The Battle of Our Era

Harry Binswanger has a great piece up at CapMag. Here are the first three paragraphs, but be sure to read the whole thing:

We are engaged in a vast battle to defend scientific, industrial civilization against irrationalism.

Whether the enemy bombs the World Trade Center, abortion clinics, logging equipment, or medical research labs, the target is the same: reason--the use of reason to produce material values.

Hostility to global trade, to nuclear power, to DDT, to "urban sprawl," to Wal-Mart--it all comes from the same root and has the same meaning: antagonism towards man's life as a rational animal. Reason is man's basic means of survival. The life- giving power of reason is sensed by those who rail against the technological-industrial achievements of the West and particularly of America. Whether environmentalist or Islamist, they cannot abide the success of America. It stands as an unbearable reproach. It's America or their own irrational way of functioning, which they would rather blow themselves up than challenge and change.