On Tuesday I sent, in response to Wretchard's foreboding suggestion that assertive democratization "cannot reduce the hatred, fanaticism and irrationality that possessed [the London terrorist bombers] in the first place," the following:
Just a tiny point to haggle over, since I understand what you're trying to say: the dictatorial Near East is the heart pumping blood to Islamist appendages across the world. Just as with the Fascists and the Communists, strongmen and thugs who want to try on Islamofascism need a cynosure. When it goes, Islamism will clear up in a fraction of the time it took to fester. Gentleman's bet.
Wretchard graciously replied:
I hope so and would be glad to lose that bet. I think half the heart is the Middle East, but the other half, perhaps a slightly different half is the fantasy part of radical Islam, the kind that lives in the Western academe, where ideas have a way of outstaying their time.
Yes, I answered, relativists will always incubate collectivist, nihilist and nescient ideologies. But I wonder if our understanding of leftist academia is static when it should be dynamic; leftist elites earnestly adopted illiberalism in the first years after the Second World War, and through culture and news media established a Western intellectual monopoly. Universalism and rightism survived in spite of that, and over the past fifteen years new media has shown leftism to be a feckless contender.
Even if the London bombers were Britons whose seduction into evil was facilitated by a permissive and indifferent society, a line can probably be drawn from the young men — through those who inculcated, trained and armed them — leading right back to the Near East. Two questions. First, if lawless societies are reformed, will the left's self-destructive predilections create physical threats to democracy or poseur bootlickers? Second, if the left cannot withstand debate or independently distributed information, what kind of cultural force will it play in coming years?
Yesterday John Derbyshire, who has been rather parochial about the war, echoed a disbelief in the infectious cultural power of authoritarian societies, especially influential to free societies suffering from stagnation or ambivalence — like, arguably, Britain. (Whereas Iraq and Afghanistan, imbued with considerable democratist momentum, are actually influencing the autocracies surrounding them.) Unconvincing to some. "Given," Derbyshire wrote, "that the entire premise of current U.S. policy is that we can end suicide bombing and other terrorism by bringing liberal democracy to the Middle East; shouldn't we be re-thinking our policy?"
No, I wrote to him, only accelerating it.
From where might those capable of the terrorist bombers' indoctrination — if not training and outfitting — have originated? The fascist Near East. What John suggested runs counter to history, as if Seyss-Inquart, Henlein, Ortega or Castro operated independently. That free societies (like the United Kingdom) are susceptible to illiberalism does not belie an authoritarian source — it underscores the incompatibility of democracy and dictatorship.
This morning it was reported that the "home-grown" British terrorists were tutored for their diabolical task by agents in the region that President Bush and his allies are working to militarily and diplomatically reform. Free societies cannot forfend sociopathy but they punish and thereby mitigate it. Tyranny is a celebration of inhumanity. The four killers did not invent al Qaeda; they reached out to Mohammed Atta's homeland for materiel consultation. Take a long, good look.