Posted on 08/31/2015 11:32:59 AM PDT by jfd1776
Reflections on the Roanoke television murders...
A LIBERAL RESPONSE:
A man is overweight, perhaps by a couple hundred pounds.
The liberal responds in force, closing the fast food restaurant at the corner, shutting down the pizzeria across the street, banning the ice cream shop down the block from selling to him, limiting the soft drink size at the convenience store next door to only 20 ounces at a time.
The fact that the man was already heavy when he moved into the neighborhood – and the fact that he eats ordinary food from the grocery store, just too much of it – don’t factor into their decision. They see an overweight man; they attack every possible culprit in their line of sight… regardless of the rights of those businesses. Those businesses are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A teenager is unprepared for life, unemployable at eighteen, having learned only enough in school to pass his classes, never excelling in math or science or the social sciences, never mastering any skills sufficiently to earn a step onto the first rung of the ladder of success.
So the liberal again responds in force, increasing funding for the school, offering after-school programs to encourage kids to stay longer, increasing welfare benefits for the unemployable graduates, all plans paid for in common by the rest of society.
The fact that the school was already fully funded and had plenty of programs doesn’t factor into the Left’s equation. The fact that the student just didn’t apply himself because his home life had no role models – having grown up in the welfare state – doesn’t enter their mind. So they lock yet another generation into the welfare state as a result, which will lock his own eventual children into it as well.
A CONSERVATIVE RESPONSE:
The conservative doesn’t look for every other answer in his field of vision, as the liberal does. The conservative cares too, as much or maybe even more, but he respects the individual enough to lay the blame on the individual’s own shoulders. Only then can a proper solution be found.
The conservative advises the overweight person to watch his diet and enter an exercise regimen. The conservative advises the unemployable high school graduate to study at the library or community college at night, and be willing to find an entry level job – ANY entry level job – just to start on the path to escaping poverty.
The conservative wants to find a real solution for the individual, even if it takes work. The liberal instinctively wants to write a law, to invoke the bureaucracy, to use the force of government to change the world… instead of allowing individuals the chance to improve themselves.
And so it is with so many problems in modern society, from poverty, to relationships, to murder.
A PSYCHOPATH STRIKES IN VIRGINIA
Vester Lee Flanagan Jr. killed two television station employees and wounded their interviewee during a live feed in Roanoke, Virginia on Wednesday, August 26.
We know why he did it; he wrote a 23 page manifesto to explain. He thought of himself as an overweight, gay, black Obama-supporter, raised to think of himself as persecuted for all these things. He was raised to believe he was a victim – of anyone and everyone he encountered, even of his friends and colleagues, even of employers who gave him a chance.
He was a product of divorce. His mother was a woman of rage (she threatened murder so often, his father had to take out a restraining order against her) who clearly passed on that rage to their son.
He nurtured his anger until it exploded, and he made up excuses – made himself believe these excuses’ validity, even though no one else would – so that he could justify an on-air murder of innocent people, just to satisfy his psychotic fury.
The Left doesn’t want to admit that such evil exists. The Left especially doesn’t want to admit that their own constituency is capable of such evil, so they look again for something else to blame, anything but the perpetrator.
The Left will blame the gun (even though guns are used far more to prevent crime than to commit crime). The Left will blame the location (malls and airports and schools and businesses should have better security and mandatory weapons checks at entry points, they believe). The Left must always find some additional law to write, some additional regulation to enforce.
In contrast to all that dodging… the conservative lives in the real world, and blames the perpetrator.
ACKNOWLEDGING EVIL
Acknowledging the existence of evil isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Logically, assigning blame to the perpetrator should be the simpler choice, but it isn’t, because human nature – compassion – interferes.
In our hearts, we don’t WANT to say “this man Flanagan was evil.” We don’t WANT to say that the thousands of gang members, the thousands of rapists, the thousands of robbers, the thousands of muggers, the thousands of murderers who plague our society are irredeemably evil. It feels so fatal, so helpless, so harsh. Even if it is almost always true.
