Can you judge a tree by its fruit?

Today we learn that one of the young thugs accused of committing a series of church burnings, Benjamin Nathan Moseley, has an interesting father: Elected Republican official Stephen Moseley. The elder Mosely ran unopposed for a constable's position in Jefferson County, Alabama, in 2004.

I feel sorry for the father; this must be an agonizing time for him. Even so, I can't help but compare these sad events to the brouhaha which arose after the capture of John Walker Lindh.

Remember him? He was the confused young man from a rich family in Marin County whose "spiritual journey" (if you can call it that) led him toward fundamentalist Islam. (As one wag put it: "There's a seeker born every minute...")

He found himself in Afghanistan when hostilities broke out. Our military arrested him and trussed him up as though he were Hannibal Lecter, even though there was no evidence that he ever took up arms against the Americans.

Instead of showing dismay at this flagrant act of prisoner abuse, the right-wing propagandists decided that the Lindh case provided an excuse to commit sociology. They fixated on the fact that this young goofball grew up in the liberal bastion of Marin county -- as though Marin had turned out scores of Taliban sympathizers.

The right-wingers insisted that we should pass judgment not just on young Lindh, but on the parents...the town...the entire culture in which he came of age.

If that is so, then what conclusions should we draw about the (Republican) parents, the town and the culture which upchucked a bad kid like Benjamin Nathan Moseley? After all, Moseley has been accused of terrible acts of violence. Lindh didn't really hurt anyone aside from himself.

If Lindh is his father's child, the same can be said for Moseley. If the right can pretend that Lindh typifies Northern Californian liberals, then why can't we say that Moseley typifies the Christian conservatives of Alabama?

Incidentally -- if Mosely were an environmentalist, you know damn well that the press would label him a terrorist.