The difference in the treatments meted out to Sens. Lott and Murray has been one of the grossest examples of the other side’s double standard, and is outrageous. How anyone — let alone a U.S. Senator!!! — could advise this country to emulate more closely what Sen. Murray calls the “nation-building tactics” of a criminal like bin Laden, a man, furthermore, who has “built” nothing but only torn things down, is just mind-boggling.

The confused thinking and obvious lack of loyalty in Senator Murray’ remarks are more serious for our country’s future than the diviseveness inherent in Senator Lott’s. Each’s comments are examples of what each’s party accepts or rejects as an off the cuff expression of the party’s platform.

Democrats have always tolerated the confused loyalties and treasonous conduct of its left wingers, while Republicans are now seen as no longer tolerant of the racial diviseness of some on its right.

The Pelosi led Democrats will pay for failure to censure Murray when she stands for reelection.They dont have the grit to cauterize their own wounds, as do the Republicans.

Saying this is going to make me sound like I’m defending Ms. Murray, which I’m not, but there’s something to what she says, even if it may not be what she intends. Leaving aside the virtues of Osama bin Laden as peacemaker, America does indeed need to get out of the business of Machiavellian power politics and back into the business of Christian charity. It is entirely unclear to the rest of the world, not to mention many Americans such as myself, that the aid and assistance we provide to countries around the world springs from charitable, rather than practical, geopolitical motives.

It is this sense people have that they are being used and manipulated by the US government that is the cause of the resentment we’re experiencing, and, frankly, I’m not able to look those people in the face anymore and tell them with any confidence that they’re wrong about it. Our politics have slipped their moral moorings and we are now paying the price for it.

J. Newland wrote:
“America does indeed need to get out of the business of Machiavellian power politics and back into the business of Christian charity.”

Try selling that softly styled hair-splitting condemnatory attitude to the families of Dr. Martha Miers, Phcst. Donald Caswell and Kathleen Gariety who had 60 combined years of charitable service at the Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen until today when they were murdered in the hospital by Osama’s friends.

Mr. Newland is yet one more who mistakes our nation’s economic success with our supposed desire for global imperialism. In roughly two hundred years we have gone a third-world nation carved out of wilderness to the wealthiest, most powerful,and MOST CHARITABLE nation on earth. We are the envy of the world; and it is precisely that envy that invites attack. Rather than lift themselves up to our level by building a system on a foundation of Judeo/Christian principles and the rule of law, our enemies desire to pull us down to their level of living in humiliating squaller and economic mediocrity.

Admittedly, there are a handful of blemishes on our nation’s history, but we are after all human and therefore fallible. Nevertheless, I invite Ms. Murray to show me a better place on this earth to live, and if she can I suggest she quietly go there.

Well, I have nothing good to say about Ms. Murray, but in reply to Jim’s post I don’t think the explanation “they attack us because they envy us” works in the case of Islam. I am not denying that it may be a factor, but it is not the only or even the most important factor. The primary reason why Islam attacks us is that it is the only true religion of the sword; it has a mandate to convert Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam by any means necessary, including and encouraging all manner of violence against the infidel. The secondary reason is that Western liberalism is a horrifically destructive force that threatens Islam’s very existence. So at most I would think of envy as a tertiary reason. Americans tend to ignore the first two because the first reason denies the moral equivalence of cultures and so is not only an affront to multiculturalism but requires one to be a bigot (by today’s understanding) simply in order to acknowledge the facts; while the second implies something sinister and internally corrupt about the West that the West would rather not face. So we end up by blaming the attacks on envy, since that no doubt plays some small role and is something to which every American can relate.