I didn't say that we should lay down like dogs and die kicked to death by Muslims or anyone else because we aren't perfect.

I didn't say anything about aid. Not one word. And in fact, I wasn't thinking about giving money to anybody when I wrote the post. The phrase, which I chose carefully, was "equal economic opportunity". Notice the noun: "opportunity". The idea is, if someone is smart and energetic, he or she should have access to the resources and agencies that can help him or her use original ideas for self-improvement, regardless of ethnic or religious background or which neighborhood was home. The rules need to be equal, not the cash distribution. Show me a place where that doesn't happen, and I'll show you a place with civil unrest and a lot of smart, energetic criminals working outside of a system that had no time for them.

Too often, the only way to get an appointment with a banker or a government official, or indeed with a teacher, is to already have access to the thing that you want to ask for -- money, influence, information. If a man is willing to work, he should have access to the opportunity. If he wants to learn, he should have access to the opportunity. I thought that was the American way. Perhaps I was mistaken.

The most reliable way to improve the world is to improve one's self. This is true of nations as well as of individuals. America is a very fine nation, but there are things we can do better at home. To seek self-improvement and to set a better example, to think about what we want and who we are and who we wish to become, isn't the same thing as opening talks with people who blow up our people and the buildings the people are in.

Ignoring the garden in which such noxious weeds have flourished isn't a good idea either. Rather than pouring herbicide on the entire patch, one weeds, improves the soil, and tends the garden with an eye toward what conditions allowed the weeds to take over in the first place.

Liberals everywhere can take heart from the fact that "justice, physical and intellectual freedom, access to diverse information, personal safety, and equal economic opportunity" are considered so basic to liberalism that they constitute "classic liberalspeak". Thank you, Phil!

Do conservatives believe in any of those?
;)

Regards--
Mary Anne