Written by Victor Davis Hanson:

What a stupid question. By any benchmark of economic prosperity, military power, and political stability, Western civilization — in the United States, Europe, and the former British Commonwealth — has never been stronger. Globalization has become a euphemism for Westernization, an apparent unstoppable juggernaut.

So how could the lingua franca of English, uniform international travel, or worldwide commerce ever falter — given that American-style material bounty is spreading among billions the world over?

But the global sale of PlayStation 3 or a world in Levis is only the glitzy veneer of civilization. That shared taste almost unnoticeably hinges on a powerful and liberal United States that keeps the peace and remains the spiritual and intellectual fountainhead of an entire global system — one ultimately dependent on American core ideas like freedom and tolerance. What pressures China to liberalize, protects the creativity of Japan, assures Europeans they can be postmodernists in safety, and guarantees that the world commerce is protected from both old and new piracy is a confident and strong United States.

In contrast, grant a jihadist his 7th-century dream world, and within months even he wouldn't have a cell phone signal to call in an IED explosion.

So just as the central nervous system controls an animal's most powerful muscles, so too capital, politics, and armed forces are all governed by subtle, unseen public opinion, or the people's will to define and defend their civilization. For America soldiers to fight jihadists in Afghanistan or Iraq, Americans back home must grasp whom they are fighting and why. And that's the core problem when we consider the recent news and the West's response to it.

Intelligence sources announce that Iran is seeking to replace al Qaeda as the foremost anti-Western global terrorist organization. Not to be outdone, al Qaeda is said to be desperately seeking a nuclear device. This is precisely at the time President Ahmadinejad announces the next step of uranium enrichment and more promises to end Israel.

International inspectors report that traces of plutonium are found in Iranian nuclear waste sites. The results of a terrorist with a plutonium-laced suicide belt in the New York Stock Exchange, the Mall of America, the Louvre, the Vatican, or the Harvard Library are like a water spill into a computer hard drive — the tiny drop unseen to the naked eye as it shuts down a way of life.

In the Middle East, Israeli intelligence warns that Gaza is to be the next Lebanon. The terrorists of Hamas worry that Hezbollah's Katyushas have upstaged their lesser Kassems. The very idea of Israel has suddenly been turned upside down. The last sanctuary of the world's Jewry that offered immunity from another Holocaust is now to be a one-bomb state that might ensure it. This is not Western paranoia, but Middle Eastern braggadocio. In that way, the Iranians trump Hitler — by not just writing about their plans, but by their president promising both to destroy Israel and to ignore international efforts that might not let him have the means to do so. Could anything be clearer?

A new generation of terrorist killers wishes to erase the stain of past Arab failures of 1947, 1956 1967, and 1973. Perhaps, it at last senses that the students of the 1960s in the West have come of age and into power. Might one day soon they shrug that things would be less of a hassle for all concerned without the "mistake" of Israel — regrettable perhaps, but life goes on?

Suicide bombers intent to destroy democracy in Afghanistan stream across the border from Pakistan with the connivance of the government there. Meanwhile, its President still smiles and hawks his books on Fox News. And why not? Once support for democracy in the Middle East has been demonized as either unrealistic or outright dangerous, a nuclear Islamic state under a sometimes neutral dictator is preferable to hostile theocracy.

In Iraq, the killer Moqtadar Sadr, we are also informed, is now seeking to be the probable power behind the Shiite-led democracy, his militias no longer mere rivals to the state security forces, but may well be infiltrated within them. Apparently he wishes to kill particularly Westerners — for the crime of taking his name off Saddam's hit list and onto a ballot.

The rationalist would find a common Thucydidean denominator in all this madness, one of lost honor and rampant envy. There is wealth aplenty pouring into Iran and Iraq through oil that is sold at a high price in a world market whose sanctity is ultimately protected by the United States. So the poverty there of radical Islam is not material, but one of the soul.

There is a sick ingenuity of a sort that can disguise terrorists as state policemen in Baghdad to kidnap and torture the innocent, and outwit Humvees with land mines. The improvised explosive device, with help from Iran, gets ever more complex. And there is a great deal of mental energy, time, and money that went into making rockets and suicide belts or even the graphics on a bin Laden infomercial.

How odd that Iranians cannot design a car or computer, but can with the proper instruction manual spend millions of hours putting together Western-designed centrifuges, like the stamped lettered-parts of a build-it-your-self intricate model toy.

So again, the problem with the radicals in the Middle East is not the lack of capital or mental energy. Rather under the influence of Islamism and autocracy a deep-seeded cultural malady distorts human effort and creativity solely for destructive purposes. In all of these places, radical leaders such as a Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, or Sadr — the same thug has a thousand faces that come and go as we saw with Zarqawi, Saddam, and Arafat — are, like the Sultan and Grand Vizier of old, as fascinated with the West as they despise it.

