Two for the Price of One

Two stories for the price of one.

First of all Larry Elder writes a column touting the negativity of the Kerry Edwards campaign. He begins his column with this paragraph.

"We're running a very positive and affirmative campaign," said Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Indeed, Sen. Kerry, D-Mass., renounces nastiness: "We have not stood up," he said, "and attacked our opponents in personal ways." Really?

Let's go to the videotape."

He then quotes 11 Democrats / Liberal saying mean hurtful things about President Bush. Many of them are justifiably questionable statements; others aren't. But out of the 11, only one comes from the Candidate for President or the Candidate for Vice President.

Two come from the recent star-studded Hollywood fundraiser, so I guess we could put those in the camp of coming from the Kerry/Edwards campaign.

But 8 or 72.73% came from outside the campaign. They are all Democrats; but it certainly seems like nonsense to suggest that all Democrats are responsible for the actions of all other Democrats.

Incidently, the one statement by John Kerry? Made off stage. It was an open mike gaffe. He didn't apologize for the words, though, so I guess it counts.

On the other hand we've had on stage comments by both President and particularly Vice President slamming Kerry and Edwards. Their campaign website spends a lot of bandwidth ripping into Kerry and Edwards (the Kerry site doesn't reciprocate, merely pointing out discrepancies in the Bush attacks). They ran an web ad comparing Democrats to Adolph Hitler. So I think I'm going to continue believing that the Kerry Edwards people are running a far more positive campaign.

The second story is by Marvin Olasky, and I'm having a hard time figuring it out. He writes on a visit to Turkey and a comparison between the Haggia Sophia and the Sultan Ahmet. He moves from that to a discussion of the Crusades and the age old struggle between the Muslims and the Christians bringing it right up to the modern day.

" Those Christians saw a clash of civilization that went on for centuries, and their paintings are very much in an Onward Christian Soldiers motif, with lots of red ochre, green, and cobalt blue. In places of Cappadocia without cliffs, the Christians went underground: 32 Thirty-two underground cities probably housed at times 20,000 or more, with multiple entrances and exits for escape.

I visited one underground city at Derinkuyu that went down eight levels and included a church, classroom, baptistry, storerooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, wine cellars, stables on the first and second stories, wells, tombs, and 52 ventilations shafts to a depth of 75 to 90 yards. Christians apparently built the city by hollowing out airshafts and excavating from the sides of the shafts.

And talk about security: Christians built not bolt locks but bolt stones -- two feet thick and weighing half a ton -- that could be rolled across passageways in case of attack. Which leads to a question: What kind of bolt stones do we have today? We need to pray for peace and work to build honest Muslim-Christian friendship. But we must also be discerning, so that terrorists don't force us into a position of weakness where all we can do is hide."

I'm not sure what the point of Marvin Olasky's article is intended to be. It is a bit like an old time "Muslim Menace" article, and perhaps that's it. We should respect Muslims if they are willing to convert to Christianity or something, but otherwise we are enemies forever? I don't know. Certainly reminding us all of the Crusades in the middle of our current conflict isn't meant to encourage understanding of the Muslim world.