Andy over at Cozy Corner says:
And here we have it: the renunciation of the rule of God, King, and Mob. And that is why America, Britain, and Israel often look like inseparable allies: all three are founded in the rule of Law, and the expectation that today’s rules will still exist tomorrow.
And he also links to an example of Sharansky’s Town Square Test. My local community had its own version a year or so ago, when MIT’s administration methodically invented new “safety” rules until it could forbid the posting of Israeli flags in dormitory windows, visible from the street. It was instigated by Muslim students offended by the view. It was clear that everybody involved understood the real purpose of the exercise: to extract that office of the administration from the midpoint of an ethnic conflict. Those damn ethnics, getting their local border wars in the way of a safe, quiet school. Better to just make both sides shut up and go away.
But one of those sides is our side. We don’t always have to agree with its government or its policies—I’m not a fan of their copyright laws, for example—but we must not sit by in a fight between the past and the future. The state of Israel, a representative democracy, is part of the future. The groups of strongmen and feudalists in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and Iran are the past. If they win, we get to repeat the last millennium of history, an empire falling and a climb out of darkness again.
The civilization we enjoy is a thin crust over an ocean of barbarism. We can debate policy with our civilized opponents, but have no shared axioms with barbarians. When we do not even share the desire to raise our families in peace, left alone, what do we have? I can talk about the copyright policy of Israel, about disagreements over points of contract law. Can we debate such details of policy with Hezbollah? With Teheran? With the democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority? Until we can, we’ve got to remember: civil debate within the family of civilization, and an unyielding wall against the barbaric night outside.
I can’t reasonably wear a cape to the office. But I have prepared this sign, with the flags of the US, Great Britain and its Commonwealth, and Israel: it really is Brittania and her far-flung children who have maintained the rule of law, and now compose the Free West.
Print one out and post it in your office. But be prepared to answer some very scary questions! The flags will offend the Left, and the words will offend Republicans. I’m not sure how Transnationalists, Objectivists, and Orthogonal Moderates will take it. But since I’ve got some of each on my hallway, perhaps I’ll find out.