EDITORIAL

Gender-neutral language and women's ordination and gay rights are "relevance" for the Left, but so are the abortion wars and the campaign against homosexuality for the Christian Right. Radical Islam (which synthesizes the worst elements of the political Left and the religious Right) now cranks up the same sense of red alert-what Egyptian playwright AIi Salem calls a mental state of war, poisoning every joy-with as much and as little basis in experienced reality, and as little regard for the outcome. [...]there are things you don't do even if you have been insulted; you don't do them because nothing is worth the kind of instability it would cause to your own equilibrium and to the world's.