[F]ar more shocking was the exchange between Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson and FOX News anchor Shepard Smith.

So much for Shep's recent reputation as "not so bad, considering he's on Fox".

"Upon discovering Hasan's name, Smith said "The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?" to which Hutchinson responded, "It does. It does, Shepard." "
Modern Conservatism

" But even if his motives were religious or political, the responsibility is his and his alone."
The Conservatism i've read about in books.

This is about more than race, it's about worldview. Saying that the holocaust museum shooter was a result of a hateful and backwards ideology would not be nearly as much of a stretch as it would be to say it was reflective of all white men.

It's the beliefs that are the issue, not the person's race. Unfortunately, Islam is a belief system that has a violent and hateful streak to it. To deny that is to willingly stick your head in the sand. At some point, the pattern becomes too big to ignore.

That does not mean that Islam itself is violent or hateful by its very nature, it just means that it has a dangerous underbelly that cannot be ignored.

And as to the Smith/Huchinson exchange, you're trying to hard to read into what they meant. A huge "oh crap" went up around the country when we learned the shooter had a Muslim-sounding name.

"That does not mean that Islam itself is violent or hateful by its very nature, it just means that it has a dangerous underbelly that cannot be ignored."

Which makes it just like Christianity, oddly enough, though you won't hear that very often.

I would agree Lee. There are parallels. Rigidly dogmatic people are more inclined to feel the need to "do something" to right the wrongs they perceive.

But in the wake of the Tiller shooting, liberal blogs were immediately on the offensive proclaiming it an act of right-wing Christian terror.

Now we've got a much worse shooting, possibly motivated by this man's Islamic faith, and immediately you all are calling for cool heads and restrained rhetoric.

The switch between offense and defense is so predictable.

I'm to the left of Bernie Sanders, and I still cannot believe liberals' unwillingness to let go of kneejerk political correctness when discussing this matter, any more than I can believe right wingers' rapid descent into baiting and mongering.

Although I doubt that enough calm rationality will prevail to arrive at this conclusion, the problem is very simple:

Religion seeds in people a kind of hatred and violence that is likely to erupt at any time. When people live in a fantasy world where they are always correct--and they project that unchallenged ego onto an imaginary friend with ultimate power in the universe--than what can we expect but what happens every day?

That is, the distance between that internal ideated world and the external complex troubled one becomes so vast, that the person snaps.

In my view the US should be rejecting ALL religious extremism and fetish. We should be demanding that, to be an American means to evolve past those ancient, primitive, and destructive biases, and toward the promise of our Constitution.

Instead we are going out of our way to accommodate and excuse the most superstitious and mean element of humanity. And eroding the Constitution systematically.

I consider Fox News the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, and almost never watch it. Yesterday, I switched over to see if they were putting on one of their parallel reality plays about the news from Ft. Hood, and witnessed the exchange between Hutchison and Shepherd.

And I take issue with Adam's concrete interpretation. The discussion just prior to that had actually been rather careful. Other networks had since released the shooter's name, but Shepherd said several times he preferred to wait until he had confirmation. That didn't prevent him from asking Hutchison several times if she had more information about that, at which point she admitted she had been given a name. Shepherd admitted he too, had a name, but still refused to give it. That's when the quoted exchange occurred.

And to my ears it sounded like a bit of a holy crap moment. Both of them realized that the fact of the man's name was going to turn up the temperature on an already hot story. I also think the man's rank played into it. It seems almost passe these days, but if you listened to the speculation prior to any identification of any perpetrator, there was an underlying assumption that the shooter, known to be military, was probably some over wound young man who lost his marbles and went off, and not an officer of many years service.

Let's face it, the shooter's name does have implications. Just look at the coverage since, and watch in the coming days. I think the participants in that little exchange were both aware of the implications, and I am not certain that either of them were implying that we should have known it was those untrustworthy, dusky-skinned Mooooslims and that a purge of the military ranks is now in order.

Fox is a dishonorable organization from the top down, and was designed as a media stalking horse for the modern conservative movement. That doesn't mean the exchange was as Adam has interpreted it.

OneTinySpark,

I think that the point about the Tiller shootings being religiously motivated was fair, given that the gunman certainly appeared to endorse those views and that others in his religious community were supporting them. Very few people made the same leap with Timothy McVeigh, for a counter-example.

So far I haven't seen anyone in the Muslim community supporting Nidal.

Richard,

Nobody in the Christian community supported the killing of Dr. Tiller. Some may have shared the view that abortion is murder and Tiller was a bad person, but most groups came out and condemned the violence, just like the Muslim groups are doing now.

I remember blame being put on Christianity, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, and the right-wing in general, way before the details about Tiller's killer came to light.

Now those knee-jerk reactions are coming from the right, and it's the left that is running interference for the Muslim community and urging everyone to remain calm.

A little consistency would be nice.

Discussion of Malkin, Fox, etc., is a convenient way to flog what we already know--that they're propagandists--and evade more difficult discussions.

