In his book Inventing the Individual, Larry Seidentop shows how our concepts of human rights and freedom of belief are a Christian construct, and that they form the very basis of modern liberal thought. By emphasizing individual responsibility and justification by faith as a personal choice, Christianity asserted the equality of individuals, subverting the stratified society of the time. This eventually formed the underpinning crucial to the concept of human rights that we enjoy today.

But the politically correct seem more open to non-western thought (anything but Christianity), deconstructing the basis of the society that puts a premium on individual rights and liberty – while actually opening the gates to terror. We are literally cutting off the branch we’re sitting on.

The real enemy is relativism and the moral ambiguity that results; we now have no articulated worldview from which to resist. It’s easier to be pushed to extremes. And ISIS wants that; to polarize, to create a “them vs us” mentality. In fact, it’s not much of a stretch to suggest the atrocity of their acts is calculated to do so: the worse, the better. And we react. We hate back. We vow revenge. And we play into their hands.

What’s the answer to terror? In the long run, society must embrace again that which created the freedoms we enjoy. Let the immigrants come: but don’t muzzle those who would share the Gospel of Christ in reasoned discourse. Let them be changed by a society that understands how we became free.