ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[Lemur]

I keep thinking about the western heritage, things like the Thirty Years War, which was a bloodbath of Rwandan proportions. We went through this. We did this to ourselves, long before cable news and cell phones. Then I stumbled across this depressing nugget of wisdom:

It took the Thirty Years war to finally purge the enthusiasm of sectarianism from the cultural DNA of Europeans (and even then, religious minorities were second class citizens for centuries). There will be no calm reasoning with Iraqis of any stripe because the march of history continues, and only sadness can convince all parties that moderation is necessary for the existence of modern nation-states. Intervention in some fashion may be inevitable in the world, but our goal should be to prevent hell, not to create heaven on earth. The former is possible, the latter is not.

Remember, the Enlightenment, which was the essential component of the birth of the USA, was a direct result of exhaustion from the Religious Wars. If Europe hadn't shredded itself like an emo self-cutting girl on meth, there would never have been modern liberalism, ecumenicalism, rationalism, all of that enlightenment stuff.