What Judith Warner Left Out

Reading Judith Warner's column this morning on the recent upsurge in hate crimes, I was struck by what she left out. Two weeks ago, a Muslim extremist shot two soldiers, killing one, outside a recruiting station in Arkansas. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad acted alone, just as James von Brunn apparently did. He was, like von Brunn, captive to a supremacist ideology that, in his mind, justified the murder of an innocent man. Like von Brunn, authorities said, he had mapped out Jewish targets for potential attack.  And yet, no mention of the hate crime committed by a Muslim; only hate crimes committed by white, right-wing extremists were worthy of mention in Warner's column. This is true for other columnists on the liberal side of the spectrum. The murder of Private William Long seems to be of no concern, and without larger meaning.

Of course, on the other side of the spectrum, great thinkers like Glenn Beck are blaming the attack on Holocaust Museum on -- well, it's hard to figure out what he's talking about, but it is safe to say that he's not blaming white America. And bloggers like Debbie Schlussel are blaming Islam for the Holocaust Museum attack. Go figure.

The attacks in Arkansas and Washington are both manifestations of a radical type of intolerance, and they are linked in very deep ways. The left, generally speaking, doesn't want to acknowledge Muslim intolerance, and the right, generally speaking, doesn't want to acknowledge white, Christian intolerance. But they both exist, and they should both be acknowledged.