MARK STEYN REPRINTS A 2002 ESSAY TITLED: The Way to Lose.

George W. Bush had a rare opportunity after 11 September. He could have attempted to reverse the most toxic tide in the Western world: the sappy multiculturalism that insists all cultures are equally valid, even as they’re trying to kill us. He could have argued that Western self-loathing is a psychosis we can no longer afford. He could have told the teachers’ unions that there was more to the second world war than the internment of Japanese-Americans, and it’s time they started teaching it to our children. A couple of days after 11 September, I wrote in these pages, ‘Those Western nations who spent last week in Durban finessing and nuancing evil should understand now that what is at stake is whether the world’s future will belong to liberal democracy and the rule of law, or to darker forces.’ But a year later, after a brief hiccup, the Western elites have resumed finessing and nuancing evil all the more enthusiastically, and the ‘compassionate conservative’ shows no stomach for a fight at least as important as any on the battlefield. The Islamists are militarily weak but culturally secure. A year on, the West is just the opposite. There’s more than one way to lose a war.

Read the whole prescient thing.