The joke used to be the “French have never met an army they wouldn’t surrender to.”

No more.

ISIS has changed that. At least 129 innocent lives taken at the hands of radical Islamic jihadists during an obscene bloodbath have convinced the French enough is enough. Continuing police raids, massive air strikes on ISIS strongholds (somehow our military could not find such targets), and military coordination with Russia make it clear a day of reckoning will come.

I never would have thought a socialist French leader and a former KGB head would take such a lead over the historic American leadership.

There is also a push, particularly here in the U.S., to quarantine our nation from the contagion — logic dictates not all refuges are, indeed, refuges; more than 30 state governors have expressed outrage, and are not even given information where the “refuges” will be located. President Obama, like a schoolchild, whines to those questioning of allowing 80,000 Syrians into our nation. We are chastised for being afraid of “widows and orphans.”

No so. While most Americans of every stripe and political persuasion feel for those truly fleeing the madness in the Middle East, even the U.N. admits some 72% of Syrian refuges are young, able-bodied males — and not all are Syrians — and the Internet is filled with video examples of Muslim youngsters being taught beheading techniques, weapons skills, and the like. And then are the disturbing videos showing what can only be called an invasion of the West, particularly in Germany, Norway, and Sweden.

We forbid immigration by Communists and other totalitarians during the Cold War, all to protect our way of life — but we cannot forbid radical Islamists today? An ideology that pledges to kill all non-Muslims, Muslims they do not agree with, gays, women who dare show their face, and probably dozens of other classes of individuals most Western civilizations tolerate?

It is a cultural divide we must admit and address. There have been dozens of under-reported instances of refuges who became terrorists (Boston is the best-known example), who were mostly stopped (thankfully) before they could kill Americans.

James Comey, director of the FBI, says “we can only query that which we have collected.” He, the CIA and others, admit there is no data base, no files, no way to vet these refuges. Yet we are being told to welcome, and pay for, them to come to our nation.

Reports of Syrians with false passports are also surfacing, some headed for the U.S.

This is not “racism.” Americans, during WW II, did not hate Germans — we hated Nazis. It’s estimated 7% of Germans followed that sick ideology and estimated 5-10% of today’s Muslims are potential radical jihadists.

Are we willing to allow four to eight thousand radical Islamists into our nation?

So what now? Some argue the radicals are attempting to draw us in to, according to one interpretation of their faith, a conflict where they will be defeated. That would lead to Armageddon (WWIII) and the coming of the “12th Inman,” Christian’s version of Jesus.

Let us short-circuit this madness — let Russia and France clean out the rat nests. Give Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other moderate Muslim nations intelligence under the table, and then tend our own table and our own interests.

Encourage the 15 or so Muslim nations to create a ‘safe zone’ for their own — and protect our own nation through true and complete vetting. Help verifiable refuges — but if there is no way to confirm their background and intent, sorry — go elsewhere.

I recently rented my mothers’ old house to a couple, based not on race, religion, sexual orientation, but on simple tenants:

Contribute — pay the rent, do not take from me what is not yours; keep up the property and do not destroy it; live your life as your faith dictates, but in peace with your neighbors and fellow citizens.

I interviewed them, their references and employers, and observed them closely.

Can we not do the same as a nation?