Watching businesses burn in France, I think about the person who built them. As a restaurant owner, I know what it means to pour blood, sweat, and tears into a business. I think about employees who need their next paycheck and owners whose bills will arrive even when customers cannot.

The demonstrations in France have involved grievances about living costs and public services, alongside violence and destruction. Those events do not establish a single explanation as the source of the unrest. We should resist forcing the evidence into our preferred narrative. But they should raise a question Americans ought to consider: What holds a country together when its people become this angry?

A legitimate grievance does not excuse destroying someone else's livelihood. Understanding anger does not require surrendering judgment about what people do with it. Freedom depends on accepting limits even when we believe our cause is righteous.

That requires shared convictions. And how can we expect people to share convictions we struggle to explain?

What happens when a country can identify its failures but struggles to explain what deserves preserving? What, exactly, is it inviting newcomers to join?

Our country has committed serious wrongs, including slavery. We should teach that honestly. But recognizing a contradiction also requires explaining the principle that made it a contradiction. Human........

© Townhall