At the American Interest, Eliott Cohen writes:

We are in the early or, at best, early-middle stages of a vicious cycle of violence. Consider only the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. What sorts of experiences have the teenagers in those camps had? What future can they expect? How many murders, maimings, and rapes might they wish to avenge? What sorts of experiences have the teenagers in those camps had? What future can they expect? How many murders, maimings, and rapes might they wish to avenge? In those camps lie a well-nigh infinite pool of recruits for the jihadi cause, and they will make their way into the fight. …

Meanwhile, on the beautiful campuses of our oldest and wealthiest universities, mobs of the luckiest young people in the world are whimpering belligerently because they believe themselves to be victims—an obscene notion, if you think about their Syrian and Iraqi contemporaries. This may not be the early 1930s, but it is getting close. And as one might have said back then, this is not likely to get any better.

While at the New York Times, Ross Douthat suggests:

If you don’t recognize that for at least some of the Islamic State’s young volunteers there is a feeling of joy and celebration involved in joining up, then you’re a very long way from understanding the caliphate’s remarkable appeal. …

The deep reality here (a reality not unlike the one that’s playing itself out on certain college campuses right now) is that many human beings, especially perhaps young human beings, still crave a transcendent purpose, even in a society that tells them they don’t really need one to live a comfortable, fulfilling life. And more than that, many people experience both a kind of liberation and a kind of joy in submission to these purposes, even — as is the case with ISIS — when that submission involves accepting forms of violence and cruelty that rightly shock the conscience of the world. …

If the West’s official alternative to ISIS is the full Belgium (basically good food + bureaucracy + euthanasia), if Western society seems like it’s closed most of the paths that human beings have traditionally followed to find transcendence, if Western culture loses the ability to even imagine the joy that comes with full commitment, and not just the remissive joy of sloughing commitments off — well, then we’re going to be supplying at least some recruits to groups like ISIS for a very long to come.