It’s been interesting to watch the members of the commentariat play their designated roles in the aftermath of Virginia Tech. I wish they wouldn’t just yet. We don’t know enough, and anyone who has genuine feelings about it is still too raw to think clearly much less talk intelligently.
But the news cycle demands its sacrifices, and our good sense is probably the first one.
I don’t typically read Michelle Malkin – I pretty much know what she will say on an issue, and while I respect her intelligence and ferocity, she skates a little close to Ann Coulter sometimes. So I caught this via a post on Outside The Beltway.
Wanted: A Culture of Self-Defense
Enough is enough, indeed. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense — mind, spirit and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.
Steven Taylor, at OTB (and PoliBlog) writes:
More Asininity (This Time from Malkin)
What in the world is going on? First we have Derbyshire and Blake and now this. First, why do we have to find blame in places other than the fact that a truly disturbed individual simply did an unthinkable act and cracked. There is only so much that can be done in a free society to prevent such situations. This attempt to blame a general “liberal” attitude at universities and that this somehow has led to a culture of “conflict avoidance” that somehow, by inference, led to people not defending themselves on Monday – that is utterly ridiculous.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Michelle is strongly advocating more people carrying weapons. James is strongly opposed to it.
That’s a topic I’ll talk about more later on, not today.
Michelle is very specific in her blame of campus culture – specifically progressive campus culture – for the apparent passivity of the students, and blames the passivity of the students – in some part – for the scope of what the evil madman was able to accomplish.
I’ve also talked about the roots of the modern terrorist movement as being closely aligned with mainstream academic thinking, and will have more to say about that later, as well.
But I want to talk about one simple thing tonight. I’ll evoke the immortal words of noted right-winger Michael Moore, who gave a lecture in Cincinnati in 2003:
Near the end of his lecture, Moore invoked the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, transporting his audience to the seats of a hijacked airplane.
“Two or three men holding box cutters paralyze 100 people,” he said. “How can this happen?”
There’s fear, certainly, from seeing some of the first class passengers’ throats sliced open. The smell of death, the blood, the rasping breath of misery. But something else had to be in play. Maybe the forbearance that comes from living comfortable lives. Surely someone would take care of this, as surely as policemen always rushed to aid them in times of need.
“Could the 100 passengers have stopped the men with box cutters?” Moore asked. “Sure, of course. Three guys with blades against a hundred unarmed fighters? The hundred win every time. Maybe not easy, maybe a few die, but the hundred win. We know it because those brave fighters on the Pennsylvania flight got up from their seats. And they beat the hijackers!”
Then Moore asked the audience to replace those passengers with 100 people from the Bronx or Over-the-Rhine or any not-so-comfortable community — the kind of neighborhood where calling 911 won’t necessarily bring the police running to help you.
“And maybe when the police do show up — if the police show up — they take you away instead,” he said.
Now, Moore asked, do you think 100 people from the Bronx would sit there?
“They would fight back,” he said. “They would rise up out of their seats and fight.”
He’s right. The good folks don’t fight. They don’t because, to be honest, they never have in their lives – if you’re my age or younger, fighting in elementary school isn’t normal, it’s the end of your school career. It amazes me how few of my peers have ever had a real altercation.
Obviously, by virtue of my willingness to own and use arms – and martial arts of other kinds – I made the decision a long time ago that I would fight. I’ve argued in the past that fighting bad people is an obligation society places on good people as a way of raising the cost of being bad.
And the reality is that in extremis, people freeze, flee, or fight. Two of those reactions are useful. I’ll quote my law enforcement officer friend:
By design, Universities are filled with idealists wishing to take the higher road of understanding and compassion when it comes to dealing with the dangers people often pose toward their own species.
…
Most importantly, if you find yourself in an active shooter situation and you can access real shelter or cover, waste no time running full speed in that direction. If you are trapped, in a room with an assailant who is picking off victims as he/she finds them, FIGHT.
No, I do not blame the victims in Virginia. The only person to blame is an insanely evil young man who isn’t here to receive his just punishment.
But I have advice for those who would prefer not to be victims. And it lies in the simple fact that the State cannot, and will not guarantee your safety. You are the ultimate guarantor of your safety. You should act that way.
