Eric Holder is planning conferences on the root causes of terrorism. That was his excuse for sitting out the “I am Charlie” demonstrations, even though he was in Paris at the time. That was a non sequitur, of course. No reason why you can’t do both. But there was a bigger story here. Why was the Attorney General representing us?

I can see why the President wasn’t there. He didn’t want to run into Bibi Netanyahu. Plus he has a major problem condemning terrorism.

But the Attorney General? That makes sense only if the attacks in Paris (and Denmark, and Ottawa, and London, and Madrid) should be seen as crimes, not terrorism. And root causes? We know who Holder has been reaching out to here—his Islamist buddies, including the Moslem Brotherhood. And we know their diagnosis: a lack of respect for Islam—Islamophobia—especially the kind that is said to occur immediately after some guy opens fire on innocent men, women and children while yelling “Allahu Akbar.” That the anti-Moslem violence never eventuates is irrelevant. By asserting their “anxiety” loudly and often, the Islamist sympathizers distract attention from the violence that actually occurred.

The problem, bleat the Islamist sympathizers, is our materialism, our unveiled women, our free speech code. Oh, and let’s not forget our support for Israel. That’s always a hit with the left in general and with Obama in particular.

The root cause is always us. Never them. People who worry about the root causes of terrorism project our sensibilities onto the terrorists. They’re just like us. Like John Kerry, they love windsurfing, James Taylor, and Vineyard Vines ties.

You might think that a gang of psychopaths who make Hannibal Lecter look like a candidate for Celebrity Chefs might be just a wee bit different from us, but John Kerry knows better. Here’s how he’d discredit ISIS, as reported by the Washington Post:

“The areas under its [ISIS’] control are languishing,” said Kerry, citing shortages of food, water and medicine, huge pay cuts for fighters….” All of which emphasizes the degree to which Daesh is guilty of shamelessly deceptive advertising. The advertising about its path to paradise… is in fact a road to nowhere.”

For Kerry, these sadly misunderstood kids want nothing more than the perks of a social welfare state. ISIS is luring them with promises of food stamps, free medical care, high salaries. With 72 virgins at the end of the road. All we have to do is convince the gullible youth that it’s all a lie. Even the 72 virgins? How are we going to do that? Maybe get Brian Williams to describe how he saw them while he was flying over this paradise in a helicopter—which was taking rocket fire.

Meanwhile the French, who have already provided a generous social welfare state for their people, are worrying that la jeunesse, their young Muslim folks living off the state in les banlieues, might be turning to terrorism because they’re feeling alienated. It was after all the French existentialists such as Sartre who raised the concept of alienation to its most romantic and literary form.

The French, you see, have steadfastly refused to recognize racial or religious differences amongst their people. That’s what the “égalite” part of their national slogan—Liberté,Égalité, Fraternité—means. And it follows from this that there must be no preferences of any sort along racial or religious lines. No affirmative action. But now the French have begun to question whether they shouldn’t adopt an American model. Give the Muslims special preferences and maybe they’ll be content with mere whining in the same way as American Muslims.

“American Muslims cite increasing concerns about hate crimes,” is a headline in Sunday’s Washington Post. That’s a reference to the three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who were shot to death by a white neighbor over what seems to have been a parking space quarrel. There is no indication that the shooter, who was an atheist, cared anything about the religion of his victims. Imran Aukhil, a friend of one of the victims, opined that “The greatest threat in America is, frankly, white men with grudges and guns.”

So was this shooting about an on-going parking dispute or about killing Muslims? If it were the latter, perhaps we could all relax a little. Just look at the statistics on white-on-Muslim crime. Not much there.

What we’re seeing is an exquisite sensitivity to every slight to Muslim Americans, and a callous indifference to the people they kill. Remember Fort Hood? That was workplace violence, not terrorism. And the Jews who were gunned down in a Kosher supermarket in Paris? That was some folks in a deli who got caught up in a random act of violence.

The suggestion that France move to a preference-based model was rejected by Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front party, in an interview with Sohrab Ahmari. She also rejects reaching out to Islamic leaders à la Eric Holder, asking, “Whom do you talk to in France with the Muslim community? The current major Muslim organization in France, which is privileged nowadays, is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, General Sisi in Egypt is fighting the Muslim Brotherhood.” She gets it: You don’t ask a terrorist to help you determine the root causes of terrorism.

“What do Muslim warriors of this new Heroic Age seek to achieve against us?” asks Michael Vlahos, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the US Naval War College, in reference to ISIS. Drawing on his profound knowledge of warfare in classical antiquity, and the parallels between ISIS and the heroic tradition described in Homer’s Iliad, he answers, “Just this: Dominance.”

“Armed resistance in today’s world is a renewed path to realization and transcendence,” writes Vlahos. These warriors—“Achilles wannabes” Vlahos calls them—believe that they occupy a sacred moment in history. Infused with righteous zeal for the purity of their cause, they fight to reestablish a utopia that never existed. This fight necessitates the subjugation of all peoples whom they identify as the infidel, the “Other.” It necessitates ritualized slaughter of innocents. And we shouldn’t be surprised at atrocities such as the burning alive of the Jordanian pilot, since the point is to convince us that they observe absolutely no moral constraints. That’s why they think they will triumph, says Robert Kaplan in “Terrorism as Theater” at realclearworld.com.

And in the end, these “heroes” must sacrifice their lives on the battlefield. This is how they earn the 72 Virgins. Hitler approvingly described “Mohammedanism” as “that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone.” (Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944, p. 667, trans. N. Cameron)

If I were inclined to become a holy warrior, or one of the virgins that will have the honor of servicing him in paradise, I would greatly resent being told that all I wanted was John Kerry’s social welfare state, or French-style full integration in my host society. How petty! How trivial! It’s much, much more than that.

To recall a slogan from Bill Clinton’s day, “It’s the virgins, stupid!”