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As far as ranting and raving about Arabs, you're painting with a mighty big brush here. The majority of Muslims worldwide are not Arabs, and the majority of Americans of Arab descent are Christian, and not Muslim, as the inaptly named Arab-American League would have you believe.

No, it's too many of my fellow conservatives who paint with too broad a broad brush. The distinctions you point out are nearly never noted in the, yes, anti ARAB ranting that is a fixture of talk radio and of some other conservative sounding boards. For instance, Saddam (obviously a vile chap) is regularly talked about as if he was an orthodox Muslim of the same stripe as Al Queda-- when, as I understand it, he is/was a secularist and therefore hated by the fundamentalists. Yet it's constantly said that the war on Saddam was part of the war on Islamists.

You have to acknowledge that Islam is being condemned by many conservatives as a monolithic, undifferentiated force that hates America through and through - - - as if this also applies, necessarily, to Muslims who live down the street. Bush isn't buying that, so does it make me a dupe or traitor to share his skepticism?

Nor am I retracting my hope that Jewish Americans in genuinely significant numbers will at some point abandon their rigid Democratic allegiance - - - which, contrary to your statement, is far, far more predominent (about 80 percent or above pro-Dem, I believe) than whatever overall Democratic leanings still exist in today's Catholic community (didn't Catholics pretty much split evenly or at most 60-40, btw Gore and Bush?). Unfortunately, I'm not as confident as many freepers that Bush's (correct) pro-Israel stance is going to wean significant numbers of Jews from left-liberalism; Nixon's strong pro-Israel stance didn't, nor did Reagan's.

From the Wall Street Journal, 11 June 2003:

In Washington, the Islamic Institute has helped furnish Muslim support for various Bush administration causes. After Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Saffuri, wrote a paper justifying U.S. military action during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Mr. Norquist passed along the document to the White House National Security Council. A senior administration official says it was used in developing talking points by U.S. officials defending the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

That's not my idea of a Wahabbi Lobby. The folks attacking Norquist et. al really don't seem to think Muslims should be involved in American politics. Why on earth do we have the First Amendment, then?