So here, I’ll side with Michelle, and my cop friend, and Michael Moore (who would have thought it?) and tell Taylor that to call Malkin’s views asinine is – well – I’m too polite to say asinine, so I’ll just say foolish and wrong.
Update: fixed dumb conflation of names.
Update 2: Anne-Marie Cox takes a swing at the issue too; she’s indignant that John Derbyshire would suggest that someone might try and do something in the face of an active shooter:
If I had to choose a favorite insane statement here — like, say, if someone was holding a gun to my head — I think it’d be the idea that, “At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him.” Or, best yet: you could always try the ol’, “Shoe’s untied!” bit. Works with my theoretical mass shooting murderers all the time.
Um, Anne-Marie, it’s like this. One of the ways that you train for things that haven’t ever happened to you – and I’m so tempted to put in an assf**king reference here – is to imagine them, and pattern a response. real grown up people – like pilots, musicians, and yes, people who fight for a living – do exactly that.
Along with real training, it has a nice benefit, to which I can testify – which is that you’ll respond better if you’ve got a pre-made plan (and better still if you practice it) than if you don’t.
I’ll bet that no one today gets on an airliner without thinking a little bit about how they’d react to a hijacker. Which is one reason there won’t be any more hijackings without serious weaponry.
So thanks for playing, Anne-Marie, and please go back and comment on things you actually know something about, like what midlevel Washington wannabe politicians do for relaxation.
James Taylor is a singer. The post is by Steven Taylor, on a blog run by James Joyner. He is not strongly opposed to guns, only to college students carrying them to class.
The passivity and aversion to fighting that you criticize is the direct reason why we have a peaceful, stable society. In our culture, generally speaking, we fight our battles through voting, lawsuits, protest marches, and blogs. If we fought regularly as children and teenagers, and came to see that as normal, it would undoubtedly lead to more adults trying to resolve their disputes through violence as well. Look at Iraq, where all too many are ready to fight those they see as “bad people”.
A more belligerent populace would lead to fewer deaths in extremely rare events like school shootings, but more violence in many other situations. It would be nice if people were eager to fight only bad guys, and averse to fighting otherwise, but that’s an extremely difficult balance to strike in a large society.
But Biff, when it’s culture v. culture, how does the equation balance?
This is not an homogeneous world. A healthy culture is one that can adapt to hostile environments, and not just its hothouse origins.
Or, to be more abstract, the first rule of playing by the rules is, if you can’t play by the rules, change the rules.
This first rule is almost always thrashed out of kids in the early years by teachers invested in rules, but a small percentage never really get it. They go on to do extraordinary things.
And of course, from there it becomes how well the extraordinary is reared by the gestalt. And man, do I feel for that boy’s parents.
I think everybody is missing the major implication of this event, and it has nothing to do with guns. Because of this, fences are going to go up, campuses will become less open, and tuition and taxes will go up.
Compare the schools your kids go to to the ones your parents went to. Note the metal detectors, the lockdowns, and the minimum security prison environment. And yet guns are somewhat harder to obtain now than they were then. Something else has has changed.
The gun arguments are an utter wash. Smart Democrats don’t want to get into a fight over guns right now, especially smart Democrats named Hillary Clinton. They have absolutely nothing to gain from it.
I think there is also another element involved, which is a widely differing conception of “peace.” We see it playing out across our society and our politics.
One group, generally “liberal,” with which our campuses, media, and entertainment are absolutely infested, understands “peace” to be the lack of conflict.
This is inherently passive, and it (repeatedly) provides an abundant supply of victims.
On the other end are people who in their hearts know that “peace” is provided by the lack of THREAT and are thus willing to attempt (at least) to neutralise or even eliminate that threat.
VTI had some of the most restrictive gun-control policies in America, for a campus the size of a small city. It did not work.
What’s more, there was (consequently) no one available either to eliminate the threat or even set up a primitive defensive perimeter behind which students could evacuate to safety.
The Left likes to say “Ideas have consequences.” Yes, they do. Some ideas simply do not work, either on the world scene or a campus.
AL,
The simple version of your thought is from Sun-Tzu:
“On Death Ground — FIGHT!”
Biff – dumb name mistake fixed.
