Posted on 09/12/2003 7:26:42 PM PDT by Rummyfan
How can anyone be a bystander while someone is stabbed? By Mark Steyn (Filed: 13/09/2003)
On September 11, 2001, the first individual to be named among the dead was the wife of the US Solicitor-General, Barbara Olson, whom I'd sat next to at dinner a couple of months earlier. On September 11, 2003, I woke to the news of the death of the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, whom I also sat next to a couple of months ago, at a conference. I can't claim anything other than the most casual acquaintance with either lady, but even an accidental proximity to the victims of terrible murder is sobering.
Miss Lindh was a charmer, even if you didn't agree with a word she said. It wasn't until afterwards that I found out she liked to refer to Bush as "the Lone Ranger" and that she'd complained about America dropping bombs on six al-Qa'eda terrorists in Yemen. She believed in the "Swedish model", a phrase that to Don Rumsfeld probably means Anita Ekberg, but that Swedes understand as the most advanced form of European cradle-to-grave welfare democracy.
But, for the second time in as many weeks, I find myself wondering where European statism is heading. In France, where the death toll in the brutal Gallic summer is now up to 15,000, the attitude of Junior to the funny smell coming from grandma's apartment was the proverbial Gallic shrug and a demand that the government do something about it. On Thursday, Swedes, though more upset, took much the same line:
"This can happen to anyone, anywhere," said Annika, described as "a 24-year-old bystander", at the scene of the attack. "She should have had bodyguards."
There seem to have been an awful lot of bystanders to Miss Lindh's stabbing - in broad daylight, in a crowded department store, after being pursued by her assailant up an escalator. Granted that many of the people bystanding around were women, it still seems odd - at least from my side of the Atlantic - that no one attempted to intervene or halt the blood-drenched killer as he calmly left the store. I'm inclined to agree with Jimmy Hoffa that I'd rather jump a gun than a knife - and even Jimmy's luck ran out eventually - but, if just a handful of the dozens present had acted rather than bystanding, Miss Lindh might still be dead, but her killer would be in jail and not en route, like Olof Palme's, to becoming yet another man that got away.
"It's terrible wherever it happens," said Fredrik Sanabria. "But you think you would be safe from this kind of violence in a country like Sweden."
Really? Why would you think that? Sweden's violent crime and murder rates have been going up, up, up over the past quarter-century. But just about every Swede quoted in every news story seems mired in what National Review's Dave Kopel described, after 9/11, as "the culture of passivity". The lone exception was Lanja Rashid, a Kurdish immigrant. "If I had been there at the stabbing, I would have ripped his face off," she said. "How could people just stand back and watch?"
You can blame it on a lack of police, as everyone's doing. But Miss Lindh's killer didn't get away with it because of the people who weren't there, but because of the people who were: the bystanders. When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I heard a strange rustling one night and, being new to rural life, asked my police chief the following morning, if it had turned out to be an intruder, whether I should have called him at home. "Well, you could," said Al. "But it would be better if you dealt with him. You're there and I'm not." That's the best advice I've ever been given.
This isn't an argument for guns, it's more basic than that: it's the difference between a citizen and a nanny-state baby. In Lee Harris's forthcoming book Civilization And Its Enemies, he talks about the threat of societal forgetfulness: "Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe."
But Anna Lindh would have thought that was just American cowboy talk, too raw, too primal to be of relevance in Europe. After 9/11, my wife bought me a cellphone, so that, in the event I found myself in a similar situation, I could at least call my family one last time. It's not much use up here in the mountains, so I never bothered getting it out of the box. If I ever am on a hijacked plane, while everyone else is dialling home, I'll be calling AT&T or Verizon trying to set up an account.
But, of course, no one will ever hijack an American plane ever again - not because of idiotic confiscations of tweezers, but because of the brave passengers on the fourth flight. That's why the great British shoebomber had barely got the match to his sock before half the cabin pounded the crap out of him. Even the French. To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.
Mark
Right. But those people at least were ashamed. None of the Swedes experienced the least bit of shame.
I have no idea who stabbed this woman, but I do know that a Norwegian friend and I share news stories from around Scandanavia. Many, many crimes that make it to the news seem to be perpetrated by Muslim immigrants to these countries. Amazingly, they are often let off w/light sentences because they 'don't understand the Nordic culture' - even if they've been in Norway or Sweden for 10 years!
Every country homebrews enough criminals. It would appear to me that the Nordic countries should seriously reconsider continuing to let in a group of people who seemed hell bent on crime and disruption.
Since noone else seems to have done it, I'm replacing my tagline with this.
L
I'll bet in the last seconds of her life, she regrets those thoughts, a nice American cowboy was just what she needed. Too bad the Swedes are testosterone deficient.
One of the original Upton "Golliwogg" illustrations:
And one of the many subsequent incarnations of the craze:
As one source points out, the doll in the story was copied from blackface minstrel show costumes, making it a caricature of a caricature...
But Miss Lindh's killer didn't get away with it because of the people who weren't there, but because of the people who were: the bystanders. ...
This isn't an argument for guns, it's more basic than that: it's the difference between a citizen and a nanny-state baby.
Another Mark Styen treasure...
The best essay ever written on that topic, and the need for a personal dedication to self defense (and the defense of others), is A Nation of Cowards, by Jeffrey R. Snyder .
Mr. Snyder has turned oddly leftist in recent years, in a manner seemingly incompatible with his thoughts and tone in the linked essay, but the essay he wrote in 1993 is more relevant today than ever.
Excerpt:
For years, feminists have labored to educate people that rape is not about sex, but about domination, degradation, and control. Evidently, someone needs to inform the law enforcement establishment and the media that kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and assault are not about property. Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract, but also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty. If the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with others, then crime always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth your life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can hardly be said to exist.
You might want to try reading this.
Excerpt: What follows is the 1964 New York Times article that first broke the Kitty Genovese story. It remains today the primary source of popular information about the case. However, as explained below, evidence from her killer's trial and other sources shows that the popular account of the murder is mostly wrong.
Do you have a reputable source for that? I distrust any proffered etymologies that involve pre-Modern Era acronyms. I've seen apocryphal ones for "posh" and "shit" that supposedly predate the modern era which are undoubtedly false.
Well, I'm not saying it WASN'T Al Quada, but why would Islamists attack people who are on their side?????
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