The rapid advances in technology, computing and communications continue to wash over human civilization, with increasing speed and force.
I view the rise and dominance of main stream media, not to mention Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union, in the last century to be a result of corporate and big government acquiring the means and control of rapid communication and publication before the ordinary person did. Now as us ordinary citizens are gaining similar powers, the main stream media is losing its position of dominance.
In most of the wars fought by these United States, from the Revolution, to the Civil War, to Vietnam, to the misnamed War on Terror, there was vigorous and wide spread dissent. The dominance of daily newspapers and radio broadcasting during World War II, and its control those mostly supporting the war, is the most outstanding exception.
Fifty years ago, the existence of Islamo-Fascists on the Arabian peninsula was of little concern to the average resident of Manhattan. On 9/11, it was of major concern. With the advent of world wide travel and communication, what was once a localized problem has now become a world wide problem.
As with any change, it comes in phases. Some aspects of the change come sooner, some later. We are now seeing the brunt of the changes that made the world so much smaller, putting Afghanistan next door to Manhattan, putting eleventh century fascists on the same flight as Barbara Olson.
But as modern technology, and democratic reform, infiltrate the eleventh century civilization that work up one day to find itself sitting on a big oil patch, they may loose their rabid potency for terrorist destruction.
Just as it would have been hard to predict the rise of FreeRepublic.com by looking at the dominance of big media (television, newspaper, books and radio) between the 1930's and the 1980's, so it will be difficult to predict what will happen to the Islamic civilization, now that it is being flash merged with our civilization.
While I cannot completely disallow this concept, it seems that the capabilities of modern technology are only being used diabolically by the islamists. Where westerners tape weddings, they tape beheadings, cell phones become detonators, etc.
Give chimpanzees enough training with rifles and let them use them to dominate the world, which they might do, but that does not mean that the world will become a better place for it, nor will they necessarily be able to build a rifle once that dominance is established.
At the bottom of it all is the culture, and ours needs to get back to the basic charachter which allowed it to dominate in the first place.
Without trying to inject another issue, I still cannot help but wonder about the potential squandered in abortion mills around the US since Roe v Wade, what those 40+ millions might mean even now, and not just fom an economic standpoint, as American Culture is being overrun with alien 'multicultures'.
The threat is real, and assimilation will likely not occur given the intractable nature of Islam. Even changing a word of the Koran in transcription is punishable by death. How many different editions of the Bible have been published in the same time period, often with phraseology which has subtle differences which lead to different meanings/interpretations? If they are wrong, it is immutably so.
The only thing left is to defend our culture, and for that to be successful, it must be a culture worthy of that defense. With the growing aspect of that culture in 'red' states, and among conservatives in general, there is hope.
I was scanning ahead to see if someone would be on this.
Our modern society does not exist in stasis. Steyn is right
on the socio-political aspect but does not appear to have
factored technological progress or influences. I am not
thinking along the lines of technology's influence on Islam
as much as producing new paradigms, such as what occurred
in the Twentieth Century, that influence all human culture.
Futurists can give more insight on this now.