>>>I am suggesting that we all tend to carry prejudices that we are unaware of. In unstable or more violent personalities that can quickly contribute to becoming a thug, that's for sure...or it can contribute to becoming a "freedom fighter" or whatever else one could call it. <<<

This is a good point and it seems to me is a necessary distinction to prevent discussions from getting heated for no good purpose. Someone anonymously asked above: "Why is it that anyone (myself included) that suggests addressing causes rather than symptoms feel the necessity to make explicit their horror at the slaughter in New York? Can this not be taken as read in view of our common humanity?"

In other words, where is the common humanity, where is the inhumanity and ethically unjustifiable, and where are the cultural differences. (We get into further trouble because the cultural differences may not be ethically justifiable.)

Mr. Anonymous doesn't recognize, because of his basic goodheartedness, that the common humanity has elements which literally approve of the WTC massacre.

I admitted in another thread that if I were born poor in Northern Pakistan, I would likely be a member of that aforementioned category. There is not an inherent, natural evil that would have made me that way. Circumstances would have caused me to go down a wrong moral path.

If I enjoy material excess because it is what I was raised on, despite actual knowledge or through laziness in failing to understand, that some of that material excess is made possible by geopgraphically or socially distant injustices, I have also gone down a wrong moral path.

But it's not ""I'm okay, You're okay." Osama bin Laden is morally more corrupt than I. So are his lieutenants. AND (here's where you and I may disagree): so is the poor Pakistani boy is willing to give his life for a "cause."

That poor misguided youth is willing to give his life for a cause, where I (probably) am not. On it's surface, he may seem to have a claim to moral superiority on that basis. But he does not. His position is morally inferior because he wishes to have me or mine (a) lose their lives, and/or(b) live in fear. I do not wish such deprivations directly upon him. My mental laziness may contribute (in large or very small part) to his material deprivation and discomfort.

The poor misguided youth may not be mentally lazy, but his moral wrongs in celebrating the misery of the relatives and orphans of the six thousand dead are worse than my failings in lazily accepting that my material comforts are due in abstract part to his material discomfort. His ignorance is more extensive than mine, even though I would be equally ignorant if raised in his environment.

In an imperfect world, prioritizing is required. The arguments we have here between those that ask us to see the more abstract portions of our ignorance are in large part engendered by the lesser developed of us sensing that you are failing to acknowledge the need to prioritize.

First, let's stop the direct mass murder. Then, let's lessen the ability to cause fear of personal harm. Then, let's enlighten ourselves about more dispersed injustices.

bin Laden is real and he is causing mass deaths and fear. Even if he is a creature formed by his environment, even if there are cultural idiosyncracies which explain his behavior, these have little influence upon or relevance to job one. Call him a freedom fighter for all I care. The name is irrelevant to immediate priorities.

Dan