Christian Lives Matter ...

Liberals in America have never been shy about expressing their outrage over all sorts of injustices, as they define the word.

When a black kid in Missouri attacks a police officer who then shoots him in self-defense, liberals are outraged.

When Americans protest a planned mosque in the shadows of the old World Trade Center, liberals are outraged.

They're outraged over a phony war on women.

Outrage is one of the ways the American Left shows how compassionate it is.

So where is the outrage now that Christians in the Middle East are being slaughtered simply because they are Christians? Is ethnic cleansing not worthy of outrage? Where are the demonstrations?

But many liberals are ill at ease when it comes to condemning this particular kind of brutality – because the murderers are Muslims.

My Fox News fellow commentator Kirsten Powers has written eloquently about this in her USA Today column – a column that has gotten notice in conservative circles precisely because Ms. Powers is a liberal. She deserves our thanks.

She writes about the men aboard a migrant ship going from Libya to Italy who were thrown overboard by Muslims. Their “crime”? They were praying to Jesus. When Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, was asked about this at a joint White House news conference, he chose to play down the atrocity, saying, "The problem is not a problem of (a) clash of religions."

Except it is – no matter how much apologists try to ignore a simple fact: Islamic extremists are killing in the name of their religion.

While the prime minister spoke, President Obama stood by … mute.

As Ms. Powers writes: “He failed to interject any sense of outrage or even tepid concern for the targeting of Christians for their faith. If a Christian mob on a ship bound for Italy threw 12 Muslims to their death for praying to Allah, does anyone think the president would have been so disinterested? When three North Carolina Muslims were gunned down by a virulent atheist, Obama rightly spoke against the horrifying killings. But he just can't seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians or the eradication of Christianity from its birthplace."

As troubling as Mr. Obama’s silence is, it should surprise no one. He can’t bring himself to utter the words “Islamic terrorism.” But at the National Prayer Breakfast not long ago, he had no problem lecturing Christians about the crimes their ancestors committed ... a thousand years ago.

And when Coptic Christians in Libya are beheaded simply because they are Christians, much of the world yawns. How terrible, we say, and then go back to whatever we were doing before. Where is the outrage?

But let's not fool ourselves; it isn’t only Christians who are dying. Outrage itself is on life support. And when outrage dies, a piece of our humanity dies too.

Christian lives matter.