Posted on 04/20/2007 10:35:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The search for the propellant of the killer-madness in Cho Seung-Hui tells us more about disorders in American thought than about those of the murderer. Recall first and foremost that the crime was quickly identified as the “bloodiest shooting attack in American history” done by a single person. We accepted this—but quickly rejected its corollary: namely, that if it was that—the most violent rampage in 231 years of history—then it had some claim to be called unique. In fact it differs in magnitude but not in kind from shootings in which 23 or 19 people were killed. If a man jumps out of an airplane window at 25,000 feet and survives, it is understandable that there should be public curiosity about how he managed to do so, and scientists will wish to probe the event intending to illuminate, presumably for the benefit of ambitious acrobats, what made it possible. But when the causes of an event are inside a person’s mind, such probing is a waste of time, and on the order of presumption. Intensive study of April 16 could succeed in telling us various ways the script might have been changed to spare Cho’s 32 victims.
How? Well, an armed guard might have been retained for every classroom. Wonderful idea! But as the French say, une fausse idée claire: a terrific idea that doesn’t work. There are 500 classrooms at Virginia Tech.
Well, another idea would be to have barred the lethal weapons from the scene. But doing that would require a kind of cultural revolution, one at great variance with Southern traditions. Yes, such a ban might have been instituted anyway, and yes, efforts might have been made to enforce it, but guns go off in many places where they are illegal. Ask Google about murders in New York City.
Well, Cho Seung-Hui had a history of mental imbalance, and had actually spent time in a mental-health facility—from which, however, he had been discharged, as evidently fit to mingle in society. Does this tell us the simple story that standards are loose, too loose, and Cho Seung-Hui and all others like him should be—isolated?
That reasoning brings to mind J. Edgar Hoover’s testimony after the assassination of President Kennedy. The killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, had a security record which included time in the Soviet Union, for which he professed sympathy; a mysterious week in Mexico City during which he tried to obtain a Cuban visa; and membership in a political organization that pleaded for “Fair Play for Cuba.” Hoover’s observation: If I removed from access to presidential itineraries everyone with indiscretions the equivalent of Oswald’s, I’d have to lock up 500 people whenever a president visited Chicago.
So then, despairing of external measures, the scientists went to work. Here is a digest of one report, written by John Schwartz and Benedict Carey for the New York Times: “People with so-called avoidant personality disorder shun social situations because of a paralyzing dread of disapproval or criticism. Those with paranoid personality disorder nourish a deep distrust of others and see insults and malicious meanings in almost every interaction. Both are stubborn patterns of behavior that can begin in adolescence or earlier, and in his influential book, Disorders of Personality (Wiley, 1996), Dr. Millon identifies a blend of the two as ‘insular paranoid’ disorder.”
Long live the scientists.
But magnify such research by a factor of 1,000 and we would still not come up with a test that imposed a big X mark on the application for admission by Cho Seung-Hui. We can retroactively pluck from him signs of aberration, but they did not come together beforehand to spell out, NOT FIT FOR ADMISSION.
So you are left with the most violent shooting attack in American history committed by someone you don’t have an apparatus for successfully disqualifying or isolating.
We need, then, to return to the paradox: The most modern scientific methods aren’t refined enough to discover the most dangerous people in our society.
Pretty soon we’ll forget, not the horror of what happened, but the presumption that we can discover and attack evil, other than by the cultivation of biblical rules for human behavior.
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Similarly, here we have WFB meandering around the page talking about not very much and ending on a strange and discordant note.
Yup.
The admission question is not particularly relevant, since we have no idea what history of Cho's plusses and minuses were available to the decision-makers. The relevant question is why our laws and policies are set up so that numerous signs of things a lot more ominous than "aberrations", which clearly spelled out NOT FIT TO REMAIN, are studiously ignored.
