Mark Steyn: Let's be realistic about reality

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | April 22, 2007 | Mark Steyn

[Puzzleman]

Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had identified the problem: ''What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.''

--snip--

The "gun-free zone" fraud isn't just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia's distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with "the erosion of intellectual self-defense," and the retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech codes and "safe spaces" that's the very opposite of the principles of honest enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we "fear guns," and "verbal violence," and excessively realistic swashbuckling in the varsity production of ''The Three Musketeers.'' What kind of functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?

[Puzzleman]

Another good one from the good one.

[Lurker]

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.

Nobody but nobody does it like Steyn.

L

[Nailbiter]

pong

[syriacus]

I wish there were more columnists like Steyn. Thanks for posting this column.

[kjo]

He’s smart and right on the money. That’s why he’ll never be allowed a place in the MSM.

[goldstategop]

Liberals have successfully created a society or rather, a sub-culture that can't defend itself from danger. Danger overwhelms it. And in the larger world, the attitude has real world consequences: liberals want to run away from a war instead of fighting to finish it. Liberalism has exalted passivity, weakness and cowardice as its highest principles. So what happened last Monday at at VA Tech was all too predictable. Liberals behaving according to their own code and understanding of the world - that took a great many of their lives.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[jim35]

He’s like a breath of fresh air.

[beaversmom]

[livius]

To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish.

Excellent summary - that's really what liberalism does, it makes a moral virtue out of vulnerability and the lack of will to defend oneself or others. Leave it to Steyn to come up with the right phrase!

[nathanbedford]

From pre-K to Postgraduate studies the evidence is daily mounting that our educational establishment has utterly abandoned education for indoctrination.

I used to advocate that vouchers were the only antidote for this constipation in the pre-college educational scene, but there is a degree of freedom of choice in the selection of a university and it seems to be ineffective against the institutionalized cultural Marxism of the campus.

There might be an analogy to failing newspapers where leftists would rather sink the ship than steer it toward the right. Has MSNBC not understood why Fox news is making so much more money? Not even bankruptcy can pry these liberals away from their cherished biases. How much less can we expect it in the cloistered academy?

[beaversmom]

Mark Steyn on Cavuto’s show after the killings at VT.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YhMpMdsSC9I&mode=related&search=

[Lurker]

As far as I'm concerned there is only one real choice in a College anymore and that is Hillsdale.

I believe they are one of only two institutions in America which refuse all forms of Federal aid.

Therefore they are not bound by all those silly Federal rules.

I highly recommend "Imprimus". I get it monthly and it's always a very good read.

L

[goldstategop]

Liberals seem to believe giving the bad guys what they want will stave off further violence. No one offered any sort of provocation to Cho Seung-hui at VA Tech and they were still murdered. Playing "nice" to those who are evil doesn't win your their respect - it only confirms their contempt of your own softness. Someone unwilling to stop a bad guy is not exactly a person who would save his own life. The liberal ethos of meekness and surrender only breeds civilizational disintegration. People unwilling to defend themselves can hardly be expected to defend their own country. The liberal cult of enforced vulnerability has implications - all of them troubling - for our own national survival.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[carton253]

I am laughing out loud over that paragraph. But he is so right. Oh to have that talent and ability.

[kjo]

The daughter of a close friend graduated from Hillsdale. Liberals paint the campus as closed to all but conservative ideas; in fact, it's the opposite. It may be one of the last colleges in America where conservative ideas are examined and debated. In almost all other places of 'higher' education there's only one acceptable answer to all societal problems: liberalsim. My friend's daughter found Hillsdale open, friendly, and not just conservative.>

[livius]

Exactly - I was about to refer you to the article on Spain, which has similar reflections...but then I saw that you had already posted on it!

In any case, for others who might be interested, here it is: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821495/posts It’s called “Spain’s Feminized War on Terror.”

The alarming thing, I guess, is that this is a global phenomenon. I think maybe a brain-devouring bacteria has attacked the entire human race, or at least the Western portion of it.

[Ken522]

“Playing nice” to bad people goes very deep in the culture - after I was robbed many years ago (a skinny white guy in the wrong section of town), I told the police I should have fought back instead of freezing up: The policeman told me fighting back is the wrong thing to do when robbed, that it’s better just to give them what they want. A big, beefy Hartford policeman said this!

[goldstategop]

There are a lot of stupid people in our society - even in police departments. An entire culture exists that wants to avoid any sort of violence - or confrontation with it. No wonder Benedict Arnold Harry Reid declared the Iraq War "lost." We've just barely started the surge and we can't handle a few setbacks along the way. The message of contemporary liberalism is to seek a sort of illusory safety at any price - but its an entirely illusory safety until the real world intrudes violently and sweeps away even that illusion.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[visualops]

Not only that, but the last 25 years have raised generations of helpless narcissistic brats.

[olderwiser]

"Liberalism has exalted passivity, weakness and cowardice as its highest principles..."

Liberalism creates a weak, passive populace, all the better to successively brutalizes and enslave, and whisk away political offenders.