A good rule of thumb for political commentary -- or life in general -- is that terrorists are never right. People who go on mass shooting sprees are never right. The man or woman who lights the fuse on a bomb that blows up a government building is never right. Their actions are wrong, and the ideas that motivated them are wrong.

Pat Buchanan, however, has discovered in the insane bigotry that allegedly animated Anders Behring Breivik's horrendous acts of violence in Norway a lesson about Europe and Islam that we maybe should take to heart.

After a perfunctory denunciation of Breivik as an "evil ... cold-blooded, calculating killer," Buchanan notes that Breivik's motivation was "to bring attention to his ideas and advance his cause: a Crusader's war between the real Europe and the 'cultural Marxists' and Muslims they invited in to alter the ethnic character and swamp the culture of the Old Continent."

Buchanan then gives the alleged terrorist an assist, writing that Breivik's vision of a grand conflict between European Muslims and Christians "may be right":