Michael Totten, a foreign correspondent, extols Paul Berman's new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals
While we haven't had a repeat of the apocalyptic terrorist attacks on September 11, what we do have is an entirely new class of people in the Western democracies who live in hiding and under armed guard from the same sorts of killers. Salman Rushdie was but the first, and Somalia-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one-time collaborator with the butchered Theo Van Gogh, is now but the most famous.
Totten describes Berman's condemnation of much of the intellectual class to this persecution: "The killers' would-be victims have been excoriated ... , and even, in some cases, blamed for their predicament." Kudos to Berman for his defense of those preyed upon by Islamic extremists.
