Sunday, September 03, 2006

Chestlessness Again

Steyn's latest deserves a reprise:
"In other words, if Faust becomes so enthralled by "the moment" that he wants to live in it forever, the devil will have him for all eternity. In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions -- that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead."
And don't miss the Arthur Conan Doyle part my dear Watson... And the ending of Warren's "Chestlessness" -- as I rightly focused on -- looks a bit more salient than many such as Ed had suggested by taking the middle out of context. (Also see Warren's follow-up here.)