Lessons from a killing spree

Some deny, some pay lip service, some pay with their lives. This could be true of many things, but I'm talking about the Holocaust. Look at the last couple of weeks. In Great Britain some schools have been dropping lessons on the Holocaust and the Crusades to avoid antagonizing Muslim students.

I wrote about this amazing phenomenon, the latest example of political correctness run amok, two weeks ago. It has surfaced elsewhere in the news since. Islamo-fascism is seeping though the body politic of Western-style liberal democracies. One particular infestation was detected by a government-backed study for the United Kingdom's Department for Education and Skills. The Daily Mail quoted the authors as saying that teachers fear confronting "anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils." So much for Britain.

Israel doesn't deny the Holocaust, of course. It pays lip service to it, while letting some of its surviving victims live in the Promised Land under shameful conditions. The approximately quarter of a million Holocaust survivors living in the Jewish State are all elderly (a baby born the day before the last of the Nazi camps was liberated in Europe would be 62 years old today) and, according to the Holocaust Survivors' Welfare Fund, some 80,000 of them are poor -- not just poor in the sense they can't afford dining out or going to the movies, but so poor that they can't afford dentures and hearing aids. Some can barely afford three square meals a day.

"Many of the survivors suffer from mental distress and loneliness, and lack proper social and family support networks. Some 50,000 to 60,000 survivors are in need of some level of nursing, as 73% of this population is over the age of 76, and about a fifth is over 86," reports David Regev in Israel News. "Due to budgetary constraints, the Fund is only able to provide assistance to about 30,000 survivors, while an estimated 30,000 more are also in need of care."

These are the people who, despite the best efforts of the Nazis, somehow survived the Holocaust, but may not survive beleaguered (and periodically mismanaged) Israel, the country they helped create, the country that was to be their safe haven from the next Holocaust: the country that has somehow run out of money for them. So much for Israel.

On Monday this week, a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor named Liviu Librescu died while trying to prevent a 23-year-old gunman, later identified as Cho Seung-hui, from entering his classroom at Virginia Tech. The killer and the visiting professor standing up to him were both

resident aliens in America. The South Korean literature student shot the Israeli engineering lecturer who barred his way at the door. But a precious second or two was provided for some future American engineers to escape. "All the students [in Librescu's classroom] lived because of him," reported Israeli Army Radio, quoting another Virginia Tech student, Asael Arad.

By ironic coincidence, the Holocaust survivor was murdered on the day after Jews worldwide honoured the memory of those murdered in the Holocaust over 60 years ago. Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, a week after the seventh day of Passover. In 2007, it fell on Monday, April 16, the day of young Cho's campus massacre. The full name of the commemorative day enacted by Israel's parliament in 1951 is actually Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day -- Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah -- and Professor Librescu observed it in the most fitting manner possible. So much for America.

Between killing sprees, the Virginia Tech gunman had time to mail a multimedia manifesto to NBC. There's an eerie resemblance between the half-witted, despicable self-justifications of the evil mass-murderer Cho-- "you forced me into a corner" and "now you have blood on your hands" --and the half-witted, despicable self-justifications of the evil Nazi mass-murderers who kept maligning their victims with anti-Semitic rants while butchering them. Terrorists do it today: The sectarian fanatics, the self-described "men of God" or "men of sacrifice," the car-bombers, the suicide-bombers, who have the temerity to talk about their grievances, their lack of options, blaming their victims while blowing them up in schoolrooms and marketplaces. For the "root causes" of terrorism all over the world, for the portrait of any terrorist, for understanding how a terrorist's mind works, read the message of Cho.

Lessons? For Britain: denying the Holocaust won't appease those who need to deny the Holocaust to be appeased. For Israel: the right to honour the dead is earned by supporting the living. As for America, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday quotes the Quebec economist Pierre Lemieux: "Mass killings were rare when guns were easily available, while they have been increasing as guns have become more controlled."

Indeed. Disarming the bad guys has been a failure. Try arming the good guys. If Professor Librescu carried a gun, he and some students might still be alive. Forget gun control; try crime control.

The real problem here is the denigration of the TRUTH.
For whatever screwed reason, truth now has to give way to LIES because of pretend “hurt feelings”, or even the remote possibility that somebody, somewhere some place or at some future time JUST MIGHT get upset.
When truth goes out the window, ANYTHING AT ALL can (and will) come in.

a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor named Liviu Librescu died while trying to prevent a 23-year-old gunman, later identified as Cho Seung-hui, from entering his classroom

Sensible column, overall of course. But I don't know where this asinine locution got into our language: Prof. Librescu died "trying" to prevent the nutcase from entering his classroom and shooting his students? He died succeeding at it. You might as well say soldiers of the U.S. Army died "trying" to invade Normandy. Many of them were killed as they did so, but they did it!

The first time I recall seeing this trying expression was about 1978 in New York's bad old days. A guy I went to high school with was described in the liberal papers as being killed "trying to break up a mugging." He did break it up. He got shot, God rest his heroic soul, but the guy he intervened to protect didn't lose his stuff and the perps had to run away. I assume the libs say "trying" in these circumstances because they believe it's always wrong to resist evil using the weapon of heroism. They hate heroism, because they despair of having any. And mugging was vaguely regarded as a means of redistribution of wealth.

Folks, if someone dies doing something selfless and heroic, and he attains his goal, he didn't "try." He did it, even if he laid down his life for his brother in the process. It's probably a good bet he's wearing the starry crown for his labors.

Nice "try," professor! Please pray for us.

“Sensible column, overall of course. But I don’t know where this asinine locution got into our language: Prof. Librescu died “trying” to prevent the nutcase from entering his classroom and shooting his students? He died succeeding at it. You might as well say soldiers of the U.S. Army died “trying” to invade Normandy. Many of them were killed as they did so, but they did it!”

What you talkin’ bout?

Trying and succeeding aren’t mutually exclusive. Success is an outcome of the act of trying. Failure is also an outcome.

The one thing that I haven't seen, perhaps just because I've missed it, is the class hatred that this troubled young man obviously had. In his recorded rants, as well as his writings, he spoke often of how he hated the "rich".

IMHO, the constant preaching of class hatred for the rich contributed to this tragedy. Let's stop and think for a minute. Which political party is the party of "hate the rich" rhetoric? You all know the answer to that one, of course, which is why you won't see that angle covered in any of the MSM.

This argument is all fine and good, but in the end, it's about civilizational conflict. In comparing Cho to suicide bombers and the justifications they give, this author loses focus on our own need to win at any cost. The PC reaction to 9/11 suggests that we'll have to come far closer to defeat before Americans stop pretending that they're holier than their enemies and simply kill them.

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