And I’l disagree; we managed to use the ballot box and politics to solve domestic political issues for a long time up until the late 60’s which is about the point that an elementary school fistfight became a terrorist act.
A.L.
Personally, I’m ambivalent about properly trained people carrying guns on their person as they choose. I think it would help in certain situations but might lead to more reflex shootings. I’m not sure what the data show on the latter once proper multivariate controls are run.
I’d agree with Taylor on the asininity of the “the students ought to be ashamed they didn’t fight back” meme, for reasons you yourself cite. These are scared kids with no training or experience fighting.
As a former soldier, with minimal training in hand-to-hand combat but who from an early age seriously contemplated taking action in the face of mortal danger, I’d like to think that I’d jump the gunner from behind or otherwise try to do something in that situation. But, really, I have no idea how I’d react. And blaming victims of a massacre from the safety of a couch is pretty unseemly.
Normally I agree with Michael Moore 🙂 but here, it’s worth mentioning that the Flight 93 passengers were the only ones who knew the plan was to crash into something. The other passengers probably assumed the plane was being diverted for ransom of some sort, and given that the pilots had already been killed, rushing the hijackers would leave no one to land the plane.
As for the main claim, AL, I’ll try to put this nicely. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to fight, but I do know I’m not foolhardy enough to claim I would, never having been in the situation. I think a lot of people who are fantasizing how they would have taken the shooter down (or even tried) would, in the event, have pissed their pants and frozen.
James – I’m also ambivalent about encouraging people to carry guns; if you’re motivated, trained, and interested, I can see not preventing you, but I’m also reluctant to push it on people.
And I place zero moral culpability on the victims. There is one actor here who bears the moral weight of this horror, and he’s dead.
I’ll strongly and absolutely disagree with both you and Andrew; the proven reality is that mental rehearsal is one of the most useful things you can do to condition yourself to act in situations where you’d otherwise freeze. I have pilot and musician friends who do it all the time. If I get a chance I’ll dig for some research on it.
If you expect yourself to act – you’ve got a chance to overcome the ‘prey’ reflex of freezing.
And, in fact, the active-shooter situations where people resisted have turned out less horribly than those where people hid under desks and waited to be shot.
And further, I think that the moral and political impact of refusing to be a victim is a positive thing – I’ll write more extensively about it.
There’s an old martial arts saying “you fight like you train” and even if the only training you’ve done is to mentally rehearse fighting back, it’s better than not training at all.
A.L.
This is an extremely vile thread and I find it outrageous that anyone would lend any credibility to Malkin’s cheap effort to blame Liberalism, once again (she’s a friggin’ one note pony), with this massacre.
You’re advocating playground fistfights among children as a solution to this random act? They’re not “terrorist acts”…they are not tolerated because in such a circumstance problems are “solved” by force rather than reason, logic or intelligence. Is that the kind of society you think we should promote? Because that is certainly not the kind of society I would like my children to be part of. I am flabbergasted that someone has the temerity to even suggest something like this.
Andrew and James Joyner are correct….unless you’ve been in a similar situation and actually fought back, somehow, then STFU.
I will also point out that Liberals and Democrats have been and continue to be among the most courageous defenders of our freedoms by whatever means necessary, including force, WHERE APPROPRIATE. Based on the comments above (i.e., Bart Hall), I’m starting to see that a cornerstone of the Right wing mentality is to promote mindless aggression. Note the use of the word “promote”, since they rarely see fit to engage in it themselves, the armchair warriors and cowards that they are.
And finally, how the hell do any of you know that none of the students DID fight back, but die in the process? Huh? Some of the professors died trying to protect their students….these people are GREAT HEROES, and your suggestion that they didn’t “fight back” because they weren’t allowed to mix it up at the playground is beneath contempt. Far far beneath contempt.
James,
The following is information posted at “this thread”:http://volokh.com/posts/1176876747.shtml#207204/ at the Volokh conspiracy blog by Clayton E. Cramer.
Texas has 258,162 active carry permits as of 12/31/2006. See here:
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/PDF/ActLicAndInstr/ActiveLicandInstr2006.pdf
During Fiscal Year 2006, 180 permits had been revoked–or .06%. See this link:
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/PDF/2006Fiscal/ByRace/FY06R-SLicRevoked.pdf
Florida as of March 31, 2007, has 415,006 permits issued to civilians. See here:
http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/licensetypecount.html
For the nine months ending March 31, 2007, 277 licenses have been revoked–or .067%. see this link:
http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/news/reports.html
CCW carriers are only a threat to criminals.
