained free. The parliamentary inquiry later confirmed every name was already known. What was missing was the will to act before the massacre began.