Back to the expected, and appearing, apologist articles appearing in the MSM...Spiked: After Paris - Thats enough cultural appeasement; lets fight for the Enlightenment. Less than 24 hours after the barbarism in Paris, the bodies of more than 120 concertgoers, Friday-night revellers andbarely cold, and the apologism has already begun. They couldnt even wait a whole day, these cultural appeasers, whose kneejerk response to every act of terrorism is to ask what we the wicked West did to deserve it, or to argue that we the wicked West will make things worse with our response to it. The simple fact of our existence makes us ripe for murderous assault, apparently; and the folly of responding to such assaults with either police activity at home or military activity abroad makes us riper still for attack. Were damned if we stay still, damned if we take action. Our citizens must die because our nations are nasty.Right now, the apology for terror, the liberal self-loathing that says Ofthey attack us, is sporadic. Its in the Guardian commentary arguing that such attacks are a product of high youth unemployment and racist discrimination against Arabs and Africans [in France], a foul racist argument masquerading as progressive empathy, which implies that such Arabs and Africans are so lacking in the moral autonomy enjoyed by us well-educated whites that they have no choice but to gun down scores of people as a kneejerk, Pavlovian response to individual difficulty. Its a warped line of argument which has no answer whatsoever for why earlier generations of the unemployed or racially demeaned did not take hostage youths at a rock concert and then massacre them.Its in a left-wing commentators almost bloodthirsty celebration that Westerners are finally being given just a small taste of the constant fear that people from other nations have endured for generations as a result of our military actions abroad. Yes, what does the family of four massacred at their restaurant table in the 11th Arrondissement? Its about time that they, and us, felt such agony. Its in the France-bashing, with one Irish politician arguing that the massacre was terrible for the victims, but  when is France going to stop its role in the militarisation of the planet?. Its in the already emerging handwringing about a Islamophobic response to the attacks, with observers fretting that there could be a backlash, largely driven by confusion and anxiety. This has become routine after every terror attack: the first response of concerned observers is not with the actual victims of actual terrorism but withvictims of a moronic mob uprising that exists entirely in their imaginations. This, too, speaks to a profound self-loathing in the West, where the media and political elites fear is always how their own societies, and what they see as their inscrutable fellow citizens, a confused and anxious mass, will behave. They condemn the terrorism, yes  but they fundamentally fear and loathe the societies they live in, the people they live among.Yet while it might be sporadic now  this musing that France deserved the attack; that we Westerners need a taste of fear; that the problem is not those who massacre 120 people but our own bovine native populations who allegedly harbour a far greater violent urge  it will spread. It is now the narrative that follows all acts of terrorism in the West. From the massacre at(they were offensive, so what did they expect?), back to the 7/7 bombings (widely blamed on British foreign policy), to 9/11 itself (described by awriter as natural payback for what America has visited upon large parts of the world): the story from leading liberal observers and significant sections of the political class is always that the West, by being cocky, modern, allegedly racist, and with a chequered history, invites these attacks, needs them, must change its ways in response to them  must apologise, self-flagellate, denounce itself.And it is precisely this response, this moral disarray in the modern West, which acts as a green light to terrorist groups or individuals to punish us. Its an invitation to assault. The interplay between the self-loathing of the modern West and the nihilism of Islamist outfits is striking. They are a brutal, violent expression of a disgust for the modern world that has its origins in the universities, political circles and media elites of the West itself as much as in volatile, unstable territories in the Islamic world. Indeed, many of the attacks in the West over the past 15 years have been carried out by people either born in or educated in the West. But even if the attackers have foreign passports and got into Europe via the recent influx from Syria  as one of the Paris suicide bombers allegedly did  its not their foreignness that is important so much as the unholy marriage that now exists between the nihilistic youths drawn to anti-modern, anti-Western death cults like ISIS and the anti-modern, anti-Western death wish of the West itself. Terrifyingly, horrifically, they are complimentary.Post-Paris, we are likely to see the forging of the two usual responses to terrorism. One side will argue that we arent tough enough on the foreign elements that long to kill us, and therefore they continue killing us; the other side will argue that we arent nice enough to minority communities within our own and other nations, especially Muslims, and thus they will want to kill us. Both sides internationalise, or externalise, what is in truth a product of the corrosion of Western values and confidence; of a process of cultural appeasement, where, feeling ever more estranged from the liberal, democratic, Enlightened foundations of our nations, our societies now acquiesce to the rise of dangerous, destructive ways of thinking; refuse to criticise Islamist ideas on campus for fear of being branded Islamophobic; balk from bigging up Enlightenment texts or ideas lest they be accused of being morally judgemental; denounce schools that cleave to Christian values and dont celebrate other cultures, particularly Islam; and in other ways give a green light to the instinctive emergence of groups and outlooks which not only self-consciously juxtapose themselves to the West but which come to despise the West. Why do they hate us?, people asked after 9/11. Better question: why do we hate ourselves?The cultural appeasement must end. Yes, everyone can argue for whatever they like. And those charged with directing the political and moral make-up of our supposedly liberal, free nations must argue for precisely those Enlightened values  unapologetically, judgementally, fiercely. Bombing death cultists in Syria or heaping further paternalistic pity on Muslim communities at home  the two proposed responses to all terrorism  will do little to solve the moral vacuum in the West into which backward, barbaric gangs are moving. Lets start by refusing to be hesitant after Paris. Its too soon to comment on this attack, say some liberals, who are really biding their time before trotting out the usual self-loathing narrative. But it isnt too soon. This was a despicable act, an unspeakable assault. Neither French militarism nor alleged Islamophobia comes even close to justifying it. Nothing does. And it was an attack not only on the good people of Paris but on everyone who values living in a free and open society where fear has no place. Let us now refortify those values of freedom and openness, in a real and direct way, angrily if we must, and in the process shrink the moral vacuum in which nihilistic Islamists have been able to place their bloody flag. Thats enough cultural appeasement; fight  really fight  for the Enlightenment.