Anybody who doesn't recognise why it's important to try to understand the people who disagree with you you must be a bit crazy.

John Lindh came out of White Christian America. That's something Americans need to make sense of. He's unlikely to be the last.

I still can't see what he is supposed to have done that was a crime. The bizarre plea-bargaining system that enabled him to escape a legal lynching and the prosecution to escape having to produce a legal case has meant there's been no trial of the evidence.

But whatever, it must be frightening to think what might happen if there are lots more like him coming out of the same background that produced him.