Remembering Theo Van Gogh

-- Francis Fukuyama: Remember Theo van Gogh, and shudder for the future

-- And Belmont Club comments on Fukuyama's article.

The events in France may turn out to have a greater strategic impact than September 11. French policies, however maddening, had the virtue of serving as the control case to the American experiment of attempting to reform the Islamic world. The latter acknowledged, however shyly, that it was facing an aggression which had to be met at the root; which had to be resolved by building viable societies in Islamic homelands. The former, and France in particular, maintained there was nothing that temporizing and appeasement, in one form or another, could not solve. What events in France have done is discredit the liberal recipe so badly that even those who are not prepared to admit that American policy may have been right must now root around for an alternative theory. Fukuyama's essay is a good step in that direction. Faster please.

More on Van Gogh here.

And this is a must-read too: The Suicide Bombers Among Us by Theodore Dalrymple.