They obviously want Western technology — whether the Internet or the plastic munition — but never the decadence of freedom, democracy, and tolerance that creates the very appurtenances they crave. It is like sacking European Constantinople and then moving into it as your new Window-on-the-West capital, with the requisite minarets plopped on Hagia Sophia.

Such parasitism proves no lasting palliative, but only the goad for more envy and frustration. The stark truth is that the radical Middle East is religiously observant, but spiritually poor. Naturally wealthy, it is mostly materially impoverished — and as anti-Western in ideology as addicted in fact to Western attention and consumerism.

Out of all those ashes of failure and contradiction arose the Phoenix of Islamic fascism whose origins Western experts endlessly dissect. Who and what caused this foul apparition that has succeeded fascism, Nazism, and communism as the world's next bane?

Is the hatred and venom a feral shoot of Islam, or an import from the West during the dark times of the 1930s? Or is it a bastard of Soviet statism that infected the Middle East after the war?

Did globalization bring the reality of failure to the Arab street though cell phones and satellite television — and with that realization a deadly response by dictators, who paid off terrorists to blame the West, not themselves, for the glaring disparities?

We now are arguing over the significance of schisms between Shiite and Sunni. Or is the real story the regional grievances of Hamas versus Hezbollah versus al Qaeda, or again the difference between the autocracies of an Assad, Saddam Hussein, or Iranian mullocracy? Like tiny wildfires can they be put out with buckets here and there, or are they simply embers of a global conflagration? After all, these strains of hatred, or so we are told, are so intricate as to defy generalization — and so leave us all so smart Westerners clueless, like Byzantine scholastics bickering over a smudged erasure in an ancient palimpsest.

Next, examine the Western political response to all this Middle Eastern madness. The recent November election made it clear that the American public is tired of Iraq, tired of the televised bombings, tired of the Middle East and just wants to be left alone, to go home or to "redeploy." But if America withdraws before Iraqi reformers can establish a stable society, what illegitimate Arab strongman would wish to host a defeated infidel army with Islam on the rise in his backyard.

A once stalwart Tony Blair now praises Iran and welcomes back terrorist-sponsoring Teheran and Damascus for negotiations. To receive wisdom about Iran, we in America now look to the position papers of those who presided over the 1979 hostage fiasco and the Iran-Contra tragic-comedy. The University of Edinburgh gives the Iranian President emeritus Khatami an honorary degree, after his return from a triumphant American tour. It is understandable to want to talk with the Iranians and avoid unnecessary confrontation, but only on the understanding that the theocracy there is trying to destroy Israel and kill Americans working to protect democracy in Iraq. Thinking Syria or Iran could tolerate a constitutional republic in Iraq on its borders is like imagining that Hitler could have lived with a democratic Poland or Czechoslovakia next door or the old Soviet Union would have tolerated a free Ukraine.

Americans in their televised wrangling seem traumatized over Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, and wiretaps. For many George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are far greater threats than Osama bin Laden. Indeed, without a care for the thousands tortured by Saddam or dismembered by the terrorists, American leftists now seek to indict (in Germany of all places!) the former Secretary of Defense on charges such as subjecting detainees to "religious humiliation." Religious humiliation? Is war now to be played out on Court TV or ape the hurt feelings of Sunday morning television?

Iraq to the CNN talking heads is solely a story of amputations, unemployed veterans, anti-war song-writing Marines, and gratuitous violence against civilians — nothing much about Iraqis voting, the Husseins gone, or the brave each day fighting jihadists. Somehow trying to foster democracy abroad has earned far worse public outcry than the old Cold War support for dictators. Leftists apparently think helping the elected government in Iraq is comparable to our past support for a Somoza or Marcos, while those on the Old Right lament that it is not.

We in the West write novels and film scripts about killing our American President, while those in the Middle East plan it, as their latest vows to blow up the White House attest. Better yet, we supposed liberals — not Nazis, communists, or monarchs — now will censor our own cartoons, operas, films, novels, and Pope, as if the Enlightenment was a mere construct. If we find the struggle to stop Islamism is too costly or at least too bothersome, maybe appeasement of it will prove less so.

In short, while the Islamists get bolder and crazier, we become more timid and all too rational, quibbling over this terrorist's affinities and that militia's particular grievances — in hopes of cutting some magical deal with an imaginary moderate imam or nonexistent reasonable militia chief or Middle East dictator.

Well beyond us now is any overarching Churchillian vision of our enemies. We lack the practical understanding of an FDR that all of these Islamists loathe us far more than they despise each other. Their infighting, after all, is like the transitory bickering of thieves over the division of loot that always pales before their shared hatred of the targeted bank owner.