People who want “Gun Free Zones” are into moral superiority games, not safety.
What Virginia Tech showed us is that “Gun Free Zones” are game preserves for mass murderers.
I must have missed the episode of Little House on the Prairie where the kids withdrew to the playground to fisticufs. AFAIK kids fight the same place they always fought — outside of the sight of authorities. The only thing I know that has changed is that many kids now feel that school teachers are not authorities.
AJL is correct re 9/11. Unwillingness to fight for one’s life is being conflated with threat assessment. The initial 9/11 response was appropriate for a traditinoal hijacking. Flight 93 had better information. No evidence that one group had more bareknuckles experience than the other.
Okay Wei,
I will enter the fray from the perspective of someone who has fought back. If you saw me I promise you would never expect that I could or should, but that is the benefit of training. I am professionally trained to run toward trouble. I have been in more than one physical altercation and I have faced people who were crazy and armed, and I had a trained response that was appropriate and resolved the issue. Occasionally, fighting/violence was involved and necessary to overcome the situation, but having a trained response (via scenario, practice and mental conditioning)has served me well and so far, I have been successful and have suffered few injuries.
I went to school in the central valley of California in the sixties and seventies. School yard fights were a normal part of socialization then. Everyone got a stern talking to and maybe lost some priviledges for awhile, but dads would be secretly proud of their kid for having the “stuff” to mix it up. When I went through training for my job, you rarely ran across a person who froze when they took a hit in the face. Nowadays, with the excessive protection we provide children and their frequent, complete lack of experience with physical or even verbal conflict, you frequently see young trainees freeze if they get hit. In my world, that reaction can get you killed. Hell, in the first few weeks of training, some drop out after they get yelled at! I dont advocate encouraging violence from children, but suppressing the natural socialization process to the degree that our society has can only result in young adults that are lacking some tools for conflict that others, who were allowed to develop more normally, possess.
I am not criticising the heroes of VTI. I am the first to say, if you weren’t there, dont judge, but in my profession, we also debrief incidents in an attempt to learn from them and as the investigation plays out we will hear of all sorts of reactions that either helped or hurt the situation. Talking about this is a good thing.
If you can’t judge because you weren’t there, then how do you decide that certain people are heroes? That’s a judgment, isn’t it?
How can you celebrate and praise courage and heroism without implicitly recognizing that cowardice and passivity are inferior?
What would I do? I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I can’t say: courage is better than cowardice, fighting is better than submitting weakly to death. I hope I would have courage; if not, I don’t see why I should escape the label “coward” by arguing that other people might have been cowards, too.
Wei, “vile” is an excellent description of your philosophy, which asks people to forget the underpinnings of civilization itself and make themselves willing victims of any lunatic who happens along. Handing my kids over to Mr. Darwin’s mechanism? Now THAT’s vile.
bq. “…they are not tolerated because in such a circumstance problems are “solved” by force rather than reason, logic or intelligence. Is that the kind of society you think we should promote? Because that is certainly not the kind of society I would like my children to be part of.”
No doubt you’re serous, however, which is why I assume that you plan to do away with all courts, police, prisons, et. al. After all, every one of them relies on force rather than reason, logic, or intelligence as their primary guarantor. People aren’t in prisons because they’re persuaded to stay. Most people don’t pay alimony and child support out of the goodness of their hearts (if they did, we would never have needed the laws). Nor is that why they pay taxes. They do it because if you don’t, ultimately you get taken away by people with guns (q.v. the folks in prison, who are likewise kept there by force).
There are situations in which force IS the ONLY thing that works. ANY society is based on that reality, and the shape of that society is determined by how it acknowledges that reality.
Clearly, you do not. Which doesn’t make it go away. Rather than set up other people’s kids to be murdered, I invite you to test your philosophy personally first. Check into any maximum security prison in the country, spend time in the general inmate population, and rely on “reason, logic, and intelligence” to keep yourself safe.
Friendly tip: bring lots of K-Y. I’m told that petroleum-based stuff isn’t good for you once frequent repetition starts to create chafing.
