An Anatomy of Surrender

Excellent article with excellent insights and research in it. I want to read it again to see if the things that did not click the first time will click in the next read. And then again and again. I need to look up some of the points to get the full stories, even though I know most of the points Mr. Bawer has made. I love articles that tie loose threats into a string, but this is almost a rope strong enough to hang with.

An Anatomy of Surrender by Bruce Bawer, City Journal Spring 2008: "We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.

The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively—and some, approvingly—while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission.

But we certainly can’t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don’t stand up for it ourselves."