Warren on 'chestlessness'

Canada's own David Warren is hardly a stranger to controversy. A recent column of his, Chestlessness, has engendered no small amount of discussion in the blogosphere, because in it he excoriates the two captured Fox News journalists who went along with their captors even to the extent of "converting" to Islam. Warren, who is an adult convert to Catholicism, responds to his critics here.

Although I am sympathetic with Warren's critique, I do wonder whether one can realistically expect someone who is not a Christian to display the same courage in the face of martyrdom that so many followers of Jesus Christ have manifested over the centuries. To die for something as abstract as "the West" while lacking an ultimate hope in redemption is almost certainly more than one can demand from a journalist steeped in a secular worldview.