“As the cliche goes, “A conservative is a liberal whose been mugged by reality.” Like most cliches, this one exposes a larger truth. Namely, people often base their views on their fantasies of how the world should be than on the reality of how the world actually is.
Following this line, the September 11, 2001 attacks can be seen as a large-scale mugging. After the attacks, the same American people that had ignored the threat of totalitarian Islam since the Iranian revolution first categorized the US as the Great Satan back in 1979, acknowledged the danger and recognized it was at war. The overwhelming majority of Americans supported President George W. Bush when he said that the US would fight to destroy all global terror organizations and take down the regimes that sponsor them.”
