Alex wanted to laugh aloud, but knew his friend was deadly serious. “Simon, I long ago learned to understand that people who have faith are sometimes willing to die for what they believe. That is their right. But faith is faith—it derives from a willingness to be faithful. It is nothing we can know. And not only is it not knowable, it is very often not in the least plausible. In today’s developed world of educated people, there can’t be any group who could inflict their blind faith and implausible ideas on others to this extent, and actually get enough government backing to send us all to war over it! Not in the West, at least. You’re being too pessimistic.”

“Don’t try to rationalize their arguments, Alex. It has nothing whatever to do with logic. It’s all about a fear of being excluded. And they are working feverishly to turn back the clock and repeal the Enlightenment. Like James I and his witch-finder general—what would Shakespeare say today to a Western leader who would use a climate like this—indeed, would promote it? A president of ‘fantastical dark corners’ who’s come out on record as being in favor of the Rapture? Here is the nub of it.

“To open the way for this Second Coming, a group called the Christian Zionists believe that the Jews must be allowed and indeed helped to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. This would require the removal of one of Islam’s most holy and beautiful places, and it might upset a few people. But no matter: this group is committed to creating the gateway for the Second Coming. They are well connected. They see themselves as part of a cosmic struggle. They demonize their opposition. They are antimodern—but not antimodernist. They will use all technological advances to their advantage. They are ultraconservative about the role of women, and scientific research. They strongly resist those Enlightenment values for which we enshrine your heroes, Alex—Kant and Voltaire, and the very principles of the American Constitution—which is ironic, don’t you think, given that this wonderfully idealized liberal thinker’s paradise is exactly where they’ve risen to power and has—arguably—allowed them a voice in the first place. And they have certainly seized the airwaves very effectively to get their message across. Remember, I’m not talking about someone in a cave in Afghanistan. These people are right-wing Christians who have a revenge fantasy which sees them winning out, in the most brutal way, over the rational, modern, scientific, and at least ideologically egalitarian world. Their verbal war is waged through their literature and control of the media against the liberal thinkers and the gays, women they would deem overeducated, Muslims, Arabs, and especially the United Nations.