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"You can deal with the poor striking out, but you can’t deal with the threat of a universal religious war.”

This sums up the denial and defective thinking in the West regarding Islamism. It isn't "poverty-ism," it's Islamism.

Yup. Why is this so hard for the media to get? I suspect it's because they cannot understand religious belief in general. They simply cannot believe that other people take their faith seriously, since they don't themselves. Therefore they must logically ascribe the motivations of religious believers to other things, like class struggle, economic factors, psychological conditions, etc.

Wow! You said a mouthful...

I never thought about it like that... but, you are right. They don't have the capacity to think in those terms, therefore, no one else does either... so, it has to be what we are doing to them and not just the fact that we are.

Which is the crux of the problem. They don't hate us because of the things we have, they hate us because we are not Islam, and because we are not Islam, it is their religious duty to "convert us at the edge of the sword" and if we won't be converted then to kill us with that sword.

All you have to do is look at the history of the Middle East and Islam's dealings with all other religions and people who were not Islam.

What is the expression... "those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it."

"Therefore they must logically ascribe the motivations of religious believers to other things, like class struggle, economic factors, psychological conditions, etc."

It's called "conditioned response". We all had at least one teacher or several college professors who blamed every social ill, no matter what it was, one of the conditions you name....and knew about a hundred students offhand who thought the same way. Now they can't think any other way.

They're trying SO hard to be logical and objective that they are acting illogical and unobjective.

Yup. Why is this so hard for the media to get? I suspect it's because they cannot understand religious belief in general. They simply cannot believe that other people take their faith seriously, since they don't themselves. Very insighful obsdervation. Lately, Europeans began to refer to themselves with pride as "post-Christian." The name is of a recent origin, but the process has begun in XIX century. I strongly believe that the vacuum created by teh retreat of Chritianity has allowed, and was filled by, socialism.

By now, the post-Christian West cannot even recognize the ability to die for one's beliefs, whether religios or any other.

Therefore they must logically ascribe the motivations of religious believers to other things, like class struggle, economic factors, psychological conditions, etc. The class strugle is particularly comforting psychologically because it fits with the rest of the presently fashionable social-engineering view of the world: if we only give them more aid, if only we educate their children...

This mentality is the very root of the why-do-they-hate-us bewilderment that decended on a huge portion of our own country after the Sep 11.