Why Me? Why Me?

In a quote-without comment (on my part) item from today's WSJ Best of the Web:

"Why Me? I'm So Complacent!
In a USA Today op-ed, Tom Krattenmaker of Portland, Ore., "a writer specializing in religion in public life," puzzles over why a terrorist would consider bombing his city:

For several good reasons, many of us Portlanders are having a hard time wrapping our minds around the horrific thought of a 19-year-old from the local suburbs wanting to kill and destroy. Why would Portland, of all places, be the site of a terror attack?

The "People's Republic of Portland"--so dubbed for its liberal ways--seems so utterly different from New York, Mumbai, London, or the other places that one associates with terrorist attacks. Portland is so much smaller, light years from the figurative front lines. This is a laid-back city where the red-hot rhetoric around terrorism, Islam, the "ground zero mosque," and the like runs cooler. It's a place where a live-and-let-live spirit extends ample latitude to anyone who might otherwise stand out--whether it's for wearing a Santa hat and pedaling around on a unicycle playing bagpipes (which my wife actually witnessed last year), covering every inch of your arm with tattoos, or wearing a head scarf and praying at a mosque rather than a church or synagogue.

This guy really needs to get out more. Portland is liberal, welcoming of weirdos, and munificent toward Muslims, and he thinks that sets it apart--from New York? And how self-absorbed do you have to be to think, almost a decade after 9/11, that terrorists won't target you because of your "live-and-let-live spirit"?"

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703296604576005542958085686.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion