Dreher admires the certainty that he thinks that fundamentalist Muslims have, but I think it’s weird to admire certainty in a belief you think is false.

Amanda, you’re just soo post-feudal. Get over it.

I can’t count the times I’ve had the annoying idiot vs. evil fuck argument. I’m firmly in the evil fuck camp, myself.

I thought this was a “both / and” blog?

One of the few things that really sticks with me years after majoring in history is that there is always, somebody - usually a male authority figure - complaining that the world is going to hell and that the new generation lacks respect.

The reason WA is more of a clusterfuck than Cairo has nothing to do with religion. Go read about the history of French and British colonialism in Africa: one thing that will stand out is that when the colonists had to let go of their colonies in the 50s and 60s, they purposefully drew the borders so that the newly independent states would be as dysfunctional as possible. In WA, the ethnic, cultural and linguistic similarities tend to run east-west: people along the coast are pretty similar to one another, but different from the people 100km inland, who tend to be pretty similar to one another, etc. So the French drew the boundaries north-south, thus ensuring that each country would have a problematic mix of people. This kept them financially and culturally dependent upon France.

You can look at the history of Iraq and see the same phenomenon writ large.

Anyone who can find The Power of Nightmares on youtube or bittorrent is encouraged to do so.

On another note, I do feel like I am surrounded by the decay of democracy and the environment. I do have a sizable ego, but I don’t think these are related.

I’m not sure that The Fear of End Days and the Reverence of the Golden Age don’t spring from separate impulses (though if you buy them both today, they’ll throw in Dismissal of Present Trends, your treasure to keep, for absolutely nothing).

Hard to say.