Djelloul Marbrook

One of the more unsavory characters to emerge from our criminal lore is the clean-up mechanic. He knows how to get rid of the evidence. He enjoyed a brief vogue in filmdom before the CSI industry convinced us that crime can be disguised but not erased.

Historians can be something like the clean-up mechanic. In their zeal to explain this and that they sometimes obscure the plain fact that in any clash of fanaticism and common sense fanaticism wins hands down.

Mark Twain (inset) put it this way: “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Fanatics don’t always look disreputable. They wear suits and smile at us in church. They entertain us on radio and television, stoking our prejudices. They seduce us with their beauty or their manliness. They make everything seem simple and sensible. So we give them good ratings. We buy their books, usually ghost-written. We vote for them.

And, above all, we fail to remember that fanatics bring down all great works, all civilizations, all human progress. It doesn’t matter what ideology they happen to be wearing that day. They always bring disgrace and ruin.

Today more than one commentator has remarked that we seem to have devolved to the time of the Crusades. In fact, Muslim fanatics are calling Western soldiers in the Middle East Crusaders. Bloody-minded fanatics brought on the Crusades. And bloody-minded fanatics today in Israel, and throughout the Muslim and Christian worlds are beguiling people looking for simple answers with mindless hard lines.

We can resist. But we have to think, and think again, and that’s not as easy as listening to honey-tongued fools and cruel hearts dressed in piety

—DM