Western Self-Hatred Makes Jihad Possible
by William Kilpatrick, Crisis Magazine:
It’s often said that we are engaged in an ideological struggle with radical Islam—a clash of civilizations. But what exactly does that mean?
Ideological warfare is, in its most basic sense, a war of ideas. Of course, it’s not advisable to engage in pitched intellectual warfare with every group with which you disagree. As Jefferson said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” On the other hand, if your neighbor’s religious or political beliefs do encourage him to break your leg, then it makes perfect sense to try and disabuse him of his beliefs.
The Cold War was in part a war of ideas. It was necessary to fight it because it was one of those cases where the other side’s ideology encouraged them to break your leg—or, as Soviet Premier Khrushchev put it, “we will bury you.” On top of that, communist ideology was spreading rapidly across the world. Discussion about the nature of that ideology could no longer be confined to faculty lounges in ivy-clad universities.
Today we are in the middle of a new Cold War—this time with radical Islam. Once again we are faced with an ideology that seeks to subjugate us, and, once again, it is a fast-spreading ideology.
So it seems that ideological warfare is called for. But there is a caveat. There’s no sense in engaging in a war of beliefs if you don’t have any of your own, or if the ones you do have are of the wishy-washy variety. But thanks to relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence, wishy-washy is the order of the day.
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