He could have argued that western self-loathing is a psychosis we can no longer afford. He could have told the teachers’ unions that there was more to the Second World War than the internment of Japanese-Americans and it’s time they started teaching it to our children.”  But he ducked the rhetorical challenge.

Bush has allowed the culture to lapse back into its default mode of psychobabbling self-absorption... Mona Charen summed it up in a column on the increasing pressure to pretend that September 11th 2001 was not what it was – an act of war – but instead some sort of unfortunate "tragedy". It is, she says, "a kind of moral disarmament of the nation.

Before there can be an army, navy and air force capable of protecting us, there must be a citizenry that believes we are worth defending." If it sounds extreme to put it in those terms, consider how far many in the west are prepared to go not to defend themselves...

Five days before 9/11, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65% of the country's rapes were committed by "non-western" immigrants – a category which, in Norway, is almost wholly Muslim. A professor at the University of Oslo explained that one reason for the disproportionate Muslim share of the rape market was that in their native lands "rape is scarcely punished" because it is generally believed that "it is women who are responsible for rape".

So Muslim immigrants to Norway should be made aware that things are a little different in Scandinavia? Not at all! Rather, the professor insisted, "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because their manner of dress would be regarded by Muslim men as inappropriate. "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it." Or to modify Queen Victoria's apocryphal wedding-night advice to her daughter: lie back and think of Yemen...