The Jihad Generation

In light of the recent arrests of 17 homegrown terrorists, The Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno, writes one of the best pieces I've read to date, on the "jihad generation". As the Toronto-born daughter of immigrants, Rosie DiManno knows that segrationist thought reinforces feeling of alientation that leads to resentment, rage, and an inferiority complex.

Rollerblading children and women dressed in head-to-toe burqas.It's a juxtaposition that, poignantly, captures the diversity we're all the time celebrating in this country. But, symbolically, in these details is also found the pith of social conflict and maladjustment. The rollerblade and the burqa, of all things.

(...)

In the pecking order of these things, gender rights have been sacrificed to religious righteousness. Such is the hypersensitivity to cultural imperatives that even hard-core feminists have all but abandoned their hideaway sisters, including those who live right next door. Stung by accusations of ethnocentric self-absorption, not even the tough old broads of feminism want to draw Islamist ire.

Nor do I know if fundamentalist practices — regardless of what religion they serve — can co-exist with Canadian values, particularly when our human rights apparatus, as well as our instinctive respectfulness, are manipulated to assert and legitimize the indefensible, the segregationist.But I do know, as the Toronto-born daughter of immigrants — parents who went to hysterical lengths to preserve my otherness, to reject assimilation — that gulag-thought causes incalculable harm. It reinforces feelings of alienation that lead to resentment, rage and that old bugaboo, an inferiority complex.Mad at them, my mother and father; mad at the world.

Please read "From Isolation Can Come Rage"

Related:
Take A Good Look At What's Going On
Hat Tip to Girl On The Right

The Long War Ahead
Paul Jackson, Calgary Sun

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Western democracy is very exhilarating, unless the thought of freedom scares you.Freedom -- and fairness -- scare some individuals, usually individuals with inferiority complexes who often turn into bullies as a defensive mechanism.

So what can we do to protect western democracy?

In Canada, we already started when we elected Stephen Harper prime minister, and when Harper made Stockwell Day public safety minister.

(...)

In the U.S., President George W. Bush is a beacon of hope and courage compared to the likes of Al Gore or John Kerry.

In Britain, Tony Blair is a man of steel, as is Australia's John Howard. Angela Merkel is a far more stalwart leader in Germany than was Gerhard Schroeder.

What we must remember is it took us 12 years -- from 1933 to 1945 to beat Germanic Nazism, and and some 74 years -- from 1917 to 1991 -- to whip Soviet Communism.

This is going to be a long war and we must not waver.