I saw a report on CNN last night that talked about the layout of the building at VT. It did seem that Cho may have had all the tactical advantages and that the students may not have been able to fight back. While I agree that we have probably moved too far toward passivity, I think it is unfair to judge the students when we don't know specifics. What we should do is reenforce the legitimacy of self defense.
expat | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 7:44 am | #

I agree with every word, Doc. And the timing is impeccable -- coming on the heels of John Edwards' self indulgences, including $400 haircuts, spa treatments, and facials. It's time to reverse the wussification of America. Stop Girly-Men Now!
GnuCarSmell | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 7:55 am | #

I'm not arguing whether the students could have fought back or not. I am arguing about a mentality we are seeing after the tragedy that is infantalizing of all of us. We can never be protected 100%--our parents couldn't protect us and the government can't protect us, no matter how many laws they pass. Ultimately, we have to take responsibility for our own lives.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 8:25 am | #

Excellent post, on all accounts.

One point, though.

Geraldo notwithstanding, college kids are kids (unless they have grown up as Mongol warriors). For the most part, they have not been exposed to the tragedies and vagaries of life because their parents have shielded and protected them from those things. University life is the process meant as the beginning of the transition period from sheltered adolescence to the beginning of adulthood.

Standing 5 or 6 feet tall does not an adult make.
sigmund, carl and alfred | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 8:26 am | #

siggy wrote:
Geraldo notwithstanding, college kids are kids (unless they have grown up as Mongol warriors).

...must... resist... impulse... to comment... about... frat parties... drat.
Patrick Chester | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 9:32 am | #

Patrick - or enlistment, or abortion, or drug use.

We do have some curious adult/child divisions in this country.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 9:36 am | #

Anybody care to try to understand how the Nazis could march over 6 million people into showers and ovens using a very small number of armed guards by comparison?

And over a period of years?

"Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act."

The Machine does not think that this was an instinctual behavior.

This man's actions on that day were the result of learned behavior of the hardest kind.

"Never again."

That kind of thinking did not appear until AFTER the holocaust.

It would be a wonderful thing if our nation could collectively learn the same lesson.

Think about this long and hard before responding: If Lebrescu had been teaching at Tel Aviv University on that fateful day, he would have been armed by law rather than disarmed by arbitrary decree.


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The Machine | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 10:23 am | #

Also, read "Who Stole Feminism" by Christine Hoff Sommers.
The feminist movement was taken over by the communists, as are all political resistance movements if they are not careful.
By destroying the structure of the family (woman at work, not raising family, father reduced to merely a financial support who can be supplanted by the government) eventually the father and mother of us all is the government, which is also the font of all authority. The State as God.
suek | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 10:40 am | #

femmishness is part of the left's gramscian agenda/strategy to undermine the cultural foundation of the west and make it easier/inevitable for the dstate to take over once they've made a vacuum.

a disarmed femmish public DEPENDS on the state for protection - a protection which cannot possibly always be there in time.

btw: my group blog posted on PASSIVITY as it relates to gun-ownership and self-defense and the gramscian anti-gun crowd A FEW WEEKS AGO.

the firts of two posts was called THE LEFT'S PATHETIC PASSIVITY and it was based on a link from Tim Blair to a leftie FEMINIST who posted that she would not want to have a gun at home and thinks it wouldn't be necessary to have one in order to deter an intruder into her home!

check'em out.
reliapundit | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 10:43 am | #

Antifeminist women have scum in their pussies.
greg | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 11:28 am | #

Is the PC mentality really a slightly deranged one, in that it concentrates on transfering responsibility for everything?

I know nothing about insanity, but I was struck by Cho's claim in the video that others were responsibility for "inducing cancer in his head". Also the idea that the Columbine killers were "martyrs". Martyrs?

Whatever else, he was all the way off the sanity reservation.
MaxedOutMama | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 11:31 am | #

The sad part here is that feminists are quickly creating the conditions for their own slavery at the hands of radical Islamists. The very underming of the good that is in being male and the feminization of our culture could not be better for those who wish to take over this nation.
Thought the idea of seeing feminists reap the damage of their ideas appeals to me I have a wife, daughters and granddaughters I do not desire to see suffer under what feminists are making possible.
There must be a natural law that state that every good idea is eventually taken over by radicals who destroy all gains made by that idea and create their own downfall. It makes no difference whether one is talking about feminism, the environment, race relation , et al, it always ends the same way in lost opportunity an failure.
Dennis | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 12:17 pm | #

If the Femmies win, they'll get their comeuppance in one or two generations. When Islam provides the Yang -- with interest. "Men of the world, Convert and Conquer! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"

If the only two choices we are left with are my (male) boot stamping on her (female) face in the name of Allah or her (female) boot stamping on my (male) face in the name of Gaia, you know which way I'm gonna choose. That's what it is coming down to: Them or Us.

