Posted on 04/20/2007 10:35:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The possessed in biblical times lived in small villages and people were generally aware whether the demon had been exorcised or not and could stay clear of him. In Cho’s case, the “priests” declared him fit to rejoin society. No one else was permitted to gainsay what the shrinks said, even the judge who sent him to them.
I'm not sure I agree with this. One of the things that motivates an A-hole like this is the knowledge that his killing spree will be plastered all over the evening news, the front page of the newspaper, etc. Even a half-decent chance that he'd get gunned down after shooting one or two people might cause him to reconsider.
Shooting one or two people is bad enough, but think about it . . . does anyone today even know the name of the guy who killed himself and the hostage yesterday at the NASA building in Houston?
No, dear, that’s why God made extremists. If that’s what I’m required to vote for, then you may include me out. I’ll settle for a communicative gentleman who knows how to STAND for something, and won’t back down. I want a real man (or woman) who will go toe to toe without depositing a big fat turd on the carpet of the Oval Office.
My post is so unworthy of Mr. Buckley’s rhetoric, but I don’t want anyone to get lost in the vocabulary. Keep it simple, clear and immediately understandable.
...who will win with the ability to persuade others to see his side. George W. Busch and his family, his mother in particular, may be entertaining and delightful neighbors, but George W. couldn’t talk an eskimo into a dogsled.
Legalized concealed carry by law-abiding students and faculty is the only thing that would have stopped the maniac at VT.
more than any other quality, george blew it because he did not pay proper attention to public relations and perceptions
while on a personal level that may be an asset, in politics it is fatal
winning every news cycle and every issue, not with lies and deception, but with clear communication and the truth, is key to holding the real power to improve the foundation on which this nation stands
he depended and relied on volunteers like freepers to do the work for him
when he betrayed our principles, only vacuum remained
imagine what bush could have accomplished if he understood this simple fact
the gop needs a leader without nuance or compromise
compassionate conservatism, aka c-lite, is dead
bush killed it
See # 29. It IS possible [at least in principle] to do personality quantification, and thus to do ‘evil-o-scope”. More, it is highly desirable to do so. The difficulties are of purely technical character. Besides, the result - the matrix of probabilities - would be intelligible to professionals only. Hence the abuse potential.
One of the instructors who was gunned down was a vet. Apparently he actually went to confront the guy. Now if he had been armed, the probably would have used it. Military service trains one not to think too much before action.
There were reports that the young demon began not speaking to people several years before he graduated high school. You are assuming his family did not know how bad he was in a way that other people did know and/or that they would've done anything to change his path. I see no real reason for either of these assumptions other than to comfort ourselves that this whole muck could have been averted.
WFB is more concerned about forming a grammatically proper English sentence than with using words to express the sense of his ideas.
Not speaking is not evidence of violent tendencies. His family certainly knew he had mental problems, but as far as we’ve heard, there was no clear evidence of violent thoughts (much less actions) prior to college. We’ve heard about how he was teased in school for his speech, and I think if he’d been turning in writings like what he turned in at Va Tech, we’d have heard about it by now (and his parents would have heard about it back then).
Schizophrenia is a likely explanation for his extreme behavior (though not for all of his mental problems), and it typically doesn’t emerge clearly until the late teens or early 20s. Just when kids go off to college. My half-sister is schizophrenic, and it started to emerge during college, while my father was working overseas. But at that point it was mild enough that when put in the context of what was going on on college campuses and youth culture at the time (mid-late 1960s) it was not clear to my father (and probably not to college professors and officials either) that her increasingly strange behavior wasn’t within the bounds of what was then pretty mainstream campus culture (which included lots of recreational drug use, of course). But within a short time after college, she clearly had full-blown schizophrenia.
She’s never been violent, but is totally disconnected from reality, and could easily become violent just by misinterpreting an approaching person’s identity or intentions. To you or me, an ordinary looking person walking along the sidewalk towards us, minding their own business, looks like just that; to her mind, the person could suddenly and unpredictably become one of those evil people who implants things in head (those imaginary implants “go off” when she goes through metal detectors, which is how she explained to my father why she could no longer pick up letters or money he sent her at the post office, which installed metal detectors some years ago).
“All conservatives and all true Americans are in this man’s debt.”
Hugely in his debt, I might add. Thank you for your post.
Some might disagree. If that is the truth why didn't he go to the nearest military base and start shooting at the troops? Why didn't he go the nearby State Police barracks? Why not to a gun mart superstore?
He absolutely cared about someone with a concealed or unconcealed weapon or he would not have gone to a GUN FREE college where I bet the university security officers don’t even carry guns.
One thing all these types usually do is NOT ATTACK ARMED PERSONS or places where armed persons are likely to be. He absolutely cared if he might get shot before he was able to carry out his whacked out evil scheme.
Why didn't he show his guns to his “room mates”? Because he thought people with guns might come to stop him before he got started. No matter what his problems were they involved killing other humans and not getting shot himself.
He absolutely cared if someone other than him had a gun.
That was pretty much my reaction. Buckley seemed to wander aimlessly, and while I was wondering when he would get to the point, I got to the bottom and realized there wasn't one.
Oh, well. It's hard to be brilliant on deadline, and not even the geniuses among us can't have their best day every day.
Science does nothing of the kind. Evil is outside its purview.
No, he wouldn't have. Lethal force can never deter someone who wants to die. Deterrence in these cases is a chimera -- but he could have been stopped, and lives saved.
Concealed carry would have insured his failure. He was a coward, but he wasn't without some planning logic. I doubt that if he had a serious gripe against cops he would have walked into a police station believing he could shoot fifty people before he was terminated.
The perp chose to do what he did because he knew he would be in control and wouldn't have to face any uncertainties -- nothing in the way to thwart his plans.
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