Perhaps it is easier to argue that the problem (Muslim anger) has a solution (change of foreign policy), rather than recognize that our belief in rationality and our optimism about human nature are sometimes misplaced. It is a legacy of the Enlightenment that we find it so hard to deal with madness and fanaticism. We are always inclined to seek an alternative explanation: There is a cause — our policies — there is an effect — their anger — and there is a solution — our change of policy. ~Emanuele Ottolenghi, National Review

God forbid that I ever say anything really favourable about the Enlightenment, and I have made my strong objections against political optimism known on several occasions, but I tend to find that people who are otherwise so thrilled with the promise of the Enlightenment, rationality and freedom when it comes to the blasted “freedom agenda” suddenly become very cautious and hesitant in assuming that it will, in fact, do very much good when applied by Westerners to discern intelligible causes of our policy screw-ups.  Reason will light the way across the Near East and eliminate the causes of terrorism, but it apparently cannot help us devise a better Near Eastern policy. 

On questions of policy we must remain mute, because obviously you can’t change anything with changes in policy–in spite of what Enlightenment theories about politics, society and culture claim.  When lumieres get depressed, they come off sounding more morose and pessimistic than any reactionary, because they are coming down off the big high of actually believing in their absurd theories about the innate goodness of man, the state of nature and all the rest of it. 

Maybe the Enlightenment in its entirety is a bunch of hokum (I generally think so), perhaps its concept of rationality is deeply flawed, its optimism about human nature absurd and its belief in solving every problem with recourse to reason naive and dangerous, but it is amazing how quickly otherwise steadfast believers in said hokum run for the exits the moment the possible answers conflict with their deep-set prejudices against changing policy in the Near East.  Because certain of our neo-lumieres approve of current policy, we must now devise some elaborate explanation of why this problem of resistance to our policies–unlike all of the others–has no solution. 

Now I don’t think every problem has a solution (as Burnham would say, such a thing is not really a problem anyway), but I am skeptical about the reasons for the sudden loss of confidence of friends of the Enlightenment the moment that a rational solution does seem to present itself to us.  As I have said several times this month, withdrawal and ending occupations are not the complete answers, they do not solve everything, and there are indeed some aspects of the Islamic world we will never be able to “solve” (because these are simply realities integral to Islamic societies and not some sort of political and social structural flaws that we can repair), but I have to say that the only thing more offensive than the arrogant confidence of the hubristic Enlightenment man is his despair after he has encountered some impasse in thinking about a problem.  He suddenly adopts the most fatalistic, tragic airs and laments about his poor lot instead of rethinking his assumptions and doing something to get out of his predicament.  Reason offers him no guidance, so he must resign himself to endless violent conflict!  There is, of course, always a better guide than reason (more than one, I should think), but in this case I think Mr. Ottolenghi hardly gives the power of reason enough credit.  His is a vision that has clearly been overwhelmed by the weight of ideological presuppositions–ridiculous presuppositions, by the way, that must be laid at the door of Enlightenment rationalism–that tell him that religious fanaticism has no reason and cannot really be understood.  By defining rationality in his typically limited, dessicated way, the Enlightenment man cannot perceive the method and logic that exists even in the mind of the religious fanatic.  Needless to say, the distraction of thinking of it in terms of fascism or even totalitarianism does relatively little good. 

Let’s think about this: changing our policies, which the Islamists positively state are the causes of their violent actions, will supposedly avail nothing, because these people are fanatics…but bringing secularism (which they do indeed hate), liberty (they’re not big fans) and democracy (they like it only on certain occasions) will revamp the entire region and instill the spirit of peace and brotherhood among the nations.  Does anyone see a disconnect?  (Steve Sailer, by the way, offers a different sort of disconnect that makes a lot of sense.)  In other words, giving the region’s peoples something they claim to want–changes in foreign policy–is useless, while giving them something that they may or may not want and may actually despise in practise will reduce the scale of the problem. 

If the “freedom agenda” crowd is even 1% right about the transformative potential of the new ideas they propose on the grounds that, given the chance, most people will opt for a different set of values from the ones the Islamists offer (which is doubtful but not completely impossible), they have to grant that there is some chance that there are other incentives and changes that can be offered and made that would reduce the level of the threat from Islamic jihadis, chief among which are significant changes in policy in the region.  If they believe firmly that changing policy will avail nothing, they must also acknowledge that attempts to transform political culture will also avail nothing; they have defined the cause of jihadi attacks in such a way that there never could be any “solution” short of perpetual warfare.  If they really believe this, why do they waste our time and resources with all this babble about democratisation, which they must believe to be futile?

But at the root of all this lumiere moaning and groaning is a deeper misunderstanding: thinking of our foreign policy as if it were just some sort of abstract question no more personally or immediately relevant than the raising of taxes.  Mr. Ottolenghi displays his stunning aloofness here:

For why should it be logical or even understandable that Muslim anger at Western foreign policy solicits terrorism? Should anger at high taxes, inefficient health care, poor environmental standards, or disagreeable op-eds solicit “understandable” similar responses? Should we condone people blowing up airliners because they think the highest tax bracket should not be higher than, say, 30 percent? Should we “address their grievances”? By, say, lowering taxes? What if someone decides to blow up, say, the Guardian because they are fed up with the political inclination of its Comment section? Should the Guardian address their grievances by becoming right-wing? Can we not call it blackmail, instead, as it should be the case? Can we not say that differences of opinion are only legitimate when voiced in the peaceful forms amply provided by the open societies we are part of? That what makes people angry is no excuse for killing people?

Well, I don’t know.  Some rather famous people, with whom Americans may be familiar, who objected to tariffs and started killing people over that seemed to think there was an excuse, or rather a justification, because their disagreement wasn’t just about tariffs but about claims of right, justice and a certain sense of their own dignity and status.  They took their disagreements, as the saying has it these days, to “the next level” in the belief that they no longer had peaceful options left.  It’s all very well to say that this sort of behaviour is inexcusable, but every daft idiot who praises the liberal revolutions of the last two centuries must acknowledge that it was also wrong to take up arms over what were, in some respects, much more trivial and unimportant political disagreements.  If you are not willing to condemn Bastiat, Garibaldi and Michael Collins, spare us the lecture on the need to resolve all our differences peacefully.  And whatever you do, don’t pretend that the current round of using violence to redress perceived grievances is really that different.  Its methods may be different, but its logic is the same as the logic of every revolutionary–which is why I oppose them and the revolutionaries of every age. 

What they all have in common is a shared objection to policies that directly wound, or are perceived to wound, the community and the community’s sense of justice, its sense of how it ought to be treated.  Because foreign policy, particularly ours in some parts of the Near East, directly impacts the daily lives of millions and affects the sentiments and perceptions of hundreds of millions, it is not hard to see how the exercise of our power in their part of the world–particularly military power–rankles in a way that a change in the marginal rates never would.  Particularly if that policy leads–or is simply perceived to lead–to an allied government mistreating its people or to the use of U.S.-provided weapons on their villages or the direct use of American firepower in their country or even the mere presence of American troops in their country (regardless of why they are there), that policy will elicit a fierce and predictable response.  Removing these provocations is a first step towards eliminating the broader support and rationale of groups that feed off of the outrage over these policies.  

Of course, in another era now long gone, the suggestion of direct taxation would have been met with fierce political resistance and even violent resistance in this country–this seems irrational to the modern wage slave who trusts his government and may even want it to take more of his money “for the good of all,” but it really was that important for maintaining personal and political independence and liberty.  If men used to kill each other over this, we can surely understand why they would respond vehemently to the perceived humiliation of their peoples and their countries.