I think David Frum is on to something.
The greatest scholar of the Islamic world, Bernard Lewis, has brilliantly explained the roots of Muslim rage. He traces that rage to the failure of Muslim societies to adapt to the modern world. The people of these societies remember that they were once rich and powerful and important. Now they lag far behind – and they do not understand why. Rather than look inward at their own faults and failings, they have sought scapegoats in the world beyond their borders.
Lewis may well be right about the sources of Muslim rage, but note how well his analysis also seems to explain the rage of … Democrats!
Frum recognizes this fit when he uses the Lewis model to explain the incoherent anger of Michiko Kakutani, who reviewed his book for her employer, the New York Times.
The brand of liberalism championed by her newspaper was once all-powerful in American cultural life. Over the past decade, that power has ebbed away – and since 9/11, the ebb has become a flood. The New York Times no longer decides what Americans will read and what Americans will think about what they read. Rather than look inward, they blame talk radio and the Internet and Fox TV. And when this ferocious reservoir of accumulated resentment encounters a new and contradictory idea – well it just boils over.
But it’s not just the NYT. It’s the particular political persuasion for whom (not just to whom) the NYT speaks.
Stupid idea. Really, really, dumb.
Why aren’t the Turks angry over their recent lost Empire?
Why aren’t the Chinese violently angry about their ancient glory, now lost?
Think how low Spain has fallen since the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
And the English? Think how angry they must be over the recent lost of the world’s greatest empire.
No, the Islamic world is angry because the Islamic world is teaching its young people to hate. The answer is right in front of your nose.
Joel
The Turks, the Chinese, the Spanish and the English do not live in Third World hellholes while the people they once considered inferior to them live in affluence.
I think it was in the first video from bin Ladin that came out after 9/11, that he blathered about wanting Andalusia restored to Islamic rule as one demand for standing down the terror. That would be Spain, liberated from the Moors in the 15th century.
Seems that Joel is off his meds.