" My time in the Middle East led me to realize that, with a few rare exceptions, the dominant political ideology there—whether you were talking about Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds, Israelis, Arabs, Persians, Turks, or Palestinians—was “I am weak, how can I compromise? I am strong, why should I compromise?” The notion of there being “a common good” and “a middle ground” that we all compromise for and upon—not to mention a higher community calling we work to sustain—was simply not in the lexicon. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations