Once again, the comentariate is trying to figure out just when the latest perpetrator of the latest terrorist attack became "radicalized."
What does that even mean?
I suspect it is comforting to a degree because it implies that the terrorist was just the boy next door before something happened: he was "radicalized. If we can just figure out how he was "radicalized" . . . It was some kind of accident, right? But it wasn't an accident.
Just how much of a nudge does it take to "radicalize" a young man who is already living in the West but surrounded by hatred for the West? Who grows up in an enclave where the post-Enlightenment values of the mainstream society around them are rejected and hated?
Isn't radicalization just a term for the weaponization of these pre-existing hatreds? No, not everybody in these ghettoes or banlieus becomes radicalized. There are decent people living in these hellholes. But let's not pretend that they are harmless.
Immigration is great, but we should be wary of immigration policies that do not encourage assimilation and that even create pockets of hatred just waiting to be weaponized.
We don't yet have the kinds of no-go areas Europe has, but we do seem to lack courage to stand up for our values, even if it means refusing to speak out against, say, advocates of Sharia law. What gutless wonders we have become.
Speaking of passivity in the face of evil, Katty Kay, the BBC anchor who is familiar to U.S. viewers, believes that the West should just get used to terrorists attacks like the hideous one that killed 22 people, including children, earlier this week n Manchester. The Daily Caller reports:
Kay told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday that Europeans have no choice but to get used to terrorists murdering their families because “we are never going to be able to totally wipe this out.”
“Europe is getting used to attacks like this, Mika. They have to, because we are never going to be able to totally wipe this out,” Kay said.
“As ISIS gets squeezed in Syria and Iraq, we’re going to see more of these kinds of attacks taking place in Europe and Europe is starting to get used to that.”
I am speechless.
Alas, this is nothing new. Tammy Bruce, who is enraged by this attitude (as every decent human being should be), recalls that former secretary of state John Kerry was also an advocate not getting too riled up about terror:
In 2004, Sen. John Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee, was interviewed by The New York Times. When asked “What it would take for Americans to feel safe again,” Mr. Kerry answered, “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”
Even with the Sept. 11 attacks just a few years earlier, making the nature of the Islamist terror threat clear, Mr. Kerry exposed the left’s surrender to carnage and chaos. The suggestion that terrorism should be viewed as a nuisance indicates an acceptance of it as a regular part of our lives.
All normal human beings reject the grotesque suggestion we simply adapt, but his comment wasn’t a lark. It ended up being one of the first articulations of liberal Western leadership’s strategy of management of the scourge, abandoning the idea of destroying it.
Fast forward to August 2016. Sensing that terrorism was an actual problem, Mr. Kerry had another idea. Speaking in Bangladesh he noted, “If you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. … Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
Genius. Let’s just not mention it, and everything will be OK.
Only a society that no longer believes in itself decides that it isn't worthwhile to fight terrorists–I mean, really, isn't it all somehow our fault anyway?
Mark Steyn has a sobering column on the desperate efforts to just look the other way ('"Dangerous Woman' Meets Dangerous Man").
Funny thing, ignoring the threat won't make it go away.