This was sent to me by a blogger interested in our arguments about Gun
and Nutcase control. It is from a blog called "Power Line":
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017407.php . Steyn's entire Sun-Times
Column is at
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article . Gun
Control people trying to make hay over Cho's massacre are in a ludicrous
position. There were alreadly laws in place that would have prevented Cho
from legally getting a gun, and the place were Cho perfored his massacere,
Virginia Tech College was a "gun free" zone. You could almost laugh at this
if so many people didn't have to die to expose this nonsense for what it
is. What Mike and Simon both did in the wake of Cho was something like
Obama did: 'I've had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I'd
insulted the dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn't show the
exquisite taste and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot in
the head to an Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether even he
knows. When something savage and unexpected happens, it's easiest to retreat
to our tropes and bugbears or, in the senator's case, a speech on the
previous week's "big news."'
Lawrence
April 22, 2007
The claims of reality
Mark Steyn devotes his weekly Sun-Times column to the political and
cultural infantilization of American society manifested in events related to
the Virginia Tech massacre. He urges us to get "realistic about
reality."<http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article>He
doens't miss the unreal contribution of Barack
Obama <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7V-FKT9PzI> last week. He notes
that at Yale, the students cannot even *pretend* to be realistic about
reality:
[A]t Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the
Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage
weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama
department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use of obviously
fake weapons" such as plastic swords.
Unfortunately, Steyn's not done with the Ivy League:
A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont
town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go
to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns
away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy
thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to
get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students
doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods
was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured
they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire
and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both
barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's
the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible
defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer:
Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the
doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors.
Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had
nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the
twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely
foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone
that you're not in the real world.
Yale, however, isn't even in the play real world. That has to be some kind
of a new low in the avoidance of reality. And the aphorism of the Roman poet
Horace applies to "reality" as well as "nature": "Though you drive nature
out with a pitchfork, she will still find her way back."
Footnote: See also Jack Kelly's
column<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07112/779783-373.stm>on NBC's irresonsibility
in contributing to "the next public mass killing in
America."
