DAILY SIGNAL
by Waller Newell
July 7, 2015

…In my essay “Understanding Tyranny and Terror: From the French Revolution to Modern Islamism“, I argue that terrorists must be understood as motivated by a utopian vision that seeks to impose, by force, a monolithic collective in which all individual liberties are erased. This is nothing new, and first began with the Jacobin Terror of 1793 and continued through Bolshevism, Nazism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. Today it can be seen within the international Jihad. Poverty and lack of opportunity are not the “root causes” of terrorism [more on the povery-causes-terror meme] In fact, many terrorists come from affluent backgrounds or already live in liberal democracies with their widespread opportunities. Rather, terrorists are revolutionaries inspired by the vision of a coming collectivist paradise that will annihilate the allegedly corrupt, materialistic West. READ MORE