Below is a piece I wrote almost two years ago. The issues remain the same. The blogosphere fights the culture war. I'm off in a short while until late tomorrow -- taking my daughter back to Story Land for her birthday. See you soon.

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As we follow the news here at Solomonia, one of the recurring themes we rail against is the mainstreaming of certain "bad ideas." One of the foremost of these bad ideas is terror, and specifically suicide terror -- from morally-destitute MSM descriptions of "militants" stripped of their true descriptor as "terrorists," to college professors influencing young minds with a moral nihilism that sets the world of right and wrong topsy-turvy.

"The Right" in America has been known in recent years for recognizing something that's come to be called "the Culture War." This is generally recognized as the creeping degeneration of traditional cultural values -- in the case of the American Right these values would most often show up as fidelity, chastity, sobriety, piety, the work ethic, in-tact families, etc...mostly in the realm of entertainment.

Members of the American Left -- and I count myself as having been among them -- are known to scoff at such concerns as overblown and born more of over-religiosity than common sense.

But let me see if I can draw the sides together, at least on one issue, or at least if not draw them together, help them see over the wall at each other with the help of something.

You see, what I really do here very often is fight that Culture War. I tend not to post over-much on the issues I enumerated above, being something of a Libertarian or "South Park" conservative (although I respect the conservatives who do worry more about these things), but my constant railing against the media's inability to call a terrorist a terrorist, and international institutions' inability to unequivocally condemn the same...it's all our little role in the Culture War. It stems from my fear, my horror at the possibility that terrorism, and specifically suicide terror should become part of the mainstream of rational choices people may choose to make.

For instance, there is no question that a factor in the French rioting has been the European press's glorification and justification of Arab street violence and suicide terror against Israelis. They are now reaping what they have sown in both the massive violence that has now been turned against them, and their own limp "we must understand the motives of the perpetrators" response.

The Arab world is now being swept with an epidemic of suicide murder that absolutely stems from their own glorification of the same when it was directed against others, and which, by making it acceptable, they are now reaping the bitter spoils of.

It starts with words. It starts with a society understanding certain behaviors and choices, which in many, many peoples' minds is a very short hop to acceptance. And once the door is open, you can never control who or what walks through. Once you invite the vampire over the threshold, he's there to stay.

I've posted about the new film Paradise Now previously. See here, here and here. The film which humanizes the suicide bombers, which questions not whether Israelis are bad, but how bad, and not whether they are evil or not, but merely which of them and how they ought to be killed, and which was made by an Israeli who calls himself a Palestinian, has now won and been nominated for multiple awards.

Reading admiring reviews like that presented at MSNBC, Suicide Bombers Are People, Too, one can be forgiven for reacting with shock and alarm. What, exactly, are we allowing into our body politic? What is it, exactly, that's now considered part of the acceptable discourse? What have we done? We should be able to see where it leads. The fact that the director presents his work with appropriate hand-wringing and a posture of concern changes nothing with regard to this film's meaning and effect -- in fact, it contributes to the damage, as it gives the false impression that even the well-meaning and reasonable can understand and present the horrible...they make the unthinkable palatable.

If you're one of those on the Left who's never had much sympathy for the Right's concern with morality and the creeping destruction of societal mores in the media, but you read this blog and others like it and are at least on the same page with regard to what we have to say about terrorism, perhaps you can grasp the concept now, at least on this.

Let me be the first to welcome you to the Culture Wars. You've been drafted.