The liberal approach feels more compassionate. We can say “the gun made him do it” or “his poverty made him do it” or “a cruel world prejudiced against gays or blacks or overweight people made him do it.” This enables us to avoid being judgmental about the perpetrator. It gives the perp an out. Maybe, if the liberal believes in an afterlife, it saves the perp’s soul – or at least, it allows us to imagine that his soul has a chance of being saved.
But there is one key problem with the liberal approach: it forgets the victim.
The EFFECT OF THE LIBERAL APPROACH
By excusing the perpetrator, the liberal approach makes everyone ELSE a perpetrator instead. The man who sold him the weapon. The man who operates a store. The business that didn’t install a metal detector at the door. The restaurant where people eat. The business that naturally doesn’t pay an executive’s salary to an entry level employee.
When we refuse to rightly hold people accountable for their own actions, choices, and crimes, we instead hold other, innocent people accountable for them, and this warps EVERYTHING.
Society suffers when blame is wrongly applied. Civilization weakens, even collapses, because it means that the society now considers the innocent to be worth less than the guilty.
By excusing the perpetrator, the liberal approach means that the perpetrator will be let out of jail, to do it again and again. It makes everyone else a potential victim, again and again.
Almost all crimes in America today are committed by repeat offenders: people who have not been caught, then have been caught and released, then have been caught and convicted and released, then have been caught and convicted and sentenced and released. Either no time is served or so little time is served that they come back out ready to break the law again. And again. And again.
The liberal lets him go, because the liberal just cannot bring himself to fully blame the criminal for his actions.
The conservative would lock him up, or execute him, because the conservative knows the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, between rightly valuing the lives of the innocent and wrongly overvaluing the lives of the guilty.
But the conservatives are not in power today; the liberals are. And today’s liberals blame the gun, rather than the demon who pulls the trigger. Today’s liberals blame the temptation of a skirt, rather than the black heart of the rapist. Today’s liberals blame the lack of a “no guns allowed” sign, rather than the evildoer who breaks in and robs and kills.
The liberal approach preserves the rose-colored glasses of a secular world; we can always just say we need another law or regulation or bureaucrat. We can avoid our job as a society in “judging” the perpetrators and finding them wanting.
The conservative approach feels harsh. It requires sometimes thinking ill of our fellow man. It requires intestinal fortitude. It requires seriousness, and a moral base. And a constant effort to keep one’s eyes on the important thing: the goal of reducing these crimes. The goal of reducing the number of innocents who will be victims in the future.
It can be done. Locking up – and sometimes executing – the villains of our world will greatly reduce the number of people who will be victims in the future.
But the conservative approach also requires recognizing the limits of the real world. Sometimes it IS a criminal’s first crime. Sometimes there isn’t anything society could have done… as in the case of the poor innocents murdered by Vester Lee Flanagan Jr, who had no prior crimes on his record to have justified locking him out of danger to his fellow man.
And then, when this happens, the conservative must stay true to his philosophy, and must resist the temptation to reach out with flailing arms for some solution in the lawbooks that can’t exist without unjustly denying other innocents their rights.
The conservative must simply remember the wise old injunction to “change the things we can, accept the things we cannot change, and find the wisdom to know the difference.” We must concentrate on stopping the crimes that we can stop.
And we say a prayer for the poor souls cut down too soon, and another prayer for the families and friends who mourn them.
Copyright 2015 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based trade compliance lecturer and transportation manager. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo.
The liberal wanted to close those businesses long before the obese man showed up. He is just the excuse.
Thanks a million!
That’s delightful! Grazie!
JFD
Oh, the irony of liberals blaming rape on the temptation of a skirt. Its the liberals who promote lax attitudes on sex and dress in the media. Then when rape occurs, the liberals don’t want the rapist to be justly punished for his crime, or their sex-saturated media to accept their share of the blame either. Insanity is part of the liberals’ job description.
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