Fear

If you are unfortunate enought to have reason to patronize the true right-wing blogosphere, you might know something about the accusations some bloggers and pundits have leveled against the two Fox News journalists who dared to falsely convert to Islam to keep from being killed after they were kidnapped. Glenn Greenwald opines on the topic, and it can't be said better than this:

So someone -- like [kidnapped Fox News journalists] Centanni or Wiig -- who recites a few words that they don't mean in order to avoid death is a wretched, feminine coward who has no core values and nothing they are willing to die for. But if that's the standard, then people like Steyn and his fellow neoconservative warriors -- who want to place blind faith in the Government in exchange for promises of "protection," vest in the President the most unlimited powers, and fundamentally change how our country functions and the values which define it, all because they think that doing so is necessary to increase their chances of living -- are drowning in a self-protective cowardice that dwarfs by many magnitudes that which they mock in others.

I've never understood how chest-thumping conservatives, eager to wage war on Iran or have war waged on our enemies by our proxies (see Israel and Hezbollah) could possibly characterize themselves as the ones who are "tough" on terror, when in truth they'd sacrifice just about everything this country stands for in an irrational effort to avoid the .0001% chance they have of being killed by a terrorist. Last time I checked there were several terms we used to describe poeple who were afraid of their own shadow, and "tough" wasn't one of them.