Profound Thoughts from Belmont Club

But not only has radical Islamism stirred up local mischiefs, it has also functioned as a bellows to fan the flames across other smoldering divides: the conservatives versus the Left; Europe versus America; the Third World versus the First World. It is almost as if the historical narrative, after seeming to settle into the smooth patch of the 1990s, had been reanimated across its entire spectrum by the Islamic disturbance, which shook things loose from their momentary stoppage and got things flowing again. Although the War on Terror is ostensibly a fight against the nihilism of radical Islam, it is probably much more: just how much more history will presently tell us. Radical Islam may find they are in the grip of larger forces whose power they have unleashed, which in their arrogance they sought to control only to find that events have acquired a dynamic of their own.