by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Even the administration is now considering some sort of overseas contingency operation to cope with an outbreak of workplace violence worldwide.
Each morning it seems we read that Islamic killers of Boko Haram have kidnapped or slaughtered more children. Israel alleges Hamas affiliates are behind the kidnapping of Israeli teens, one of them an American citizen. No need to mention Iraq: We are flirting with the idea that the Iranians — who once introduced sophisticated shaped-charge IEDs to better kill and maim Americans trying to win the surge — are our new allies to stop the ISIS Islamist monsters from destroying our former Iraq allies whose religious hatreds ruined the stability following the surge. Westerners say that the more secular Assad government is the more monstrous, but then deplore the fact that al-Qaeda has taken the upper hand among the insurgents in Syria, most of them now radical Islamists.
It is a measure of the cultural contamination of materialism, given great impetus by Charles Darwin, that even a giant like Paul Johnson can be infected and attenuated by it. For Johnson is one of the magisterial writers of our time whose erudition and immense energy have enlightened so many of us for so many years. Yet this biography is a disappointment in contrast to most all of his previous work. Indeed it is unfortunate that Johnson did not apply his wit and critical talents, as shown in his masterful Intellectuals, to his present subject, Charles Darwin. Oh, what a penetrating study it would have made!
