Armed & Aggressive
The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West
by Lee Harris
Basic Books, 2007
(290 pages, $26.00, hardcover)
reviewed by John C. “Chuck” Chalberg
Writing in response to Samuel (The Clash of Civilizations) Huntington and Francis ( The End of History and the Last Man) Fukuyama, Lee Harris invites his readers to consider the very real possibility that something very much more than a border dispute between the West and Islam is on the horizon and something a good deal less than a worldwide meeting of like-minded liberal, democratic capitalists is in the cards.
The Vulnerable West
Harris, author of Civilization and Its Enemies and a frequent contributor to Policy Review and the Wall Street Journal, wants us to ponder the fragility of Western success in the face of a resurgent Islam. He attributes that success to the triumph of rationalism in the West, and yet he warns that that very achievement has left Western “rational actors” vulnerable to those troublesome and persistent “tribal actors” that constitute “radical Islam’s threat to the West.”
He might have added that the twenty-first-century version of Western rationalism contains a heavy dose of feelings-based attitudes and politics. He might also have explained how and why this has happened.
But in this book he is content to deploy “rational actor” as a shorthand term for the mindset of individualistic Westerners pursuing material success and the good life here and now. Secularist to the core, this carpe diem version of enlightened (if not necessarily rational) self-interest likely contains the seeds of its own destruction, with or without an external enemy. That it has an enemy bent on hastening that destruction explains Harris’s apocalyptic title and argument.
He is concerned that what he calls the “suicide of reason” might well lead to the death of the West. Given the predominance of “live for today” thinking—and feeling—in the West, he concludes that Western “rational actors” are ignoring the threat and hence are “not acting rationally.” Will the West abandon its irrational ways and rediscover its own tribal roots in time? He hopes so, but he has his doubts.
Much of the book details the illusions of Westerners, who presume that all “laws of the jungle” have been transcended. As a result, many Christians and secularists among both Americans and Europeans assume that the rest of the world is composed of either fellow “rational actors” or those who are happily evolving into the same.
He also has serious doubts about the exportability of American ideas and institutions. The goal of creating Western-style democracies in the Middle East has not just been wrong, but “disastrously, mind-bogglingly wrong.” On the other hand, those who presume that a kinder, gentler version of pacific Western reasonableness is the answer to Islamic fanaticism are dwelling in a fantasy world of their own.
What to Do?
John C. Chalberg writes from Minnesota.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on islam from the online archives
30.3—May/June 2017
C. S. Lewis Assesses the Religion of Mohammed by Jacob Fareed Imam
18.8—October 2005
European Islam & the Doubtful Future of Christian Europe by William Murchison
more from the online archives
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
17.6—July/August 2004
Old Science Confronts a Formidable Challenge in the Scientific ID Movement by Jay W. Richards
31.5—September/October 2018
Errands into the Moral Wilderness
Forms of Christian Family Witness & Renewal by Allan C. Carlson
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
