Posted on 04/23/2007 5:59:57 AM PDT by presidio9
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Sunday blamed the "situation ethics" of 40 years of liberalism for an increasingly vulgar and violent U.S. society. Gingrich said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that children are becoming dehumanized by years of playing violent video games, and that liberalism "has created a situation ethics, essentially, zone of not being willing to talk about any of these things."
He also blamed unfettered free speech for making it "impossible to restrict vulgar and vicious and anti-human speech and I would argue that's a major component of what's happened to our culture the last 40 years."
Gingrich said he thought the carnage at Virginia Tech last week would have been less severe if citizens were armed.
"I would just suggest to you that the professor who gave his life to save a class, who himself was a holocaust survivor, had he been in a position to stop this deranged person, would have saved an awful lot of lives, including his own," Gingrich said.
He compared checking gun-buyers for mental illness to keeping tabs on sexual predators.
Gingrich, “situation ethics”, vulgar.
“...had he been in a position to stop this deranged person, would have saved an awful lot of lives, including his own,” Gingrich said.”
Solution, Newt?
Yeah, sound about right to me. But of course the left will try to villify him, but he’s right and they don’t want to hear that.
Sorry Newt. Violent video games do not in any way, shape or form cause violent behavior. If they did, how would one explain the worse violence that took place on an even more massive scale during times like the middle ages when there were no video games?
I agree. Liberals are idiots.
Had added "When I become king, I will put a stop to that!"
I agree with Terpfen. Shut up Newt.
Why? You ARE what you see and hear. It does affect people. If that wasn't true, commercials would be useless.
I would blame liberalism more for the soft on crime mentality that exists with too many judges and state legislators. Many more violent crimes would be avoided if scumbags who should be in prison were kept in prison. We have to be so concerned for their feelings and rights, and to hell with victims much of the time.
Sad thing is the American people keep electing the liberal politicians who appoint these judges.
You're kidding, right?
No Newt, it’s Global Warming.
Enjoy retirement, sellout.
Actually, todays children through vulgar Hollywood films and violent video games have become deeeee-synthesized to violence and death.
No, I am not. Prove to me that violent video games cause violence in people on a mass scale. Why aren't millions of American people who play violent video games killing millions of others as a result?
Conversely, if violent video games do indeed cause violence, then why was there more blood shed in the years before violent video games became mainstream (the late 1980s) than after?
Newt is supposed to be a Conservative, right?
Interesting how Freepers take these chopped-up, out-of-context quotes (Propaganda 101), most of which aren’t even actually quoted, at face value and run with them with UPI as the source.
No, I take that back. It’s not interesting, it’s pathetic.
When we were youngsters, my brother and I watched the old Warner Brothers or Hanna/Barbera cartoons — Quick Draw McGraw, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner/Wylie Coyote, etc. etc. Years later we were told that all that violence in those cartoons was bad for us. I dunno. Neither my brother nor I went on a murderous rampage. My brother used to love the Three Stooges — now considered especially violent. But I never saw Bro poke anyone’s eyes out.
A lot depends on how you watch them and with whom. In our case, my parents were around — they carefully explained that this was fantasy and we don’t do these things in real life. Same thing with video games. Most kids know this stuff is not real and is not what you are supposed to do. If they don’t know that, they either have negligent parents (or no parents) or this generation is growing up incredibly stupid.
Not to mention the continuing legal attacks on police officers who actually try to fight the bad guys. When you risk losing your job and being branded evil for the rest of your life each time you have to pull a gun on a suspect, of course you will focus more on handing out speeding tickets instead.
This is why I want Gingrich in the debates. Not because I’ve decided to support him if he gains the nomination...but because he will put forth quite a few concepts others simply won’t.
That said, its not ‘video games’ its the lessening of parents involvement in their kids lives.
Video gaming for tots is a symptom of what ails us, its not the ‘root cause’. If you use a video game as a virtual babysitter, that speaks more about the parent than the child, the choices being made by the parent are the problem.
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