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12 September 2006

A Lincolnesque Threat

The terrorist threat to the Western World does parallel the danger posed to the Union by the secession of the South, Newt Gingrich wrote in the September 7, 2006 Wall Street Journal. They both aim to disrupt a way of living that we believe we’re entitled to—a more perfect union and an individualistically free life. Both are concepts that do not necessarily imply greater material well-being. In fact, Islamic terrorists enthusiastically enjoy many of the same material pleasures as the citizens of Western societies, including basic physical satisfactions and technological advances.

In this way, many terrorist groups are similarly motivated by conceptual differences with the powers that control their material societies, including Irish Republicans, Tamil rebels, the Ku Klux Klan, and others. There is a distinction that brings Islamic terrorists closer to anarchists like the Khmer Rouge or the Maoists of the Cultural Revolution. They seem to believe that the West places more value on its material wealth than on its enshrinement of individual liberties.

Indeed, Western leaders often act as if individual liberties flow from material wealth and not the other way around. This is what makes them vulnerable to physically destructive attacks. It is simpler to combat physical attack than to convince a cult of technically capable and resource-endowed extremists that they have nothing to fear from self-reliance. Defense of our individual liberties will not be accomplished with weapons of war, but only with energetic communication and intellectual effort.

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