Eminently quotable:

The truth is, it does not occur to our elites that the world they wish to impose on the Taliban might be only slightly less morally repugnant than the world the Taliban wish to impose on Afghanistan.  Our leaders govern societies that systematically deny the rights of the unborn and the elderly, that aggressively violate their citizens’ rights of free speech and free exercise of religion.  They seek to create a world where parents have almost no rights over the education and rearing of their children, where toxic ideologies about race and transgenderism are forced on young and old alike, and parents are afraid to oppose these ideologies for fear of the state.

In other words, they do not really believe the things they say about rights, equality, and dignity.  They are morally bereft.  That’s why, when confronted by the bloody moral absolutism of the Taliban, they sputter nonsense and do nothing.

John Daniel Davidson, “The Afghanistan Debacle Has Exposed the Moral Bankruptcy of the West,” The Federalist (19 August 2021).