And because the leftists and the fake-Quakers are so narrow-minded and self-centered, they can't see that we're trying to save Islam from itself. We have no choice-- it's either that, or consign Islam and its one billion believers to the fire:

The Three Conjectures

People tend to suffer from one of two historical blindnesses: either that people in the past are just like us, or that they are nothing like us. Some people will be shocked that these things can still happen today, but some will think that it could only happen today.

I try not to suffer from either blindness. There's evil out there, folks, and in the face of that I try to hold to the one and only technique that has ever worked:

Reward the behavior you want, and fight the behavior you don't.

Somehow, I think mass slaughter is on the definite "don't want" list.

Hale, you are right on. We are "older," we are in loco parentis. Trying to keep a self-destructive teenager from making the same mistakes we did at that "age."

Mistakes like trying to stop progress, or go back to an "age of faith," or ignore intellectual challenges. There is no way out except "through."

Is it possible we are actually giving the Left too much credit when we simply brand them as nihilistic? I often wonder (and I'm thinking out loud now) if there isn't something else at work here. In some ways, something even darker.

The Left doesn't just want Bush to fail, they need him to fail, and I think some of that has to do with simple political desperation. Despite what happened in the most recent congressional elections, the Democrats are in real trouble. They have lost a huge amount of ground over the last thirty years.

Even now they can't win an election without the media supporting them in any way they can. If Bush were to win his war in Iraq, and if his presidency, coming on the heals of Reagan, were to be deemed successful, they could truly be looking at political annihilation.

There is a crazy desperation on the Left that I don't think can be explained by nihilism alone. They are staring into the abyss. They can easily imagine a future in which the Democratic Party as we know it (pro labor, big government, trans-national) ceases to exist.

True stuff, but I'd tend to flip it around and say that if the problem were purely political, there would not be desperation to the point of craziness. Politically the Democrat Party, while tending I think towards minority status, has lots of options. Just as the Republicans had during their minority years of, very approximately, 1930's to the 90's.

But the basic option they have is to be more in tune with the country. We saw them doing that in the last election, putting up a bunch of blue-dog Democrats, and winning control of Congress. That is painful, but the craziness demands a deeper explanation. The nihilism is my guess, but it could also be caused by ideology, such as if they are truly commited to a socialist belief system or world-view.

I admit to being baffled, and I am groping around in the dark for an explanation. But Clinton (Bill) certainly tried to lead his Party in a direction more in tune with the country (welfare reform, NAFTA, "the era of big government is over", Sister Soulja smack down, etc.) and the hard Left hate him for it.

My current theory is that the energy on the Left is coming from good old fashioned Socialists (like Michael Moore) who want to turn the clock back to 1977. These are vile (but committed) people who will stop at nothing in pursuit of their world-view (which is genuinely anti-American by the way).

The normal, run-of-the-mill Democrat is looking the other way for two reasons. First, they don't have anything to offer. Second, they see and feel the energy and hope it will at least succeed in winning some elections, where certainly (they hope) the adults will take over.

The question here that fascinates me is, what's going on in M. Moore's head? IS he in fact a Socialist? Not just someone who has socialistic habits and policies, but does he have an actual believed-in theory-of-everything? Marxism or something similar?

Socialism used to be a faith. Something for which people would embrace poverty and obedience, and sometimes even chastity. I don't think that exists any more. Some of the habits persist, but the faith is dead. Much like many main-line church congregations.

The phrase that describes much of our western world is "hollowed out."

I think this statement is mistaken--
That misguided world is being racked over the space of a generation or two by changes that the Christian West worked through, with lots of bloodshed, over many centuries

What exactly do you mean?

I'm thinking of changes like urbanization, with large numbers of rural people flocking to city slums. Industrialization, with hand-crafts replaced by factory production.

And philosophical changes, such as the challenges scientific discoveries present to traditional world-views and creation stories. And philosophies that assume that it is impossible to know anything for sure.

And changes like sexual-liberation, contraception and Feminism. And ever-faster communications that bring all the changes into people's lives instantly.

My world of Western Christendom was repeatedly shaken by discoveries like the Sun-centered universe, the great age of geological formations, and then of evolution and Darwin's explanation of it. (These were actually unnecessary griefs; the Bible creation stories were never intended to be scientific accounts, and even the idea that they should be considered to be literal explanations was a modern idea.) But those discoveries impinged on people slowly, and the thinking of simple folk might lag behind various discoveries by centuries.

Today some people can get on a bus and move in a matter of hours from a village with oxen and folk-tales to a city with Internet and multi-national industries and complete sexual freedom and wide-spread atheism, and no wise elders to tell one how to behave...