WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The man nominated to head public diplomacy at the State Department said Wednesday that al Qaeda is doing a better job than the Bush administration in winning friends over the Internet.

Customers surf the Web at a sandwich shop in Beirut, Lebanon.

"Our enemies are eating our lunch in terms of getting the word out in digital technology," said James Glassman.

...

Glassman's comments Wednesday echoed a November speech by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in which he said the United States needs more speed, agility and cultural relevance in its communications.

My comment is that we went through this 40 years ago with the communists.  The United States did not defeat the USSR.  Rather, the USSR collapsed, as it had to do. That default left the American government in Washington D.C without the need to clearly articulate the values that make America (and its government) possible: reality, reason, and rights.  

 

Above are outtakes from the CNN article along with the link.  Note that the audience at the internet cafe could be anywhere.  Collectivism is a state of mind.  To the extent that you de-individualize people, you fail to understand them.  That rests on a lack of reflection. 

That the American government in Washington DC does not understand capitalism as the only moral system is that kind of an internal disconnect.  Islam is the basis of shariah law, just as dialectic-materialism was the basis of communism.  Rational-empiricism ("Objectivism") is the basis of what we commonly and incorrectly call "democracy", the limited constitutional republic. You can find the start of any thread -- tolerance for the diversity of your neighbors or the material prosperity that allows personal development -- but you have to follow that to its source in order to appreciate the tapestry that is Western civilization.  Our society starts with the individual.  An individual survives by using reason to discover reality.

 

It is a subtle message, but one that can be -- and has been -- communicated.