The left wing essayists were gushing and slobbering over Amish forgiveness.

Ann Taylor Fleming of PBS's The News Hour, wrote a very moving essay on the Amish schoolgirl murders and the subsequent decision the Amish made to forgive the killer and invite his wife to live among them. Surprisingly, Fleming's essay was not an attempt to cast blame at the American people for going into Afghanistan or Iraq out of a need for revenge. Fleming's essay actually pointed out the difference between the current behavior of many Muslims in the Muslim and Western worlds and the Amish. The Amish themselves are somewhat of a fanatical sect. I have often stated that Muslims in Iraq who choose to live in a democracy could practice as pure a form of fanatical Islam as they would wish. They could live separately. They could eschew modern life. They could school their children as they wish. In turn they would leave others to practice their religion, or not, as they choose. The Amish have done this successfully for many years.

I doubt that the left would have used such glowing praise to describe a Christian Evangelical sect if the murders had happened among say, George Bush's coreligionists. The Amish are odd enough and a minority as well, so the left felt free to praise them for upholding a tenet the liberals themselves are always touting. It didn't even matter that the only reason the Amish did forgive the child killer was that their religion required it. They did not forgive him because they are nicer than you or I. They forgave him because they were told to by their religious leaders. Where the left thinks that forgiveness originated from is beyond me. They seem to think they have invented it. The truth is that the left has appropriated all of its values from Christianity. No Native American tribe invented forgiveness. No Muslim in the world believes in forgiveness. Ask the most moderate Muslim you know if they forgive the Israelis. You will get an hour long diatribe of all the purported atrocities committed by Israelis from time immemorial.