If you haven't already, I really think everyone ought to watch the recent speeches by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the U.N. These remarks do an awesome job of outlining what's at stake: freedom, progress, the post-WWII system of diplomacy instead of war, the explicit threat of a second Holocaust of the six million Jews living in Israel – the very Enlightenment tradition of reason over hysterical violence, superstition, and genocide. It also makes rather clear who the good guys are.
The vivid moral clarity shown here – about orgiastic religious violence, about a nuclear-armed and messianic terror state in Iran, about a citizenry-slaughtering dictator in Syria – is much needed, and frankly awesome.
(It's also well worth noting in this context that the stunningly brave reformers and revolutionaries of the Arab Middle East deserve, as they always have, our unwavering support for the values they are battling, with whatever birthing pains, to embody.)
