Please, Mr. Obama, cool the equivalence

President Obama was foolish the other week to drawn an equivalence between Christian violence, which was mostly hundreds of years ago, and the endless violence perpetrated by Islamists now and from the start. And for that matter, the Muslims started the violence against Christians and invaded Europe soon after Mohammed started the religion.  (Charles Martel stopped them at Tours.) And  early Islamists "converted'' people through the sword; some of them are still doing the same thing, with guns and bombs. They're still using violence to expand their  religion. Christians have long since moved on from the Inquisition, etc. Obama and others must find the courage to declare that Western Civilization has long been better than any other, for all of its disasters. It has created more good for more people than any other  major cultural tradition. One of the reasons is  its ability to absorb the best of other cultures, including many of the glories of Islamic and East Asian civilizations. That makes it the most supple and innovative of  major cultures, and usually, the most humane, with such horrific exceptions as the Holocaust.

That's why people flee to the West.

--Robert Whitcomb