In which another branch is added to the chickenhawk taxonomy:
May we now classify Wei as an emoter instead of a thinker?
Complete strawman, Katzman. No one is arguing that we should remove all use of force from society. The argument is about whether ordinary people – not policemen or servicemen – should be eager to take violent matters into their own hands. And whether we should prepare kids for this by allowing them to engage in fights – in other words, by encouraging them to resolve disputes through violence.
#15, because there is plenty of evidence of heroism but none of cowardice.
#16, once again, I will ask how it is that you know that most or all of the victims were “willing”? I’m not sure which is more idiotic: that you think you can know what is in the minds of people in this terrible situation, or that you think whatever it is it reveals deep character and societal flaws that can be blamed on THE LEFT.
As I said, and you seem to want to ignore, it is self-evident that society sometimes must use force…I never suggested otherwise.
Just for the record…I am raising two girls who I have taught how to punch, hard.
Wei,
You originally wrote: unless you’ve been in a similar situation and actually fought back, somehow, then STFU.
This is not an argument that there is no evidence of cowardice at VT. It’s an argument that, regardless of the evidence, unless you have previously proven yourself to be courageous, you have no right to identify or criticize cowardice. It gives a way for a coward to hide from criticim: I might be cowardly, but only those who have proven they are not may actually say so.
For my part, I wondered how, in an abstract sense, it is possible to adjudge certain people “heroes” if, as you suggest by urging others to “STFU,” it is impossible to adjudge others “cowards.”
You have now changed the subject to discussing the concrete facts of VT. You see heroes, but no evidence of cowards. Fine, I don’t disagree. That wasn’t the question.
I’m answering your quesions, Rob, so if you think that amounts to “changing the subject”, so be it.
Coherence Lost:
What’s this “eager”? Nobody WANTS to be the person in this kind of situation. Nobody sits around in a restaurant hoping a robber will come in so they can jump them. I would be extraordinarily happy if this sort of thing never, ever, ever happened again, to anybody.
But if you have a choice between fighting or dying, you fight. If you have a choice between fighting and dying, and just dying, you still fight! (Y’never know.) There’s nothing shameful about merely surviving an incident like this, but if I was going to die, I wouldn’t want it to be from a gunshot to the back.
I did get in a couple of fights in school, even got suspended once. Didn’t start ’em. (To be honest, didn’t really finish ’em either… that suspension was basically prefaced with “take a couple days off and let your scalp heal, okay?”) Maybe that affects my attitude on the issue, I couldn’t say for sure.
Good grief! Is there anybody other than the infirm who doesn’t think that? From behind??? How could that be a difficult question? It’s the “gunman appears at your classroom door” scenario that’s at issue here, where there is no “behind” for you, isn’t it?
And Wei, if you can read Bart Hall’s comment and get an advocacy of “mindless” agression, then all I can say is that mindlessness is very close to home.
Finally: Biff–I don’t go out of my way to look for trouble or violence, but if I were confronted by somebody like Cho intent on harming me or mine, “eager” doesn’t begin to describe the energy with which I would use force to oppose him.
The problem is that we know some inforation about the people we label heroes. What they did and what their options appear to have been. A.L. is posting on the “apparent passivity of the students.” That’s a pretty broad brush without a lot of information. Some of the students hid, played dead, erected barricades or were able to flee partly based on these strategies. They may not be heroic responses, they aren’t wrong responses. They are alive.
I can’t resist stating the obvious, that this discussion was vibrant yet civil until Wei decided to inject some really nasty name calling and insult (I suggest, in lieu of logic). I am not always or even often a fan of the extremes of discourse, left or right, but am always a bit amused when someone like Wei calls foul on the foul mouthed with worse insult than the source of outrage.
To the point. I think the phenomena being discussed has much broader implications, beyond 9/11 or school yard fights or even mass murder. WE have systematically stripped away serious, meaningful consequence that used to moderate extreme behavior. Swift retribution in justice (because it’s not always the right target). Corporal punishment because it is abuse. Moral condemnation because it isn’t sensitive to cultural differences. Financial costs because some have greater means than others.
