Crusader Rabbit-Hole

Last week at the National Prayer Breakfast, our esteemed president jammed his foot in his mouth again, this time intentionally.  In trying to defend Islamic terrorists, a term he still won't use for no apparent reason, he made the following inane remark (it's about the three-minute point, but you've heard it):

"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

Of course, despite his protestations of being a Christian, and spending 20 years in the flock of that great American, Jeremiah Wright, he never learned that the name "Christ" has a "T" at the end; for some reason he kept saying "Chrise."  Listen to the recording; I'm not kidding.  He does it twice, it was obviously intentional.  Who does that?

But I digress.

Obama missed the point of the comparison that he himself gave.  Anti-Islamic-terrorist advocates, whether Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and whatever else, do not have to apologize for what happened in the name of their respective faith.

Because, and here's the point -- if the evils ascribed to the Crusades and the Inquisition happened today, we would condemn them with the same fervor that we condemn the acts of radical Islamist terror today! 

Obama's stupid "two wrongs make a right, or at least they prevent us from calling one wrong" comparison forgets that very thing.  The moral code under which the world operates in 2015 would call comparable actions to the worst of the Crusades evil, or at least something to be stopped -- same as Islamic terrorism is.  Today's world would have fought the Inquisition, and today's world needs to stop Islamic terror.

It bedevils most Americans that their president would take the discussion down a rabbit-hole, by making such a confusing and inappropriate analogy -- let's face it, he's saying that today's Islamic terrorists are no worse than medieval Christian inquisitors were and therefore should not be vigorously condemned -- what else can he possibly have been trying to say?  It bedevils us because the actions of medievals in a completely different society have not for centuries been thought of as "good" or "justifiable."

The actions of Islamic terrorists today must be measured not against the morality of the Middle Ages but against what we in 2015 -- and for at least a few centuries -- think of as right and wrong.  Seriously, do you think you could find a minister or priest of any Christian denomination who would defend the promotion of Christian values by war and murdering "infidels"?

Let us not fall into the trap of responding to Obama's words by debating his premise and defending Middle Ages Christians.  His rabbit-hole of Crusaders leads us to a comparison that is flawed and, I contend, intentionally so.

For what purpose, we can only guess.  And none of the guesses are pleasant when you're analyzing a guy who can't even pronounce "Christ."

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton