11/2 Changed Everything, or The Global War on Fundamentalism

Classic Modern Liberalism has been subject to two disastrous attacks in the last three+ years: the first, on 9/11/01, and the second, on 11/02/04.

Both attacks involved the stealthy machinations of devoted teams of Machiavellian nihilists working in league with, and underwritten by, intolerant religious fundamentalists.

In both instances, the attacks and preparations for the attacks were preceded by numerous cultural, political, and fiscal signs. The plots behind both attacks were detected by insignificant and marginalized groups within the Classic Modern Liberal apparatus, but due to the small numbers and disempowered position of these "hair on fire" Cassandras, the apparatus did not mobilize itself successfully to prevent the attacks.

The Confidence Man herewith proposes a Global War on Fundamentalism. We cannot allow these nihilistic zealots to threaten our God-given freedom, our way of life. We will defeat them. We will defeat them by demonstrating the innate goodness of our vision, of our way of life. We will continue to build and nurture an open and democratic society, to serve as a beacon of hope for the world. We will unite the world behind us, and shame the forces of intolerance and ignorance and darkness into retreat. We will blaze the path of progress and freedom. We will work hard to free all people from the clammy grasp of fear and intolerance. We will provide every person on the planet with the opportunity to join us and be free. And the freedom-loving peoples across the globe will join together behind us and will reject the forces of ignorance, fear, intolerance, and slavery.

This Global War in Fundamentalism will not be easy. The enemy has many weapons at their disposal. The greatest weapon they have is fear. Fear is the weapon of mass destruction that we must seek out and destroy. We must not allow the enemy to deploy and spread their reign of fear and exclusion. We must assemble a grand coalition of the free and open societies of the world and deny the enemy their fear. And we must resist this fear ourselves. We must not allow the enemy's weapons to weaken or undermine our resolve. We must remain positive, steadfast, and strong, as we always have. This moment of crisis will test our resolve. But when we pull together and unite our forces behind our greatest strengths -- the strengths of openness, of opportunity, of growth, of innovation, of liberty, of freedom -- we will defeat the fear and terrorism practiced by our common enemy.

We must win the Global War on Fundamentalism. We will win the Global War on Fundamentalism.