Mark Steyn: "Unlearning Together"

No satirist can compete with reality ...  about the killer and his victim on London Bridge.

Jack Merritt was a 25-year-old Cambridge criminology graduate and an administrator of the "Learning Together" programme. He had written the dissertation for his Doctorate of Philosophy on the "over-representation" in the British prison system of young ethnic-minority males, such as Usman Khan. He had apparently donated to a charity fun run by two Cambridge professors that raised money to buy a laptop for Usman Khan.

Usman Khan used that laptop to explore his continuing-education interest in global jihad, and then he asked permission to go to Fishmongers' Hall in London to attend the "Learning Together" anniversary event.

Jack Merritt saw Usman Khan as his friend, proof of the validity of his thesis, a testament to the success of the programme. Usman Khan saw Jack Merritt as the other, the infidel. So he killed him.

And, Jack's father is upset, not with the man who killed his son, but with the people who criticized the man who killed his son.

If anything can be said for certain about Jack Merritt's short life, it's that in the end he wasn't terribly good at recognizing who the real "haters" are. Nor is his father, who seems to think they're Nigel and Boris, Tories, "Islamophobes". So who actually is the hater here? If you happen to think that bollards and de-radicalization programmes are insufficient to the situation, Dave Merritt will label your difference of opinion as "an agenda of hate". Which is one reason why the bollardization of everything is all we get.

The determination to denounce everything other than diversity blather as an "agenda of hate" is a big part of why we're where we are today.

In a way, Jack Merritt is a victim of his father.

Usman Khan was an ill-educated fanatic, but, up against all the sophisticated stupidity of the elites, he figured that out at least.