Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Collision of Two Runaway Trains



I am currently on an around-the-globe trip, going from the West Coast, to Down Under, Singapore, London, and then home again. From the vantage point of this journey, the one striking and overwhelming image I get is of two runaway trains moving in opposite directions. And yet, in some strange way, they are about to cause a global collision.

Let me explain.

On one train, Islamists are violently demanding that the West bow to them as they seek to take the world back to the Arabian dark ages of the 7th century.

On the other, humanists, atheists, greens, and extreme liberals are pushing the West to abandon its historic morals and Judeo-Christian ethics. They demand that the West embrace a world of homosexual marriages, nature worship, environmental extremism, and godlessness.

Although I am a trained social anthropologist who is supposed to make sense of such things, I must confess that I am baffled on this front. How can two extreme movements, heading in opposite directions, be so perilously close to an unprecedented collision? Read more

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