by Lee Harris.

Basic Books. 279 pages. $26.

BY SAM COALE
Special to the Journal

This simplistic, muddled, frustrating and loopy analysis of Islam and the West contends that history has been hijacked by alpha males, high on testosterone, who, as fanatics dedicated to a cause, will easily ride roughshod over the rational, reasoning West. We have underestimated the realities of such fanaticism, and “for reason to tolerate those who refuse to play by the rules of reason is nothing else but the suicide of reason.”

Who’s tolerating such fanatics?

Harris, a frequent contributor to Policy Review, The Wall Street Journal’s “Opinion Journal,” divides the world into rational and tribal actors. The rational folk are imprisoned in the “freakish” triumph of the Enlightenment and, therefore, cannot gauge the commitment of fanatics. The tribal folk are bound by blood or a cause, led by alpha males, who are reason’s worst enemy.

This is simplistic bunkum. The world is not so neatly carved into either/or camps. I’ve known many “tribal actors” who are quite rational, and many “rational actors” who are bloodthirstily tribal. This set-up’s bogus.

Harris scores his best points when he describes American democracy as a particular system dependent on its history and geography. It cannot be shipped overseas, however strong the zeal of its missionaries. Taking it to Iraq is folly at best and radically stupid at worst.

Harris giddily supports a Darwinian law of the jungle that can never be abolished, the Cosmic Process that will always trump the Ethical Process. The United States, he maintains, shames us into denying our testosterone-driven selves, thereby undermining our ability to recognize the power of fanaticism.

The West is sunk in decadence and the “carpe diem” syndrome. Our schools undermine Western traditions, we are systematically eliminating “the alpha males from our midst” (What’s Bush? Chopped liver?), and the triumph of the middle class is “the most unnatural order possible on the planet.” Nature produces masters and slaves, conquerors and conquered, and because that’s the way it was, that’s the way it will be.

Harris’ solution? Attack those who don’t play by the rules. He uses baseball as an example: play by the rules or else. But if the law of the jungle is all, and rules are “freakish” and too rational, how can this possibly solve anything? Whose rules? It’s a cop-out, the muddled musings of a wimp.

Harris reduces history to psychobabble, circumstance to “nature,” then tries to dig himself out of the rubble. He attributes fanaticism to all of Islam, not just to terrorists who are Islamic, so it’s Us vs. Them. He sees no real difference between Islam’s resentment of the West and suicide bombers.

The only suicide in this dreadful book is the author’s own debased and delinquent reasoning.