From the French, "terrorisme," the word originally described the 1793-94 "Reign of Terror" in revolutionary France; the first, but not the last, time that progressives took themselves too seriously and started killing people.

From the 1848 upheavals in central Europe into early 20th century Russia, "terrorism" and "anarchism" were synonyms commonly used to describe the organized, extra-governmental violence of the political Left.

Such violence from the Right, however one defines "right," has always been sporadic and less organized than its leftist counterpart.

Modern terrorism literally exploded onto the scene in the late 1960's with groups like the IRA, the PLO, the Basque ETA, Peru's "Shining Path," Germany's Baader-Meinhoff Gang, the Japanese Red Army, and the Italian Red Brigade. Being left-wing, these groups always blew people up in the name of "liberation" and "social justice."

Today, terrorism is largely a Muslim phenomenon. And, no, this is not to say that all Muslims are terrorists. Nonetheless, most modern terrorists are Muslims.

The jihadist rationale is neither liberation nor social justice but a toxic witch's brew of koranic exhortations to kill infidels, envy and hatred of Israel, and a manufactured sense of historical grievance vaguely connected to the Crusades (which didn't actually begin until 450 years after Islamic armies had swept across and conquered what once was called "Christendom").

Wikipedia defines terrorism as "the systematic use of violence as a means of coercion for political purposes," but that could be applied to warfare too and terrorism and war are different things. There are "rules of war;" not always followed but always understood. There are no "rules of terrorism." There often are acts of kindness and restraint in war. There is only barbarity in terrorism.

Progressives ponder terrorism in the abstract, hypnotically staring at it as one would stare at flames in a fireplace, and always seem to blame it on western imperialism. It's not the terrorists' fault. Thus is our progressive president naturally and benevolently inclined toward Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (no matter that it is al Qaeda by another name). Add a dash of their usual cultural relativism and progressives end up saying, and perhaps actually believing, silly things like "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

But while abstract terrorism may be reducible to a few non-judgmental lines in some freshman political science textbook, real terrorism is not.

"Our humanity," William Golding wrote, "rests in the capacity to make value judgments, unscientific assessments, the power to decide that this is right, that wrong, this ugly, that beautiful, this just, that unjust." We can and must make moral judgments about terrorism even when progressives call us "judgmental" for doing so. And the fact is that blowing up school busses full of children, flying airliners into buildings, decapitating hostages on TV, or opening fire in crowded shopping malls are acts of pure evil. Their perpetrators are not freedom fighters.

Our survival depends on our taking terrorism seriously and opposing it as forcefully as we can.

After 9/11, President Bush said, "We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." But we will do all of those things if we refuse first to pass judgment on evil and decide instead that terrorism is just an understandable reflection of a culture different from, but as valid as, our own. That is open-mindedness taken to the point of empty-headedness.

Western civilization stands for human freedom and dignity; imperfectly to be sure, but better than any other by far. Terrorists, whatever their rationale, are civilization's declared enemies. We must clearly understand that and not engage in dreamy, romanticized ruminations about this ugly phenomenon lest we fall into the trap of believing, then crafting policies around, relativistic tripe such as "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." The stakes are too high for us to be that "open-minded."