No concessions

The bombs in London last week killed people of all races and religions indiscriminately — as of course they were intended to. The terrorists who planted them were not interested in distinguishing between kinds of people: they simply wanted to kill as many of us as possible. The police now believe that the killers were suicide bombers who found fulfilment in blowing themselves up on the London Underground. The murderers were Britons born and bred. They were raised and educated in West Yorkshire.

The revelation that the murderers did not come in from abroad has understandably prompted people to ask: what has gone wrong with our society that it is capable of producing such monsters? That question will never receive a satisfactory answer. It is impossible to know what leads an individual to embrace the pointless killing of himself and others. There is no ‘social’ or societal explanation of that fatal choice, and the putative ‘social’ explanations are all obviously false.