JAPAN THEN, ISLAM NOW: Orrin

JAPAN THEN, ISLAM NOW: Orrin Judd compares our current struggle with Islamic extremists with our view of Japan in the 1980s and early ’90s:

In many ways, the current hysteria over our confrontation with Islam resembles the Japanophobia of the 1980s. Then, as now, the emotionally labile, those who live in the moment, took a current situation (things like the Japanese buying Radio City Music Hall) and projected it forward in a straight line, never pausing to consider the catastrophic internal weaknesses of the culture they perceived as a threat. Today, without our having done a thing, Japan is a nation on the verge of collapse. The problems that the rest of the West shares with Japan are a far greater threat than Islamic extremism.