ABSTRACT
The hero whose legacy includes the Jonathan Institute performed his final service to his nation at the moment when the United States was celebrating its Bicentennial. Unfortunately, Israel’s resoluteness regarding terrorism is not typical of the spirit of all democracies. The current response of democratic societies to terrorism is characterized, to a dismaying degree, by a failure of intelligence, in two senses. Whatever else terrorism involves, it always involves the element of surprise. Thus the principal weapon against it is advance knowledge. Such knowledge is the business of intelligence services. Furthermore, the democracies are suffering from a failure of intelligence in the form of moral disarmament. This is a product of bad sociology and bad philosophy feeding on each other. Terrorists are not generally “desperate men.” Many are, in fact, children of privilege. They are perhaps privileged psychopaths, but they are privileged nonetheless.
