links for 2010-06-01

Hirsi Ali is convinced that “lingering between the two value systems,” as her half sister does, “stunts the process of becoming one’s own person.” But those privileged enough to find refuge in the West rarely find it easy or desirable to abandon their ancestral culture and convert to the Randian individualism that she appears to uphold as the noblest form of human existence. The fate of the truly modern nomad is, rather, a ceaseless inner conflict between ways of life and value systems; this very quality has made the nomad an emblematic figure of the contemporary age.