This author uses an impressive vocabulary and a scholarly approach to tell us wht many of us are now coming to realize: Something Wicked This Way Comes. And it is not the old Soviet barbarian, the Islamic homicidal bomber or the Chinese cultural hegemonist - rather, it is the collapse of our own Western civilization chiefly due to our own weakness. It may not yet be too late to turn the tide, but the issue at stake is so much larger than perhaps any of us realize. This essay is a jaw-dropper, for it is a crucial pieceof the puzzle slotting into place. I agree completely. Say what one will about the Soviet communist, the Islamic fundie, the Han supremacist -- at least they still believe in something. Here in the West, all we believe in is our own nerve endings.
Yes, and Lee Harris' point in
The Suicide of Reason is that we are fast losing our ability to deal with the tribal actor. To the extent that we submerge our will to live in political correctness and the naive assumption that everyone wants the same things that we in the West do, we render our civilization vulnerable to those who don't give a damn about what we have or what we want.
In the end, they hate us for who we are and what we represent, and they want us all dead. You can't reason with the plague; you can't negotiate with cancer. You must destroy it. Because the alternative is...