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IN Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Doubleday, 170 pp., $19.95), William J. Bennett offers a patriotic exhortation to firmness in our current struggle. He speaks for an American consensus, one that goes beyond the traditional categories of the recent culture wars. Here, for example, he defends Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had met a buzzsaw of criticism when he defended the West and its system of respect for pluralism:

The irony is that the qualities of Western culture that Berlusconi picked especially to praise are the same qualities urged upon us by the relativists and diversity-mongers. Why is our civilization superior? he asked. Because it is “a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and . . . respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its values understand-ings of diversity and tolerance.” Can anyone deny that these are indeed our regnant values, or that most Islamic countries do not share them?

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IN Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Doubleday, 170 pp., $19.95), William J. Bennett offers a patriotic exhortation to firmness in our current struggle. He speaks for an American consensus, one that goes beyond the traditional categories of the recent culture wars. Here, for example, he defends Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had met a buzzsaw of criticism when he defended the West and its system of respect for pluralism:

The irony is that the qualities of Western culture that Berlusconi picked especially to praise are the same qualities urged upon us by the relativists and diversity-mongers. Why is our civilization superior? he asked. Because it is “a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and . . . respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its values understand-ings of diversity and tolerance.” Can anyone deny that these are indeed our regnant values, or that most Islamic countries do not share them?