When George W. Bush imposed steel tariffs, the people of Europe didn't blow up U.S. embassies all over the continent.

We've come too far and our ancestors paid too high a price to acquiesce in anyone's attempt to pull us back now to prehistory, which is where Islamic fundamentalism, Saddam Hussein, Palestinian suicide bombers, the Beltway sniper and North Korea's weapons builders want to take us. Poor Israel, however, is almost there.

This is the world of blood feuds, which civilized men sought to end dating back to the medieval age. Blood feuds, by tradition waged without end, are fought on behalf of individuals or tribal groups that have been dishonored. Saddam and bin Laden would damage America because it is complicit in the dishonor of the Palestinians. Blood feud, which is blood vengeance, recognizes but a single political instrument: killing. What is more, it eliminates one of the most important civilizing achievements of the West: the tempering of individual conscience. Bali is justified. September 11 is justified. The sniper is an al Qaeda hero.

Still and all, Paris, Bonn, and that part of Manhattan that never comes downtown instruct us that Iraq and Saddam, sitting atop barrels of mustard gas and anthrax, have no proven connection to this darkening world. Soon enough, they will find a way to say that medieval North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons has to be "managed."

It is possible to become too civilized, or so exquisitely civilized that the strongest feeling one can summon in response to a Bali or the logical surmise of more Balis soon to come is . . . concern. A politics of concern may be enough to assure some people that their own lives will be as untouched today by anti-civilization as they were all day yesterday. But it does appear that for a much larger majority of Americans, looking back on a week of slaughter, something sturdier is going to be needed to preserve where we are.