Fighting Ideas with Ideas

[ProfessorB]

I'm afraid I don't have so apocalyptic a view of Islam. I've certainly encountered similarly Manichean rhetoric from the American Right (the pamphlets of the John Birch Society in the 1960s are particularly instructive), various Christian sects, and any number of radical/New Left movements. Life-or-death, us-or-them rhetoric is splendid when you're recruiting, and that's generally what it's used for. Remember President Bush -- you're either for us or you're for the terrorists. That kind of all-or-nothing approach makes for good T.V. and little more.

Incidentally, it also bears keeping in mind is that we did not confront Communism "head-on" -- the entire history of the Cold War is a history of avoiding head-on confrontation (by both sides). The particular genius of Ronald Reagan was that he managed to sound like a doomsday prophet but was actually remarkably flexible when it came to managing relations with the Soviet Union -- much to the chagrin, one notes, of the most ideologically reliable members of the Republican Party coalition.