Not barbarians but savages

Here are details from the Times of London on the gang that kidnapped the young French Jew Ilan Halimi and tortured him for three weeks until he died. The articles is entitled, “Barbarians of suburbs threaten French Jews,” but this is a misuse of the word barbarian. Barbarians are destructive, sometimes for the sheer fun of it; Achaean barbarians led by Agagamemnon sacked Troy; Germanic barbarians sacked Rome; Viking barbarians laid waste the coasts and monasteries of Dark Age England. But barbarians, though not at the stage we call civilized, still have organized societies and moral codes; their behavior, through brutal, is subject to rules and limits. The gang that tortured Ilan Halimi to death were not barbarians, but savages. Their behavior was like that of the American Indians who, if they managed to capture anyone from another tribe, would subject him to inhuman tortures for days or weeks.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 07, 2006 08:55 AM | Send