In the words of scholar N.T. Wright, they want, “to reap the fruit, but sever the root.” In so doing, they refuse to see what Nietzsche so clearly did — the real, horrific consequences of a world finally free from the God of Moses and Jesus. Alexander Schmemann elaborates: “Here, in this paradox, is the whole absurdity of contemporary civilization, its internal dead end. Contemporary civilization speaks a religious language, and at the same time, hates religion.” It is a foolish, recklessly blind insistence.

The slaughter of James Foley was a watershed moment. Going forward, it will be far more difficult to avoid framing things within a Clash of Civilizations context — even if by that we mean something different than did Samuel Huntington.

What a jury might then find indictable is the contortion-act that is Western resistance to it.

The terrorist snuff-video exploiting Foley illustrates several things, beginning with its “casting.” The victim, an American, felt there was something sacred about using his talents to expose aspects of a proliferating evil. The murderer, an apparent British national, cast his lot proliferating that evil, signing up with a jihadist army the way young men of earlier generations did the Merchant Marines.

The Obama administration seems predictably intent on managing a policy of denial. To repeated declarations by ISIS that they are at war with the State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, essentially proposed: Just because they say they’re at war with us, doesn’t make it so. The president too, acting perhaps as, Theologian-in-Chief, professed, “…No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day.”

I have removed his words from a broader condemnation, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are serious disconnects here, of which these are relatively minor examples.

ISIS may be dead wrong, but they are clear. The president may be right, yet, very unclear. In each instance, the combination is dangerous. And, I would suggest that the case represented by the administration has much to teach us about the degraded state of contemporary Western culture, while pointing to some remedies for it.  Like his predecessor, Barack Obama has at times made religious appeals to justify policy. His Nobel acceptance speech, for example, was a veritable seminar on Just War Theory; an anomaly so surprising, critics seemed at a loss for objections, and supporters for plausible denial.

In terms of content, however, it was a rare moment of clarity, sinking since in a deepening miasma. More familiar is the domestic theater of patriotic boilerplate, as actions, or their lack, speak a language disturbing to allies, and emboldening to foes. It is near impossible to overstate the degree to which the problem is rooted in culture — a confusion regarding national identity that runs from ambivalence, to embarrassment, to outright repudiation. Something we might call, trickle-down self-loathing.

Decades back, heirs of The Enlightenment scaled the Olympus of Academia where, in the purity of its clouds, they discovered the Tablets of a New Law. Descending to the masses, they took it as their mission to overturn the idols that had scourged all hitherto existing society — at least since the Edict of Milan. Chief among them was, and is, the golem known as the Judeo-Christian tradition.

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