I just had to copy this part of Bill Whittle's essay on Power, mentioned in yesterday's bloggage for those who don't have the patience to read what they must:

"There is loose in the world a cancer, a cult of death and destruction, a force that loves nothing but destruction and pain and revenge for slights real and imagined. We face people whose hatred and rage sends them into fits of ecstasy at the thought of their own children being blown to bloody shreds so long as they can kill as many innocents as possible. And the higher we build the more fervent and hardened their desire to bring us down.

It is a sickness, it is a disease – it is, in fact, the last animal howling of rage and impotence at a new idea of humanity that is, at a long, bloody and terrible price, fighting and winning a war against racism, sexism, religious extremism, tribalism, conformity and slavery.

It is a war for and against the liberal freedoms of the West, for and against the idea of self-determination, personal liberty and responsibility, human creativity, diversity, and freedom of expression.

It is a fight to the death for and against a culture that can build marvels like skyscrapers and airliners, acts of technological and creative daring, and fill them with individuals of every nation and religion and color united by their desire to work hard and get along with one another, people who have traded in machetes and blood feuds for letter openers and water-cooler gossip. We are fighting a nihilistic force, a force that creates nothing and would destroy this entire world for their place in the next if given the means, a force that hijacks – both literally and figuratively -- these miracles of industry, creativity and compromise and brings them down in blood and fire and ruin.

It is a fight that we cannot avoid. Despite the bleats of terrified apologists and appeasers, this is not a fight against what we have done, but rather a war against who we are and what we believe and represent. That is why we must remind ourselves, daily remind ourselves, that all these miraculous things we take for granted are not the natural state of man, but new and terrifying ideas for millions of people shackled to the past, ideas that must be fought for and maintained by force if need be. Maintained by power, the vast power generated by freedom and creativity and cooperation.

And yet, we woke up on the first day after the world had changed, woke up to find the plainest evidence possible that we are at war with yet another enemy of civilization and progress, and what did we see?

We saw the rest of the Western world cowering in fear and self-hatred, awash in the disease of self-doubt and myopia that comes from decades of success and luxury – the same disease that brought Rome from the stability and growth of the Pax Romana to the decadent and self-loathing horrors of Caligula. We saw a few friends – pitifully few; painfully few -- ready to stand and fight this disease, this death cult of Terror. And of the rest?

They have traded in their power, their means of self-defense, for 35 hour work weeks and months of paid vacations and pre-paid health care and covered it with a patina of moral superiority that masks a rotten and tottering foundation. They have become cultures unwilling to pay the price to defend themselves, cultures so pessimistic and cynical that they have – literally and without rhetorical flourish – lost the will to live to the degree that parents outnumber their children and birthrates plummet through replacement levels and into the basement of collapse and ruin.

And so who is willing, who indeed is even able to fight back in the defense of skyscrapers and bridges, of jetliners and miracle drugs? Who will stand and fight the forces that wish to tear down our cities, shroud our women, burn our science, execute critics, torture the different and destroy our new and alien ideas of personal freedom and responsibility, ideas that have lifted billions from the perpetual fear and horror that have been the lot of the Damned Human Race since man walked upright?

Who will fight for that? Who?

We will fight for it. America. Fallible, human, flawed America will fight. Australia – another tough and proud nation of free men and women will fight. Great Britain, that ancient champion of decency and fair play. Poland, who knows more about war and horror than perhaps any place on earth – she has shown she will fight. Israel. Israel who has borne this burden alone for decades…"