In the days since the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, a lot of people have said a lot of obtuse things.

GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz thinks Barack Obama “does not wish to protect this country.” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders still believes that climate change is our biggest national security threat. And the president of the United States seems to be angrier at Republicans than he is at ISIS.

And then there are those who say Americans have been expressing too much support for France.

Almost immediately after the attacks, critics began to point to evidence of American double standards. ISIS bombed Beirut a day before Paris, and yet, that event produced nowhere near the outpouring of sympathy throughout the West that the Paris attacks elicited. Millions of people on Facebook superimposed the colors of the French flag over their profile pictures, and yet no one thought to do that after recent massacres in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Somalia.

Read the article “Why It’s Only Natural for Americans to Care More About Paris than Beirut” on theweek.com.