Strangely enough, the Left lacks understanding of the power of ideas.

Of course the Left uses words, criticism, sarcasm, ridicule and other forms of verbal warfare when they attack and demean their opponents on the Right, but they are helpless when the attack comes from the world of multiculturalism.  It's both their creation and their weakness. 

The manifest power of ideas over things makes the indifference with which radical Islamism is regarded by the left even more puzzling. Radical Islamism does stuff, no less than Nazism as an ideology did. Yet many on the liberal side of the aisle appear to ignore it as a harmless, childish, essentially unserious notion.

The Nazis as well as the Islamofascists are more powerful than their mere physical presence would indicate because of the power of their ideas. The idea comes before everything.

The Tsarnaev’s were showered with a huge amount of things. And did they like it? No they hated it. Hated the whole idea of the dirty, degenerate, corrupt West. They hated the idea and took the goodies without a thought. Despite this the mainstream culture is set to respond to their attack with more things. More drones, detectors, armored vehicles, barriers, restrictions, weapons, armor …. more items the list of which goes on and on. But omitted from the catalog of responses will be any campaign to mentally engage radical Islam — to debate against it, denounce it or render it uncool — because that would be bigoted.

It is often forgotten that Freedom of Speech means debate. It means patches on software, not paint on the equipment box. It means fixing the insubstantial. It means mental action. This is important because in the case of radical Islam Freedom of Speech has been redefined as the obligation to remain silent. That obligation has even been given a special term: it is called Tolerance. And no one seems to have noticed that Tolerance is essentially the opposite of Freedom of Speech. It means don’t program. Don’t unhack the hack. Do nothing. Pretend it’s all a joke. Watch the whole system melt down. Tolerance is a rejection of the manifest truth that information matters because it can cure or it can kill.

In ancient times the word often used to describe the power of information over man was “spirit”. And the old ones knew that though the spirit moved in us, it could be of two kinds. There could be angels and demons. And they still can be, though we give them other names.

And perhaps that is why terrorism is so hard for the modern post-western, multicultural elite to confront. We don’t cast out demons any more. They’ve joined the operating system.