Nej, riktigt så bra är det inte. Men det ser utan tvekan ut som om vi börjar närma oss ett sådant stadie. Att Robert Tracinskis kolumner blir publicerade på RealClearPolitics är ett, av många, tecken på det. Hans senaste kolumn, ”The Suicide Bomb Morality”, visar på att kriserna i världen är, precis som på Rands tid, av en moralisk natur. Tracinski skriver:

The West’s conflict with Islamic terrorism is more than a ”clash of civilizations.” It is, at root, a clash between two world views and two moral models, a clash much wider and more important than any political conflict.

I was reminded of this by a brilliant observation in a recent column by Charles Krauthammer–an observation far more significant than Krauthammer himself seems prepared to recognize. Writing about the way in which Palestinians have consistently rejected every opportunity for statehood, peace, and prosperity, instead choosing constant warfare and destruction, he concludes: ”This embrace of victimhood, of martyrdom, of blood and suffering, is the Palestinian disease.”

What Krauthammer doesn’t realize is that this worship of suffering is the world’s disease, a very old affliction that has evaded our cultural immune system by disguising itself as a morality. That morality is accepted as uncontroversial in today’s world, and you hear it, and probably nod in agreement, whenever someone tells you that self-sacrifice is the essence of moral virtue.

But isn’t self-sacrifice–or, as Krauthammer puts it, ”victimhood, martyrdom, blood and suffering”–the essence of the horrific plight the Palestinians have chosen for themselves? And shouldn’t this make us question, at its very roots, the morality of self-sacrifice?

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