Kevin’s column on Nigeria’s barbaric jihadist group, Boko Haram, is full of insight and wisdom — and I would say that even if he hadn’t mentioned me. Every word of it is worth your time, but I think this is the main point:

Jihadists hate us for our values, and they hate schoolchildren in Nigeria and Pakistan to the extent that they share those values, an allegiance defined by the act of picking up a book or walking into a classroom. Islam and the West simply have competing and incompatible sets of values, and that discrepancy, while most dramatically apparent in actions such as those of Boko Haram, is not limited to extremists. Nor is it limited to such Muslim-dominated backwaters as Afghanistan.

The sooner we grasp that, the better off we — and our vitial interests in the world — will be. And it’s getting late in the day.