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    Like us, Moslems see only their better side.  And like us,  they

    imagine that their darker impulses do not really exist.  Instead, they

    feel that the urge to destroy and conquer belongs only to their enemy.

    That's how the Moslem world justifies our imminent conquest, and

    how the Moslem superorganism excuses its hunger.

    What is the difference, then, between Americans, Africans, Latin

    Americans and Moslems?  Why do I claim that they, not we, are the

    barbarians?  It's a question of degree.  No American leader has ever

    followed the path of Syria's Assad and embarked on a mass

    extermination of political opponents to secure his position in office.  No

    Yankee presidential candidate has emulated Equatorial Guinea's

    Francisco Nguema and wiped out 50,000 members of a rival ethnic

    group in some electoral ward that was rooting for his rival.

    There is a little bit of the barbarian in all of us.  But some are far

    more barbarous than others.  There are cultures that idealize carnage.

    Others--we hope ours among them--put a premium on human life.

    Some cultures feel that debate is superior to battle, that discourse is

    preferable to the sword.  These cultures stress, not violence as a means

    of conflict resolution, but conciliation.  They measure political

    manhood by the ability to produce voluntary consent.  Their memes

    generate democracy and pluralism.

    We have a tendency to justify the pro-violence stance of the third

    world.  We turn our backs on African genocide or Syrian political

    killings as the good Germans turned away from the murder of six

    million under the Nazis.  Or we find excuses for it.   When we do, we

    become implicit accomplices in murder.  Many of those who

    romanticize homicidal peoples have gone a step further.  They have

    striven to replace the melting pot's leashed hostilities with

    "multicultural" enclaves roused to permanent anger by the dogmatic

    language of ethnic "struggle."

    It is important that the societies which cherish pluralism survive.

    It is critical that they spread their values.  It is vital that they not

    mistakenly imagine all other societies to be equal, and their own to be

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