A fight to the death between a yapping, vibrating, pee-all-over-the-floor feminized/victim lapdog and a wild jackal fresh off the Arabian desert howling "ALLAHU AKBAR!" can have only one outcome.
Headless Unicorn Guy | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 12:22 pm | #

If the Femmies win, they'll get their comeuppance in one or two generations.
Which would be amusing except those of us who don't subscribe to the concept of superior victimhood are also going to get wrapped in a burlap sack and sold to the highest bidder.

the pursuit of moral superiority through victimhood the greatest virtue.

This is what's bothering me about the Rutgers-Imus thing...the Tennessee women who WON the tournament are getting no attention, no acclaim, not being held up as role models for girls who like sports and girls who like to win and girls who have goals. There was a brief mention of Pat Summit's record and then it was all about the also-rans' bruised feelings.

There's no celebration of victory and greatness and excellence anymore; today is Patriots Day, a holiday commemorating the start of the Revolutionary War, and I've only seen mention of it on one very right-wing blog.
HeatherRadish | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 2:05 pm | #

I think it runs more deeply than just that. It goes beyond gender.
What we are seeing is a society that wants to do whatever it pleases.
And in order to do whatever it pleases, it must retreat from all adult responsibilities--- social, personal, ethical, moral--- back into childhood. Where one is responsible for nothing, catered to in everything, and where one can believe the most delusional Utopian fantasies without penalty... where you are, in fact, expected to believe in the most ridiculous things, to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and that the world is rainbows, sunshine and puppies and you can buy the world a Coke and make everybody your Friend....
RHJunior | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 2:07 pm | #

Doc, I agree with your post, although I don't believe that early feminism was bad. I'm also glad you refrained from overtly blaming the Left on this one.
Athenawise | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 3:45 pm | #

>>Antifeminist women>>

Just exactly _what_ is an "anti-feminist woman", oh you from Northwestern edu?

Can you - will you - elaborate?
suek | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 3:55 pm | #

Doc,

I didn't mean that you were blaming the students, but I have seen that attitude in comments at other blogs.

I think Siggy is right that young people have been protected from many aspects of real life, in part by their parents but also by moblile, suburban, age-group-segregated lives. They often lack personal experience of people of different ages coping with life's problems. They are taught to be accepting of all members of victim groups, but I wonder whether they are taught that they can and should stick up for themselves.

I was personally amazed that Cho's roomates managed to put up with his behaviour.
expat | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 4:35 pm | #

The word doesn't roll off the tongue. In my view, it's also way off base. Marxism is a male thing appropriated by certain grumpy women during a specific historical period. It never had anything to do with most women. It's collectivism vs. individualism, not feminism vs. masculinism.
Sissy Willis | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 9:00 pm | #

Sissy Willis wrote: It's collectivism vs. individualism, not feminism vs. masculinism.


Feminism has morphed into collectivism. Masculinism has atrophied into next to ntnothing except arrogant, brutish, and oppressive.
A. Rational Human | Email | Homepage | 04.19.07 - 11:30 pm | #

Masculine and feminine in the traditional sense are alive and well around here, thank God.

(Yes, our recognizing God has a lot to do with the reason why!)


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The Machine | Email | Homepage | 04.20.07 - 12:25 am | #

It does not matter what you call it it still does damage to us all. Any idea that detracts from our need for each other is a force that destroys us.
Within the two sexes lies the synergy that gives us as a species the ability to face the challenges of life. One neither being more important than the other. Our strengths and weaknesses are compatible.
Dennis | Email | Homepage | 04.20.07 - 8:49 am | #

Fuckin' A, bubba.
Sean | Email | Homepage | 04.20.07 - 10:04 am | #

I'm not arguing whether the students could have fought back or not.

Point taken. But it's worth remembering: the students were taken completely by surprise, by something totally out of their experience. Even the Flight 93 passengers needed twenty minutes or so to respond to the 9/11 hijackers.
The Sanity Inspector | Email | Homepage | 04.21.07 - 9:01 am | #