So we are at a crossroads of all places in Iraq. The war there has metamorphosized from a successful effort to remove a mass-murdering dictator into the frontlines of the entire struggle between Islamic radicalism and Western liberality. If we withdraw before the elected government stabilizes, the consequences won't just be the loss of the perceptions of power, but perhaps the loss of real power. What follows won't be the impression that we are weak, but the fact that we are — as we convince ourselves we cannot win against such horrific enemies, and so should never again try.

That stumble will send a shudder throughout the so-called West that will be felt worldwide. It will insidiously show that the premodern world proved the master of the postmodern, as al Qaeda's Alfred Rosenberg, the pudgy Dr. Zawahri, boasted all along — whose followers will not be happy with a successful defense when they think they can go back on an even more successful offense.

In the end, the Islamicists' best way to blow up the world's Starbucks or to turn off freewheeling American television is ultimately with a whimper, not a bang. They need not plant a hundred thousand bombs across the Westernized globe, but simply to cauterize its very spinal cord in the United States — the willingness of the American public, as in the past, to confront only the latest challenge to their freedom and all the ripples from it.

Beatniks in Space

So I was bored this weekend, WoW wasn't happening, everyone was out of town, and all three of us are sick. So I rented like 4 movies (overkill, I know) . . "Click", "T3", "X3", and . . . "Star Trek: First Contact" .

Now I've never really been a Star Trek fan. I like sci-fi, but somehow ST has always been where I'd draw the line. I've seen a few here and there, but I've never been overly impressed by the acting, the writing, hell, even the special effects which is something a sci fi show should be good at. Most of the uber-electronics look like children's toys covered with shiny lights. Anyways.

There's another reason, however, to which "Star Trek" owes it's immense popularity (which has, only recently begun to peter out) and that is its clearly liberal politics. You see, in the future, people have stopped doing silly things like "gathering wealth" or developing as individuals. Instead the ST utopia is one of human enlightenment, a pax maia of sorts, which somewhat laughingly ensued upon our realization that we were not the only beings in the Universe (i.e. First Contact) In other words, the entire Earth represents in macrocosm a sort of model of what progressives think of America today as embodying. ST is Hillary Clinton's "village" where all sentient beings work not towards justice but towards peace and get-togetherness. That we get semi-philosophical pedantic "moments" where things like the nature of Data's human/android symbiosis are discussed ad nauseum is just the icing on the cake. That Picard is a literary/philosophical/musical genius is a nice touch for those of us who happen to like those things, but all too predictable in a universe who's idea of individuality (within a socialistic organism) is that he is everyman. The idea of ethnicity has been superseded by alien-ism. (just like the latest Star Wars movies). The racial divide is no longer placed between humans whether they be black or white, it's now between aliens, and whether they have elf-ears and pale complexions or swarthy ridged brows. And guess what the major malfunction is? Yup. The lack of racial harmony. Wow, didn't see that coming. Hell, even the costumes practically reek of socialism. Good evening Comrade Warf. Beam us up Comrade Scottie. My theory is that Data is the voodoo doll for the average liberal progressive's inner quandary about their identity. :)

What usually turned me away from at least the more modern incarnation of sci-fi epics like Star Trek and Babylon 5 was the fact that the show's ideas of conflict and conflict resolution were clearly drawn from some sort of United Nations playbook. It's like making a video game about feeding the poor (which, sadly, has already been done) and expecting the masses to flock to it and conseqently raise silly things like buzzwords such as "awareness". In other words, except for a select cult section of the population, Star Trek and other shows like it just weren't exciting TV. Take "phasers" for example. . . the surgically precise boring-ass weapons of the Star Trek Universe. I'm sorry, did they just turn that person off with their universal remote or phaser him? I can't tell. What ST and Star Wars (the latest incarnations) failed to recognize is that we as humans are visceral  beings. Beams of light lack kinetic energy and hence on some level fail to connect with the audience. It's true, I know it. I just don't know how. :)

Despite all this naysaying, however, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I tend to nourish the inner liberal/progressive in me quite a bit, I just know when to call it quits with the ridiculous ethical departures from reality (far more "fantastic" than the actual sci fi aspect of the show.) I fully intend to watch more Star Trek, if not for the acting, writing, special effects, then just for the fact that I enjoy sci fi, plots, and even the occasional silly philosophical deviation. And, I'm afraid to say, I still have that guilty pleasure of indulging my inner liberal in that people of that sort love to have "private universes". I'm there with you ST fans. :)

From "A Man Called Intrepid" (WWII documentation of William Stephenson's intelligence and secret diplomacy that contributed to the fall of the Third Reich)

"A similar situation exists today," said Stephenson. "The easy way out is to pretend that there are no crises. That's the way to win elections. That's the way we stumbled into the war in the first place-- there were too many men in power who preferred to see no threat to freedom because to admit to such a threat implies a willingness to accept sacrifice to combat it. There's a considerable difference between being high-minded and soft-headed."

