Middle East Getting Crazier Than We Could Have Imagined

Time hasn't allowed me to keep up here with all the developments recently that threaten the peace of the world (Iran, Hamas, the anti-cartoon jihad, etc.). Victor Davis Hanson has a provocative commentary at NRO.

Ever since that seminal death sentence handed down to Salman Rushdie by the Iranian theocracy, the Western world has incrementally and insidiously accepted these laws of asymmetry. Perhaps due to what might legitimately be called the lunacy principle ("these people are capable of doing anything at anytime"), the Muslim Middle East can insist on one standard of behavior for itself and quite another for others. It asks nothing of its own people and everything of everyone else's, while expecting no serious repercussions in the age of political correctness, in which affluent and leisured Westerners are frantic to avoid any disruption in their rather sheltered lives.