Lee Harris wrote two of the best books on the death of the West to have been published this century, Civilization and its Enemies and The Suicide of Reason. But even though he wrote such books, this is what I now find out:

The voters who really matter are those who, like me, were willing to give Obama a chance the first time around, but who, after watching his performance over the last four years, are not at all sure that they are willing to give him another.

He voted for Obama in 2008! He won’t this time he says, but if even someone who understands what he was able to write so brilliantly about can have voted for Obama, then the present was always the train wreck about to happen that has finally happened. Didn’t he read his own books? Did he not understand what they said? Was he really that out of touch with everything known at the time about Obama’s past? It is an immense puzzle and that’s all there is to say.

But he does now seem to have found his balance and has written an article, Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties, that unfortunately still sees the Obama administration on our side of the fence but is nevertheless more in keeping with his books. This is the central point:

Since the commencement of the current crisis, the Obama administration has repeatedly explained to the offended followers of the Prophet that the U.S. government had nothing to do with making the obnoxious film that, via its posting on YouTube, has set off weeks of bloody riot all across the Muslim world. This, of course, is quite true, but beside the point. Those who think that the rioters are foolish to attack the U.S. government for a film made by a lone crackpot are underrating the rioters’ intelligence. They know the U.S. government didn’t make the movie. What enrages them is that the U.S. government allowed such a movie to be made in the first place, and, even worse, that the government didn’t do the proper thing after it discovered who was responsible for making the blasphemous film—namely, to behead the blasphemer, in accordance with Sharia law. No doubt there are some moderate Muslims who would have probably been content with a less drastic punishment, such as hanging, and even a few liberal ones who would have been satisfied with a long prison term. But, across the spectrum, Muslims are not upset because of what our government did, but what it failed to do—punish an individual for exercising his constitutionally protected right to free expression.

There is nothing more to explain. This is who we are and that is who they are. What a compromise here would be I cannot even begin to imagine.