In view of the recent shootings and bombing in Norway, I composed the following as the Author’s Note to Jefferson’s Road: The Tree of Liberty, but it speaks to the rationale behind the whole series.

As I write this, I’ve been reading about yet another terror event. This one took place in Oslo, Norway, at the behest of Anders Behring Breivik, a self-described Christian ‘Culturalist’ Knight. He set a fertilizer bomb to explode at the offices of the Norwegian Prime Minister, killing seven people, before attacking a Labour Party youth wing summer camp on Utoya island and shooting to death at least seventy-six more.

Most of them were students.

Jefferson’s Road is not written advocating this kind of violence. What I am attempting to do, fictitiously, is explore how and why incidents like this occur. Pundits on the Left decry the Radicalized Right for promoting “Hate.” Pundits on the Right assert that the madmen alone are responsible for their actions, as if nothing had incited them. And while individuals such as Breivik and McVeigh are indeed responsible for their own actions, it answers nothing to ignore what might have incited them to violence as the only acceptable alternative. In answering the questions of “How?” and “Why?” this happened, I lay the blame for these kinds of incidents squarely at the feet of the Cultural Marxists and the forces of radical Islam.

That war makes strange bedfellows may be the only explanation for the curious union between the Left and Islam. Both appear to believe they are using the other to successfully dismantle the Christian West. Who’ll wind up on top remains to be seen—though I’ve little doubt that the Islamists will prevail.

If the Right is radicalized, it is so because of the insidious attacks from this curious union. This is the whole point behind the stories. It is not my attempt to justify Breivik or McVeigh—but to explain them. The rifts in our culture—and the wider tears in Europe—are there because Cultural Marxism and Islamism are shredding the moral and social fabric that holds everything together. Such things cannot be destroyed without violence erupting, if only because it is the same moral and social fabric which restrains humanity’s more violent passions to begin with. And if you think it’s only going to occur in isolated instances, think again.

The violence is going to get worse.

Then again, this is precisely what the Cultural Marxist wants. The increase in violence is seen as a precursor to the Proletarian Revolution that will finally dispel the old age and usher in the new, Communist Utopia. Marx himself taught that violence is an acceptable and necessary means to an end. Toward that objective, it really doesn’t matter if the violence is perpetrated by the Left or by the Right, so long as it serves to destabilize the society and further the aims of the Cultural Marxist.

The Islamists, of course, fully embrace violence in service to their god. Anyone who believes differently is obfuscating the facts and ignoring the newspapers.

Andrew Bard Schmookler wrote in The Parable of the Tribes that once one group of human beings begin to exercise power over another, the ways of power inexorably dominate all the other groups (in his terminology, tribes). It is an irresistible force that eventually overwhelms even the most peaceful people.

It may well be that violent revolution is in our future, whether we want it or not. But the outcome of such a revolution is not predetermined. Perhaps neither the Marxists nor the Islamists will find themselves on the winning side.

Anyway, those are my (recent) thoughts on the matter. Jefferson’s Road isn’t light reading. I just pray I can tackle the issues in our culture honestly without inspiring the likes of Breivik or McVeigh.

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