A caller to Dennis Prager's radio program today asserted that the cure for terrorist acts against the U.S. is for the U.S. to "keep its nose out of other people's business." (Dennis Prager Show, 1st Hour, 22 July 2005, KNUS 710-AM) This caller then rattles off several countries in which the U.S. has poked its nose. And last week, a caller to Michael Medved's radio program said that the cure for terrorism was for the US to stop spreading our culture around the world. We needed to repent of this, he claimed. (Forget for a moment the fact that our culture is being piped into these countries by the people who live there and purchase satellites!)

I am more than a little tired of the hand-wringing and self-recrimination that we are supposed to be engaging in this country. I am more than tired of the hand-wringing and self-recrimination that some people in this country are, in fact, engaging in.

According to one British writer (I can no longer locate the source), we are supposed to understand Muslim anger. We are suppose to understand how they can be angry with us (i.e., either the US specifically, or the West in general) for attempting to impose our culture on them. We are supposed to understand because of our involvment in attempting a conquest of Muslim lands going all the way back to the first crusade. (Never mind that this was undertaken not by "us" but by Catholic Europe.) We are supposed to understand because of our involvement in the colonization of Africa, the Middle East and India, etc. (Never mind that this was undertaken not by "us" but, again, by Europe. Ask yourself, for example, just why French is spoken in Sierra Leone, or Vietnam.)

Then there's the Mayor of London, suggesting that we must understand how Western policies, motivated by Western need for oil, are really responsible for all this. (See, Andrew Gray, "London mayor says West fueled Islamic radicalism", 20 July 2005,

We are supposed to understand that they believe we are trying to conquer them because we have military bases in their countries. And, of course, we can understand their position: Muslims, of course, have never engaged in any conquests of their own.

I think I will start feeling a little remorse--for only God Himself knows what--when the Turks rename Istanbul, Constantinople; and when they, themselves, express remorse and do some self-flagellating for taking what is now known as Turkey away from the Byzantines. Actually, I think we should ask for more here: The (Muslim) Turks ought to turn the area back into a Christian civilization.

I will start wringing my hands, when the Muslims surrender all those places that were Christian before they were Muslim, places like, say, Syria and Egypt, just for starters.

I will never feel--much less express--any guilt over the crusades, for two reasons. One: I am not a Catholic; I feel no need to apologize for anything Catholics have ever done. Two: Not only am I not Catholic, I am not European. Indeed, as a descendant of people who left Europe, if anything I am inclined to be rather anti-European in some respects. (And I will make no apologies for that until I see some apologies from some Europeans with anti-American feelings.) I feel no need to apologize for anything Europeans have ever done. (I mean seriously. On just my mothers side, I have both Viking and Scottish blood. If one were to assert that as a descendant of Europeans, I owe Muslims an apology for the crusades, then by the same logic I might owe an apology to the Scots for any harm they may have received from the Vikings, or perhaps vice-versa. Perhaps I should apologize to myself--twice. But since I am a descedant of them both, I can't see how this would work out. I also have some Spaniards in my ancestry, so, if anything, let some Muslims apologize to me for their conquest of Spain, a conquest it took Spaniards almost 700 years to undo.) Three: Inasmuch as the crusades were launched to regain the Holy Land...uh...from Muslims, I feel no need to apologize to those who took it from Christians in the first place. That area--one of many--was Christian before it was Muslim, Roman before it was Christan, and Jewish long, long before it was conquered by Rome.

Let Islamicist terrorists accuse the West of what they will. Their heroes and ancestors did it to ours first. They were in the conquest business long before there was a West, when the West was nothing more than a smattering of warring babarian tribes who had not even been "christianized" yet. One could say they taught the West all about conquest. I mean, really, which Western european (post-Rome) empire could compete with the Muslim East, especially the Ottoman Turks? And I don't see any of these terrorist types expressing any remorse for their--or their ancestors'--conquering ways. They're a bunch of hypocrites: conquest is just fine for them and theirs, but no others. All of this is academic anyway: if we (i.e., the US) wanted to conquer, we wouldn't be talking about our desire to conquer: we'd be done already.

Furthermore, we have an all-volunteer military. Two things would have to change in order for our military to be the effective means of extending an empire anywhere in the world. (1) We would have to have an equivalent to France's foreign legion, staffed with non-citizens who would be willing to extend our empire in exchange for the promise of citizenship. The average US serviceperson, while willing to serve for the protection of his country, is not interested in extending an empire: his interests are a bit too narrow. (2) We would have to cease to be a republic; for, as the Romans learned, an empire is not very effectively ruled with a republican form of government. (Which, by the way, is probably why we conservatives see democracy in the middle east as the most effective solution to the terrorist problem.)