This story caught my eye: Departing From Country’s Pacifism, Japanese Premier Vows Revenge for Killings. It’s not that I don’t feel much the same, but still, this did make me stop:

When Islamic State militants posted a video over the weekend showing the grisly killing of a Japanese journalist, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted with outrage, promising “to make the terrorists pay the price.”

Such vows of retribution may be common in the West when leaders face extremist violence, but they have been unheard of in confrontation-averse Japan — until now. The prime minister’s call for revenge after the killings of the journalist, Kenji Goto, and another hostage, Haruna Yukawa, raised eyebrows even in the military establishment, adding to a growing awareness here that the crisis could be a watershed for this long pacifist country.

ISIS has gone around murdering its way across the Middle East and elsewhere, and everyone who has died has been a human soul. But what has upset the Japanese is that in this case, it was one of their own who died, and that has made all the difference. You can sing The International all you like, and our elites can think there is a world of peace and harmony in open borders. The reality is that we seem to identify with people like ourselves and less so with those who are not.