So far, the reductionist psychological analysis of Cho offered by experts has been spectacularly unenlightening. What does it profit us to hear an expert explaining something he doesn't understand, in terms of other things he doesn't understand? What do we learn when familiar pathological behaviors are labelled with technical jargon like so... "People with so-called avoidant personality disorder shun social situations because of a paralyzing dread of disapproval or criticism" ? Nothing much. None of these explanations - bullying, rejection, narcissistic personality disorder, depression, avoidant personality, schizophrenia etc. - none of these psychological reductionisms even recognize an objective factor that the rest of us call evil.
the presumption that we can discover and attack evil, other than by the cultivation of biblical rules for human behavior. <<
took him a few words!!!..but he finally got there!
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OK. First of all, evil is banal, and each and every one of us is perfectly capable of it, and to an appalling degree. Not everyone does manifest it, though. Secondly, even if it were possible to quantify the evil somehow - say “those with ‘evil quotient’ [EQ] above 0.40 are not to be permitted... [insert the list: to own firearms, to procreate, to be admitted to citizenship...] - then what to do about those with EQ 0.39? The test would be inherently approximate.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW...All I can tell ya is......go to DU to get your thoughts confirmed!!!!!( I truly believe you’re offended... but do always look between your legs to make an opinion?????)
Trying to quantify evil is to misuse science. It tells us no more than a bald statement that the kid was possessed by a demon. You know evil persons when when you see them do evil but it is impossible to predict with an exactitude who they are or what they will do. Somewhere this guy’s virtual twin will live his whole life without doing something like this.
“a strange and discordant note” for a strange and discordant situation, Cho and the Blacksburg horror. I’m not normally a big fan of WFB’s column, but I do think this was a pretty good one.
I’m also encouraged that WFB was able to write a decent column less than a week after the death of his beloved wife. It’s a hopeful sign that this great American hero may be able to carry on for a while yet.
All conservatives and all true Americans are in this man’s debt.
The problem lies equally with evil, and those who would deny its existence.
WFB failed to mention the obvious. If Virginia Tech has 500 classrooms, it also has 500 self-reliant law abiding students who would be willing to carry if the rules would allow it.
So?
Not everyone does manifest it, though
So?
Secondly, even if it were possible to quantify the evil somehow - say “those with ‘evil quotient’ [EQ] above 0.40
Yeah, I know the routine. You can't build an evil-meter therefore there is no such thing as evil, etc., etc.
You wrote, “The relevant question is why our laws and policies are set up so that numerous signs of things a lot more ominous than “aberrations”, which clearly spelled out NOT FIT TO REMAIN, are studiously ignored.”
I agree with what you wrote, but probably not with what you meant.
Assuming you meant that Cho should not have been allowed to remain at Virginia Tech, I believe that you (as most of us) are looking too narrowly at the problem.
Expelling him would not have prevented his murderous rampage. He could still have come to campus as an ex-student and killed at will. Or he could have exploded in another venue, such as mall, elementary school, church.
This guy was a ticking time bomb, sure to eventually go off.
The bigger issue is what to do with the seriously disturbed individual, how to identify and effectively remove from society those who would harm us, without violating the freedoms we hold dear as individuals in this great land.
Being odd, or obnoxious, or sullen and angry simply isn’t criminal until an act is committed that breaks the law or until associates or family can convince a judge that the individual is a danger to himself or others. This is a very hard thing to do, and, even when seemingly successful, often merely treats the mentally aberrant until he reaches the margins of “normalcy” and is allowed back into society.
What to do? Again, I agee with what you suggested: that our laws and policies somehow better address how to remove the sicko from society.
Trouble is that he didn’t care about being blown away by someone with a concealed weapon. He expected to die.
Concealed weapons would have been no deterrent to this perp, but they might well have lessened the body count.
I don't know why GSlob brought up 'measurement of evil'. It's a stupid red herring. Ignore it. The question we can ask about Cho is not just 'why was he crazy' or 'how did he come to be such a demented nut', but...
How did Seung Cho become evil?But many would consider this to be the most politically incorrect question imaginable. Even on FR.
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