Multiculturalists claim that the presence in a society of a diversity of peoples limits the possibility of common values. Clash of civilisations warriors insist that such values are impossible within an ethnically diverse society. Neither is right.

Society is fast becoming an asylum, a place without privacy, because private space away from scrutiny is where abuses occur. Here we have the final attack on the self.

War is increasingly a state of being, not a process with a beginning, an end, and an actual geography.