In short, as a society we have grown immune from consequence. Only when the rare event happens (and only to some), are we confronted with the folly of inaction in the face of evil or bad behavior. And then, our first instinct is too often to “pass a law against it.” (Rather than take real action of consequence.)
Criminals and those who take up violence against others do not care whether there are laws or rules. I remember the story of the Sheepdogs versus the sheep.
The canard found in Wie’s and others objections to “imagining taking action” or otherwise preparing for self-defense is that being fully prepared for self-defense actually makes you less likely to resort to and greatly reduces the need to defend.
This is true internationally, and locally, in groups and as individuals.
This will not mean that verbal disputes on a playground will always (or often) result in fist fights. What it will mean is that bullies and those who break the rules will suffer the consequences dircectly.
If you’ve ever been the teased and taunted, the victim, and watched as those who were supposed to protect did nothing, you know first hand the truth of this proposition. And for every instance where violence goes unpunished, more follows.
And yes, Hollywood and our media and institutions are very much responsible for both glorifying violence, at the same time we are trained never to meet force with force, and that it’s wrong to make moral judgments about evil.
Wei,
You answered a different question than the one I asked. You first suggested that people who haven’t proven their courage have no right to judge. But identifying heroes is a judgment, so I wondered why it was that we are allowed find heroes without also being able to find cowards.
You replied that, as a factual matter, there was evidence of heroism at VT but not cowardice. I actually agree with you on that. But…that’s a judgment, the very thing you forbid others to make without the right courageous credentials.
So your reply is non-responsive and leaves me with the same question as before: if you don’t have the right (or ability) to judge, how did you arrive at your judgment? Or are you saying that you have been in a deadly situation and proven your courage, so that you do have the right/ability to judge, and the rest of us just need to STFU and accept your opinion?
If the shooter Cho had been taught to fight back against those who bullied him, to speak up, rather than cower passively, he surely would not have built up such extreme hate and resentment. Just a thought.
Why don’t we put another concept in play here, since this conversation is so full of thoughfullness…
Cho felt he had been picked on all his life and “wronged” by authority figures. He was alienated from his peers and from society. He felt powerless against the perceived affronts to his self-image. He had been approached on numerous occassions to seek help, and was even forced to do so at one point. He resisted all of these efforts.
Instead, what did he end up deciding to do? He chose to violently express his dissatisfaction and disagreements with others. He went to a gun store and legally bought two pistols. He then recorded a rant-filled message where he frequently invoked the name of Jesus Christ and expressed a desire to seek retribution for those who wronged him.
Then he went out to enact his violent fantasy in a manner requiring a complete lack of empathy.
Sounds like the product of the Right Wing mentality to me.
Perhaps all this effort to “blame the victims” for their (mis-)perceived passivity in the face of what you seem to think they should have recognized as an immediate threat to their lives (another unjustified conclusion, by the way) is simply an effort to deflect attention away from where it really should be directed. The violent gun culture produced Cho, not the “peacenik” attitude you (completely unjustifiably) ascribe to the “Left”.
If anything, it could easily be argued this guy is the product of the violent culture many of you seem to think needs to be expanded in order to deal with such violent sociopaths. Why don’t you chew on that for a while.
Biff (#18) that’s exactly what Wei advocated, without nuance and with extreme prejudice. Back at him. However, people do misspeak sometimes. I’m glad to see Wei’s acknowledgment (#20) that preparing your children to deal with violence or threat themselves is a good idea, thought this does appear to be counter to his earlier post as lurker notes in #23.
With that out of the way, let’s go on to deal with the most recent lines of argument.
Wei (#18). Someone conditioned to your espoused point of view, and refusing to deal with problems that require force outside of the lines of reason, logic, and persuasion, have made a prior decision to be prey. This would make them self-created victims. I will use the term “self-created, invitational victims” instead for more precision from now on.
I acknowledge your point that at the sharp end of decision, self-created, invitational victims may not be willing. Having ceded all force to the evil or disturbed by prior agreement, however, in the false expectation that there will always be an “other” to protect them, they have made themselves attractive targets for the evil or disturbed. At which point, the only willingness that can matter is their willingness to renounce all prior training/beliefs and fight back in defense of themselves and those who, by right of fellow citizenship, they are implicitly sworn by frith and pact to protect. Note that this characteristic is not solely resident in authority – the protection of fellow members in an inherent condition of citizenship itself, without which the term loses all meaning and moral authority.
