"On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right"
If, as I did, you missed this Los Angeles Times essay by liberal Sam Harris when it published Monday, don’t miss it now. Here’s a sample:
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror.” We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
[…]
We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
Given the American people’s appetite for economic populism, and the incompetence, corruption and unprincipledness of the extant Republican regimen, liberal Democrats could electorally obliterate the GOP were they all as clear-headed on national security as Sam Harris is. But they hate Bush more than they hate the enemy, and more than they love their country.
ADDED —
Case in point: “Yesterday, former Senator Gary Hart reminded us of why Democrats have managed to lose three straight elections that they should have won …”
Technorati tags: Liberals, liberalism, national+security
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