Excerpt:
Rationality can be an overrated quality in politics. Communism was, after all, so rational that it imagined humans as lumps of clay to be moulded at will – with unsuitable 'elements' consigned to the Gulag.
The attempt to apply rational political criteria to the actions of psychopathic movements has also historically led to erroneous political decisions at home: appeasement in the case of Nazi Germany and a frivolous desire to find materialist 'root causes' of Islamic extremism.
As the great documenter of Stalinism Robert Conquest put it:
Reliance on reason alone is itself irrational: It neglects the instinctual and deep-set elements of the real human being.