John Walker, the American-turned-Taliban, has become the favorite whipping boy for various conservative pundits who see him as the archetypical leftist loonie from Marin County. Never mind that joining the Taliban is not exactly a leftist thing to do, the point of their critique is that Walker’s parents — and, more importantly, their wishy-washy left-leaning fuzzy-headed liberalism (the brush with which Marin is widely painted) — are to blame for Walker being a mess.
But, as Steve Chapman points out in the Chicago Tribune, that’s not a fair conclusion.
The rush to blame Walker’s crimes on his free-thinking parents and his wealthy, liberal hometown is way too facile. Timothy McVeigh came from what conservatives might call a “refreshingly unenlightened” place–Pendleton, N.Y., a blue-collar town of 5,000 people near Buffalo. He was also an Army veteran who saw combat during the Gulf War. But I don’t recall any conservatives saying that something rotten in the culture of Pendleton or Ft. Riley, Kan., brought on the Oklahoma City bombing.
Likewise, Theodore Kaczynski grew up in the heavily Catholic, salt-of-the-earth Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, which is known as “The Village of Churches.” But when the Unabomber was finally caught, no one blamed his murderous attacks on the pervasiveness of Christianity and patriotism in his youthful surroundings.
(Via Overlawyered)