The sheer nihilistic irrationality of terrorism strains and tests our own beliefs like nothing else can.

But neither Breivik, nor the terrorists of September 11, 2001, killed without reason, in the way some nihilistic American shooters do.

The bad news is that an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency can eventually evolve into a coherent, efficient, and purposeful one.

But no such nihilistic view of our existence follows from the size of our planetary home, and Russell himself was no nihilist.

A less nihilistic view is that the Yukos affair suggests above all a series of improvisations by Putin rather than a coherent agenda.

Finally, the insurgency as a whole remains nihilistic, focused on destroying the new Iraqi government and the emerging economic and political system rather than articulating a coherent alternative.

This would obviously pose a much more serious threat, but even an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency can survive and block stability, democratization, and prosperity for many years.

They have only a nihilistic message, but no agenda, for Iraq or for the region, except to prevent, through a deadly cycle of violence and terror, democratic ideals from taking root.

The nihilistic and destructive instincts that some young Germans of the Baader Meinhof generation acquired from extreme leftist ideology in the 1970 s, it seems, can be transformed into a romanticization of al Qaeda.

The good news for those who desire stability and democracy in Iraq is that an amorphous, disorganized, and nihilistic insurgency cannot win in the traditional sense of replacing the government and forming a new regime.

Much of the world is wondering how such a successful economy could allow its politics to spin out of control. What accounts for the armies of protesters distinguished, gang like, by the color of their shirts whose mutual antipathy often borders on nihilistic rage?