"We're still evolving democratic societies. If we want to continue this natural growth, we can't ignore ideological enemies who want to stunt it -- or destroy it. By working through our own democratic institutions, they can disarm us. The campaigns against Western intelligence agencies are fought often with unwitting help from our own citizens, honestly outraged by the excesses of the huge sealed organizations with unaccountable budgets. The disclosed failures of these agencies are widely publicized. Their achievements have to be kept secret-- or they cease to be effective. The same old tule applies as it did with ULTRA-- better to lose a battle than lose a secret that might win a war.

How can citizens of a free society exercise proper control without losing these defenses? Those responsible for the intelligence feel that any public scrutiny is a danger to security. The citizen feels that secret power corrupts.

Somewhere along the line there has to be trust. The Second World War involved thousands of individuals who had to be trusted to carry out their missions in solitude, without acclaim, making decisions that could affect entire communities. These men and women, courageous, informed, but essentially ordinary people, not professional agents or intellogence careerists, proved that they could be trusted. Perhaps we had better look for them and to them in ythese most sensitive and critical undertakings."

Stephenson felt that we had to get priorities right. The greater danger to individual freedom comes from totalitarian regimes that regard any dissenting view as a threat to be destroyed-- no matter if the threat comes from a lonely writer protesting against injustice or from another nation. One nation has the power to stop this obliteration of dissenting views-- the United States.

"At the worst moment in Britain's resistance in 1940," he recalled, "John Buchan wrote: 'The United Sates is actually and potentially the most powerful State on the globe. She has much, I believe, to give the world; indeed, to her hands is chiefly entrusted the shaping of the future. If democracy in the broadest and truest sense is to survive, it will be mainly because of her guardianship. For, with all her imperfections, she has a clearer view than any other people of the democratic fundamentals."

"Every word," said Stephenson, "is true today. Which is why our enemies would like to isolate the United States, and see her retreat from the confusion and chaos as she did during the rise of the Third Reich.

"I believe Americans will resist the pressures and propaganda to discard primary defenses. They'll find responsible ways to control the weapons of secrecy. I don't agree with that metaphor of Walter Lippmann that the peoples of the West, to stop their hands shaking, prepare to welcome manacles. "

"It would be a great irony, if, having proved to the would-be-conquerors of the world that freedom will prevail, we cannot prove it to ourselves."

Stephenson later wrote: "We learn from experience. The comradeship reveals itself whenever these dark forces try to reassert themselves. This brotherhood is a human response that grows within us. It cannot be legislated any more than can a mother's response to danger. It becomes a matter of courteous and concerned habit within our evolving civilization.

"What is often forgotten is that the worst abuses of power within our democtratic societies are exposed by our own people. The spirit of resistance is opposed to all forms of tyranny. We purge ourselves while we resist our enemies. This is response of concerned citizenry, knowing freedom is in danger, putting the responsibility for defending it squarely on individuals of honor and good intent. This is a sense of brotherhood that won't fit into rules and regulations. And so long as this holds true, there will always be struglle, but there will be no final defeat."

___________________________________

I've been searching for a long time for a way to put into words why the attitude of appeasement that exists today (which, if it's any consolation, mirrors directly the attitude that led directly to WWII) sickens and disgusts me. History has a habit of being quite circular; in fact Eastern thought often depicts time as a wheel or a serpent. This can be comforting to those who think that these are the "end-times", so to speak, or unique in their challenges, but it also lays, in my opinion, a load of enormous responsibility upon those of us who face the evil of this day and age. If we do not step up, who will? Will the wheel of time (to quote a Robert Jordan-ism) be broken and remade in another image?

There are, again, both disturbing and comforting similarities between the advent of the World War that nearly cost us all our freedom and the one that we fight today. I think perhaps, though, that the comfort that I gain from it is somewhat illusionary. There is a very real decision to be made, and utterly devastating consequences should we fail to make the right choice. We are not merely actors stepping in each age to fill the spot that the Wheel has wrought for us, our lines written and the final act decided in our favor; the play is being written as we choose, and the final act is up for grabs.

And as Stephenson said, the key was comradeship. Comeradeship is far more than friendship, far more than affection. I might go so far as to call it a basic human instinct. Again the war has come our way, and once again the voices that are heard are of those whose first instinct is appeasement and betrayal, and once again the faithful must stand forth, few and unnoticed, persecuted and vilified, to meet the call. They are the salt of the earth, the Church as far as I'm concerned.