My Reading List
“The Way to Lose” By Mark Steyn: On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Mark Steyn revisits a column he wrote in 2002 warning that America and the West risked losing the broader conflict with radical Islam not on the battlefield, but culturally. Steyn argues that Western leaders and institutions were unwilling to clearly identify radical Islamism as the enemy, instead embracing a form of multiculturalism that emphasized tolerance, discouraged assigning blame, and often focused more heavily on perceived Western intolerance. He points to post-9/11 education, media, religious institutions, and President George W. Bush’s repeated insistence that “Islam is peace” as examples of what he considered a failure to make the moral and ideological case for the West. Steyn’s central argument is that military strength alone cannot win a long-term conflict if a civilization lacks confidence in its own values. Looking back 25 years later, he maintains that the warning was justified: Islamist movements may have been militarily weaker, but they possessed greater cultural confidence, while Western institutions increasingly struggled to defend their own civilization, liberal democracy, and rule of law.