How to Conquer the World

I don't believe that what drove the Paris terrorists was religion. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of interest in religion among them. Often when religion is cited as the reason for vicious behavior, the real cause is something else, something as crass as who owns what property. Religion becomes the excuse. So why did the terrorists murder nearly 20 French people?

I've come up with two ideas. One is that 1% of the people on earth are sociopaths (I read that somewhere). That would mean there are roughly 60 million sociopaths on the planet. Most are not killers. They become corporate leaders, generals, football coaches, executioners, etc. They have places, sometimes useful places, in our system. But others seek an outlet in a murderous cause that makes a virtue of their Sadism. The second idea is concerned with the nature of the cause the Paris terrorists supported, which is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. This is a hopeless task, as those who set out to conquer the world eventually discover, but people keep attempting the impossible.

Nazi Germany was never going to conquer the world because there weren't enough Nazis to go around. Terrorists are not going to conquer the world because there aren't enough terrorists to get the job done. You can't conquer the world. It's a pipe dream.