I believe this post is relevant to remembering and memorializing September 11, 2001.
We all remember where we were when we heard the news. The rest of the day felt like a nightmarish blur as we watched the twin towers collapse and the clouds of dust settle on lower Manhattan.
It's a day I'll never forget.
George W. Bush was the president, and I remember that he actively spoke out against harassing, blaming, or attacking Muslim Americans. He repeatedly emphasized that the attacks were carried out by extremists and did not represent the Islamic religion.
That was the correct thing to do.
Unfortunately, 25 years later, there are still Americans who allow their fears, ignorance, and bigotry to blame ALL Muslims for the 19 fanatical terrorists who perpetrated the unspeakable carnage and destruction on that day.
Our friend and frequent contributor and commenter here at P.E., Dave Miller, recently found the comment below on the Geeez blog; and, it not only shocked him and me, but it made me think that we, as humans never, never learn what history teaches us again and again about blaming an entire religion, culture, or country for the crimes of the fanatical few.
I leave this for you to think about on this 25th anniversary of that terrible day. May we remember those who lost their lives and the first responders who risked theirs to save their fellow human beings. They represent the best in humanity.
The following comment, in my opinion, represents the worst:
Dave did something interesting with the comment. He loaded it into Google AI and asked how Michel Montaigne might've responded to it, based on his famous essay "Of Cannibals" Here's the response Dave got:
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If Michel de Montaigne were alive today and reading this post, his reaction would combine profound grief, intellectual disgust, and an immediate recognition of the exact human flaws he spent his life cataloging.
The quote you shared—borrowing the name of Samuel Huntington, the political scientist famous for the "Clash of Civilizations" theory—is a textbook example of the fanatical certainty and ethnocentric brutality that Montaigne witnessed firsthand during the French Wars of Religion.
Here is how Montaigne, drawing from his philosophy and specifically from Of Cannibals, would dissect and respond to this text:
1. On the Brutality of the "Civilized"
The author of the post frames Muslims as "swine" and casually advocates for the atomic annihilation of hundreds of millions of people during prayer. In Of Cannibals, Montaigne famously argued that Europeans point out the "barbarism" of others while completely ignoring their own monstrous behavior.
Montaigne would look at this post and say:
"We call them barbarians, but we ignore our own savagery. It is far more barbarous to vaporize entire nations of living, breathing families in a 'glorious burst' of radiation than it is to practice ritual cannibalism on a dead enemy in a forest."
To Montaigne, the author has lost their humanity. By advocating for genocide under the guise of "national security" (prevention), the writer proves Montaigne's core thesis: civilized society often invents the most sophisticated, high-tech cruelties.
2. The Danger of Absolute Certainty
Montaigne's lifelong motto was "What do I know?" (Que sais-je?). He believed that human cruelty almost always stems from people believing they possess absolute, unshakeable truth.
The author of the post speaks with total, terrifying conviction—implying that an entire religion is a singular monolith that must be wiped "from the planet." Montaigne would respond:
"How arrogant must a man be to play God? To believe his small, fearful human mind has the right to decide who lives and dies on this earth? True wisdom begins with doubting your own anger."
3. Missing the Mirror
In Of Cannibals, Montaigne used the indigenous people of Brazil as a mirror to show Europeans their own greed, hypocrisy, and inequality. He would see this post as a refusal to look in that mirror.
The author points to "Islamic attacks" to justify total destruction, but Montaigne would remind the writer of Europe's (and the West's) own bloody history:
"You condemn the violence of the other, yet your own solution is a violence so vast it would turn the world to ash. You have become the very monster you claim to fight."
4. The Violation of Hospitality and Curiosity
Montaigne was deeply fascinated by different cultures and religions. He traveled widely, sought out perspectives different from his own, and advocated for open-mindedness. The idea of "barring" an entire group of people based on their faith would strike him as a tragedy of human ignorance. He believed that when we close our borders and our minds to the world, we stop growing and instead fester in our own biases.
💡 The Final Verdict
Montaigne lived in a time when Catholics and Protestants were slaughtering each other in the streets of France, convinced they were doing God's work. He saw where that kind of rhetoric led: to massacres, ash, and the destruction of the soul.
He would view this "Sam Huntington" post not as a modern political opinion, but as the same old, tragic human sickness—fanaticism masking itself as virtue. He would urge the writer to put down their weapons, log off the computer, go outside, and play with their cat until they remembered what it means to be human.
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