The child is the father of the nation

Do you have a strong stomach? If you do not, definitely avoid this website, which collects information and photographs about the atrocities routinely committed against women, children and gays across the Muslim world. Here, you can see what it looks like when a person has been flogged hundreds of times for being gay, or how a little girl's face looks when she is in the process of having her genitals mutilitated. Or perhaps you'd like to see the woman being stoned to death for adultery, or the little boys have their scalps slashed as part of a religious ritual. Given these grotesque punishments and cultural rituals, it's no surprise to see pictures of toddlers in full terrorist regalia, or small boys joyously practicing beheading games.

This website, more than any other thing I've seen since 9/11, makes me doubt that there is any possibility of our living in harmony with Arab cultures. It seems to be, to get back to my alpha-dog idea, that one of these cultures — ours or theirs — has to be in the dominant position, and one in the submissive, and I know where I want to be. The only sad thing is that, to retain our dominant position, we'll have to fight, and fighting inevitably has a certain coarsening, corrosive effect on a democratic culture (and I say that despite being a conservative and a hawk). I only hope that, in the prolonged warfare I see (not just in Iraq but around the world), we somehow manage to win before we become as barbarous as our enemy.

(Thanks, Trace, for the tip.)