I remember once when I was in a park I saw this guy asking this girl out. Except that he didn't want to risk saying what he wanted to say, so jerked back and forth like a fifteen year old driving a standard, between "I'm just joking" to "but seriously." If she hadn't been entirely oblivious to it all, she would have gotten whiplash by watching him bounce back and forth so much from the realm of harmless flirting and dead-serious persuit. The thing is, she couldn't possibly give an answer until she knew exactly what he was asking. I've seen it many times before in my lifetime and I'm sure that I'll see it again many, many more. If you want a response, you have to ask or say what's on your mind. If you're trying to make a point, you've got to stick your neck out and make it.

That's William Raspberry's problem in this Washington Post article. What he's trying to say (we should be wary of religion conservatives here because they're like religious conservative terrorists abroad) gets muddled by his nodding and winking disclaimers. C'mon, William, I can't address points unless you truly raise them.

But I'll try.

Here's why. People for whom religion is the source of wisdom and truth, whose religious and civic lives are seamlessly connected, and who hold governmental authority must be greatly tempted to do what they can to place truth on the throne. Maybe they have to make the effort.

But isn't that just the effort that was made by the Taliban? Doesn't that urge, or something like it, drive the religious zealotry that, ultimately, justifies much international terrorism? Aren't those right-thinking clerics in Nigeria who want to stone that allegedly adulterous woman to death (but who seem willing to look the other way with regard to her sexual partner) acting out of their sense of truth?

So what you're saying (when you finally got to the point, that is) is that it's not the belief that adulterous women ought to be killed that's the problem, it's the fact that they believe this with all their hearts and minds. So, since that they believe this with all the wisdom and truth and yadda yadda, those that believe anything with all wisdom and truth are then equally suspect? So it's not what you believe that makes you dangerous insofar as it is the belief in something? So a Quaker that preaches pacifism is substantially no different from a Muslim who forces young girls back into a flaming building because they're not fully dressed? All things equal since they're all listening to their God, regardless of what it is their God tells them to do? Not so much that they believe what right and wrong are and/or what they do or don't do to enforce that standard, but merely because they believe in the concept of right and wrong?

Maybe it's just better you didn't come out and say it...