Fear of flying

Mark Alexander quotes John Stuart Mill in a point rarely made these days:

«"War is an ugly thing," wrote 19th Century political philosopher John Stuart Mill, "but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war is worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature...."

Unfortunately, during the interim between Newsweek's posting and its retraction, Jihadi Islamofascists murdered at least 18 civilians and injured hundreds more during anti-American protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan and points east -- protests prompted by the phony story.

However, don't expect Newsweek's next issue to feature the faces of the dead, or an apology to their families, or an exhaustive CBS-like investigation of what went wrong. »