I offer my deepest sympathies to the wounded, those in mourning for murdered loved ones, and the dead in the Orlando terror attack. American citizens were the victims in their own town of a fiendish attack by a man in the grip of a diabolical political movement.

President Obama’s response to this outrage showed a breathtaking level of detachment from the views and feelings of ordinary Americans. David Limbaugh summed up my unease when he wrote:

There is just no excuse for Obama’s warped moral compass — the way he excuses the culpable. And his judgments are not happening in a vacuum; they are guiding his policies, which are leading to more, not fewer, attacks against us.

William Murchison disposed quickly of what appeared to be a main point of President Obama’s speech:

No one outside the Obama speechwriting team supposes that gun control would impress maniacal terrorists or convince them to accept America’s commitment to the lovey-dovey resolution of grievances. The death toll in Paris last year from the great Islamic onslaught was nearly three times that in Orlando, in spite of France’s far stricter gun laws.

I think the opinions of Limbaugh and Murchison are useful in forming understanding of the terror problem we all face. But we need some more basic things as well: to rebuild sympathy for our fellow citizens, to appreciate their struggles and to shore up our respect for people who express views different from our own when they are speaking honestly based on their experience.