Commentary It is a matter of speculation how far a person’s political opinions are determined by his temperament, his circumstances and his ratiocination, but it is certainly true that many extremists make their choice young, burn their boats and then cannot return, at least for a very long time, to normal life. For personal reasons unnecessary to go into, I was reading recently a biography of the French anarchist of the Belle Époque, Alexandre Jacob (1879 – 1954). He was a very interesting person. He left school early and by the age of 14 he was planning explosions with dynamite. He became a very accomplished and prolific burglar of the houses of the wealthy, using the proceeds not to enrich himself but to fund anarchist organizations—rather a contradiction in terms, one might have thought. Once, burgling the house of someone whom he had thought to be a rich aristocrat, he …