william
2008-04-07 12:09:02
There are, after all, some beneficial effects to losing a war. The way of the Bushido was deeply engrained in the Japanese spirit and has since gone the way of elaborate tea services. Junkers thought that dueling scars made the man, and this too has gone the way of spats. White southerners thought that their right to own slaves was sanctioned not just by states’ rights but by the Bible itself. There were militants in all these societies who felt that change would come only over their dead bodies, and so it came to pass. Perhaps the squalor and defeat that their value system has caused will cause the more thoughtful Islamists to rethink their beliefs and the more militant to perish.
