This conversation -- some call it dialectic -- is not perfect, but its dynamic influences some of our most lasting ideas. Our freedoms are grounded in the openness with which society debates the important, the critical and the lasting.
Islam, by contrast, compartmentalizes its thinking so that powerful ideas propounded from different traditions, whether science, government, literature or religion, are forced into rigidly segregated divisions governed by religious law. Although many of the scholars of Islam preserved the classics and Biblical wisdom along with new scientific information, they ultimately lost the right and ability to debate: "A proposition might be true in science and philosophy but false in religion." Hart laments that American students are losing by default the ability to recognize such distinctions.
Nor is this a concern only in the United States. A recent poll in Britain, conducted by the Centre for Social Cohesion, a think tank, revealed that a third of Muslim university students in Britain say it's acceptable to kill in behalf of Islam and want a worldwide Islamic government based on sharia law. The Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, based in Washington, shows how Saudi textbooks, freely distributed throughout the world to Saudi-sponsored schools, emphasize teachings of the Wahhabi sect of Islam that prescribes a worldwide theocratic dictatorship.
The war of ideas is as important as the war on terrorism in the debate over who is best qualified to be president. We'll hear a lot from the candidates over the next three months about their differences on school choice, vouchers and No Child Left Behind. Such specifics are important. But we should hear their different perspectives on the war of ideas.
Hollywood has an important part to play. A group of Hollywood actors, producers and screenwriters, who call themselves "Friends of Abe," after Abraham Lincoln, now meet to articulate a strong counter image to Hollywood's radical left, to show a proper appreciation of those who serve in the military that defends us all. Jon Voight and his like-minded are not yet a voice in the wilderness.