That the mildly-conservative Welt-reading public with near-unanimity rejected Strothotte’s suggestion seems to me far more newsworthy than the original suggestion.

More neatly than anything else I can think of, this contrast between Fitzgerald’s and my reporting points to the divergence between two fundamentally different ways of seeing the West’s evolution vis-à-vis Islamism: one focuses on the statements and actions of a diminishing elite appeasement faction; the other follows the increasingly strong negative response by the population at large.

Yes, Islamism is making advances. But anti-Islamism is growing more rapidly and so, I predict the latter will prevail.

This article was originally published by NRO.