I'd like to see those more difficult discussions.

Instead, liberals stay in the safe harbor of repeating mantras, and not providing leadership in more difficult reasoning and discourse.

As for "the Muslim community"--there are a billion Muslims on this planet. What community are you referring to, Richard?

The whole point of mass murdering madness is that it doesn't exist to be supported or denied, it is the outcome of religious mania. Sometimes it is politicised, sometimes not.

But this was as clear an act of terrorism as I can imagine, and liberals are shirking discussing it as such because it challenges their easy dismissal of the violence in Islam.

Meanwhile CAIR is fabricating "hate crimes" where none exist, to distract from reports that this mass murderer shouted "allahu akhbar" as he systematically slaughtered Americans.

Liberals are going to get flogged in the '10 elections. And we deserve it. Even in moments of moral clarity we demonstrate our weakness and cowardice.

"Liberals are going to get flogged in the '10 elections. And we deserve it. Even in moments of moral clarity we demonstrate our weakness and cowardice."
What's this "WE"?
Can you change you name to One Lone Freethinker That Speaks For Himself. "and liberals are shirking discussing it as such because it challenges their easy dismissal of the violence in.."
Maybe WE are just waiting for facts.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/06/reporting

This man harbored extreme religious views alien to our country and was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and should never have been allowed in our military.

Here are some facts: Since our horrible 911 Islamic terrorists have murdered thousands of innocent, men, women and children on busses, trains, supermarkets, restaurants, synagogues and churches, and office buildings in more than twenty countries worldwide of which half of them are Moslem countries. This is not the fault of Israel or America which obviously upsets you Blame America First folks.

There ARE people who have an eight century view of Islam and believe in murdering innocent people. There is no comparison to any other conflict or religion in the world today. Christians and Jews are not targeting innocent men, women, and children around the world. Please spare the liberal pablum about what America has done in Iraq. America ended the famine in Moslem Somalia, ended the genocide by the Serbs against Moslems in Kosovo, kicked the invading Iraqi's out of Moslem Kuwait, and freed fifty million Moslems from oppressive, brutal dictatorships in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should never have gone to war with Iraq but the rest of the world was more interested in Saddam's oil and his money from oil and cared little about his torture and murders of his own people.

Right before Daniel Pearl, the American journalist, was beheaded in Pakistan his murderers made him say "I am an American and I am a Jew." Not one Moslem group in America condemned this horrific act nor do they condemn the slaughter of innocents in attacks against Israel by suicide bombers nor do they condemn the Moslem against Moslem attrocities being committed in Iraq. Christians and Jews don't behave this way.

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any one remember John Abi Zaid . he was an american from arab american, and he was a commander in Iraq,

My heart and prayers go out to all the victims, and the victims family and friends.

From all the news reports it appears this Major is a career military man and that in his current position for less than a year and was not going well. He did not want to be deployed and in fact wanted out of the Army, so he paid back his military student loans and hired an attorney.

The reason may have been that he was being harassed and called names like “camel jockey ”. I guess all that sensitivity training for those with bigotry tendencies are all for not. (Can training real change the way you were brought up?)

Another reason is called PTSD by proxy, the stress of treating PTSD in other soldiers make you go a little crazy yourself. Its even more stressful because most of the higher ranks don’t even believe in such thing as PTSD. Their denial prompts them to tell suffering soldiers to “drink it off.” Some civilians in the defense dept feel the same way no doubt IMO, it’s why hardly anything is mentioned of PTSD until one of these violent episodes occurs. These people see PTSD as a cop-out or an excuse. First we need to have an understanding that PTSD actually is real before we can ever hope to help treat it (does anyone believe that being shot at or killing your fellow man is not going to affect you in some way either then or in the future?). I guess with the high soldier suicide rate before and after deployment kinda takes care of the complaints from coming in (so those who said he should have just killed himself, well that’s already happening ). What real pissed me off when I heard that the military was trying to say that some soldiers coming back from this war with PTSD or other psychological disorders had “Pre-Existing Conditions” and that the military would not pay to treat them, I think it has been corrected but what a bunch of asses they break you and don’t want to pay.

The final issue is why does the military want to keep people in their ranks that no longer want to be there is it just sheer number? I mean is it ten percent, twenty percent. Is it that it is the only contract in the US that you can’t get out of unless to kill yourself or kill your fellow soldiers? It does not make any sense to me.

I guess the Major could just be another wacko like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicholas, of course McVeigh was executed and apparently because Nicholas became a Christian he received a life sentenced. I real think if he gets that far the Major will get the former and not in a million years the latter.

This is so messed up, hopefully they will make some changes that make sense.

I guess the US military will carry out detail questioning as to why he did it and will prove all of us wrong.

After that happens, I know some will still believe there point still has some merit.

Earlier in May 2009, Sgt. John Russell, 44 (Catholic), of Sherman, Texas, is in custody at Camp Liberty in Baghdad where he apparently opened fire at a combat stress clinic Monday, killing five U.S. soldiers.

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