At 05:18 PM 7/8/2002 -0500, cebuman@optonline.net wrote: >I do not know how you could equate Osama bin Laden, with Jerry Falwell, or >pro life protesters. Your comparison stretches reality, which shows you >argument is hollow at best. The next time a Rabbi, Priest, Minister, or >Jerry Falwell orders the Highjacking of an Aircraft, a suicide bombing, or >bombing of an embassy or Temple we'll condemn them. > >TOM At 05:49 PM 7/8/2002 -0700, David Ross wrote: >the "US Christian pro-life extremists," as you say, are not terrorists. >These people are trying to save humans, not kill them like the terrorists >of the middle east. > >David Ross >http://home.attbi.com/~damiross/ Tom and David both miss my point badly. Jerry Falwell no more represents me as a Christian than Osama bin Laden or other well known radical militant Muslims represent my Muslim friends. Furthermore, Falwell and the leaders of the extremist pro-life movement (as opposed to the moderate pro-life movement, of which I am a member) are nearly as bad as the leaders of militant Islam at exhorting people they don't know to "action," which is often violent. Yes, bin Laden goes a step further by running training camps for terrorists, but like Falwell and some of the extremely conservative, judgmental Christian media ministers, he inspires more people then he attempts to control directly. Others have already dealt with the question of whether the extreme pro-life fringes qualify as terrorists. That's not my point. My point is, they don't represent me, even if they, too, identify themselves as Christian. And if you assume that bin Laden and Richard Reid are representative of Islam, you slam my Muslim friends the same way you mislabel me if you assume I'm like the violent pro-life extremists. My secondary point is that some of these alleged connections between the LAX gunman and radical Islam leaders strike me as likely to be indirect at best, not direct like some of these postings would seem to like. I believe that Falwell is no more guilty of abortion center bombings than bin Laden is guilty of conspiring to shoot up LAX. He might be happy about it, and the violent offenders might think they were furthering some political movement, but I really don't think that means there's a conspiracy here. (See also: Lee Harvey Oswald and the USSR) Nick PS - to those who find this topic too off-topic, I promise to start the subject line with "TAN:" for tangent for these notes that are less airline related.