A New-To-Me Blog And Thoughts On World War IV

Jonathan V. Last, film critic for the Weekly Standard (where, I'm sad to say, he gives the thumbs up to the extended abomination DVD edition of Return of the King today), has his very own blog Galley Slaves. Go check it out. Among other things, Jonathan is watching the ongoing Mickey Kaus/ Axis Sully slap-party over how the Donks should deal with the issue of Islamofacism.

With respect to Kaus's resistance to even recognizing a clash of civilizations between the West and Islamic Radicalism, Last has this to say:

What has Kaus's flackseed-oil-enhanced superbrain missed? Umm, September 11? In case he missed it, a not-insignificant-portion of one civilization has already declared war on Western civilization in general, and the progressive end of liberalism in particular. In many ways, Bush is fighting a war in defense of Big-D Democratic values.

This resonates with me because of a discussion I had recently with some people from Church. Several of the folks I was talking to are left wingers of varying degree. The topic of the discussion came around to agape, the notion of selfless love for others with no thought of any personal gain in return. One of the questions that came up was how one goes about practicing agape even with one's enemies, as directed by the New Testament. I brought up the Radical Islamists and asked in what ways we could love people who we know to be hell-bent on killing us.

The discussion that followed positively gob-smacked me, because it quickly turned into an exercise in self-flagellation. I think people understood the point that the Islamofacists hate us for who and what we are, but the knee-jerk reaction here was that if this was the case, then something must be wrong with us, that it is somehow all our fault and that the focus of our energies should be on figuring out what this flaw is and fixing it. The notion that the Islamofacists might be, y'know, wrong, that their radicalism might be the crazed product of a reactionary medievalism that is, y'know, bad, seemed to completely fail to register.

Ironically, Last is correct that it is exactly people like this, progressive liberals, who are at the top of the Islamofacists' hit list. Not to recognize this threat is bad enough. To somehow think that the threat is deserved is downright appalling, not only because it reveals a level of self-loathing that amounts to near psychosis, but also because it hampers the West's ability to defend itself through distraction, confusion and enervation.

It strikes me that it is perfectly feasible for the Democratic Party to adopt and vigorously pursue a foreign policy, harking back to its Glory Days during World War II and the pre-Vietnam Cold War, that preserves and compliments its commitment to progressive values. It also strikes me that the Donks need to do this, not just for their own sake, but for the rest of us as well.

UPDATE: The superb Victor David Hanson has some thoughts on what the Donks need to do to regain their moral seriousness.