A society that creates such people, and does not hold up other examples of courageous conduct as preferable, is partially culpable for the consequences.
Others may not have this victim mentality, but may become created victims if they are put in situations where they are not allowed to defend themselves, because of people like you who believe that leveraging societal force to ensure their defenselessness against any predator that may come along is a good idea. Several European societies, where resisting criminal attack results in legal punishment and crime rates are skyrocketing (gee, quelle surprise), offer examples. I find that vile. Virginia Tech offers a more micro example.
Personally, I think that’s a combination of abuse and endangerment, especially if taught to children. A society or institution thereof that leverages force against its members in this way is even more culpable for the consequences than one that fails at a lesser level, by merely failing to teach courage and the stress the right of each member to self-defense.
This brings us to Biff’s (#18) question:
bq. “The argument is about whether ordinary people – not policemen or servicemen – should be eager to take violent matters into their own hands. And whether we should prepare kids for this by allowing them to engage in fights – in other words, by encouraging them to resolve disputes through violence.”
Why not say what you really mean, Biff:
bq. “The argument is about whether ordinary people – not policemen or servicemen – should be prepared to take violent matters into their own hands when confronted with serious threats, rather than hoping and waiting for help to arrive in time to save their bodily integrity.”
You think they should be conditioned and forced to be sacrificial victims. I think they should take violent matters into their own hands. Anything else goes right back to the points I made above.
For those who believe that the only proper way to raise children is through an approach that acknowledges the reality of predatory people (which includes other children) – then yes, that approach must also recognize that violence is always regrettable but occasionally necessary in solving some kinds of problems. Punishments must therefore be proportional to that reality, and tempered by that acknowledgment. Otherwise, all you’ve done is set your kid up as a perpetual victim with no coping mechanisms in the absence of authority figures. Heaven knows I’ve seen that reality often enough, where approaches such as Wei’s and Biff’s work to create a free-fire zone for various kinds of bullying. All in the name of eliminating it, of course. But then, the ones enforcing those rules don’t actually have to live under them. How… convenient.
The manifestations differ from the situation under discussion at Virginia Tech, but the goal and policy remain: make people prey, then wait for the predators (common addendum: who are, of course, just misunderstood and deserving of our sympathy).
And then turn right around and blame it on:
You see, violence is not something intrinsic to human nature and EVERYONE knows that the left never encourages and perpetrates violence. It is always was the right that does, even if the gunman turns over a manifesto rife with leftist cant to the news media. It’s still the right’s fault… somehow. It’s they who are evil, or vile, or something.
Wei,
If your thesis was correct, we’d have far more and increasing violence, but in general, and in specific ways and places.
The fact is, however much it “seems” like these very random, isolated instances of violence are more common, they are not.
You ascribe Cho’s evil, violent fantasy of mass murder, somehow including deranged and entirely nonsenical references to Jesus Christ, to a “Right Wing Mentality.” What about the “Right Wing” encourages maniacs to kill college kids? Opting to fight terror instead of wait for it to happen? You really are too much.
Just one problem. Islamic terrorists really did kill thousands of Americans on 9/11, and more of the same kill thousands of Iraqi civilians, fellow Muslims, to see if they can get us to abandon Iraqi democracy to a REAL theocracy.
The unfortunate victims of your Cho did NOTHING to warrant Cho’s hatefilled attack. They were innocent victims, like millions of Vietnamese, like millions of Cambodians, like millions (and millions) of Russians, like millions of Jews, like millions of Rwandans, like millions of Poles, Czechs, Gypsies, Magyars, etc. etc. etc.
Passivity in the face of evil that seeks to destroy civilization and innocents, dare I say, can itself be evil.
Mohatma Gandhi, we can all see him as the paragon of nonviolence and peaceful conflict resolution, right? He faulted the Jews for not walking willingly into the Gas Chambers (though many did), not being passive enough. I’m sorry, but the “Right Wing Mentality” you insult and caricature is the only attitude that saved Civilization in the 20th Century from pure evil, whatever its other faults.
This entire discussion rests on the premise of the extreme circumstance of knowing that a lunatic with guns is systematically shooting every person in a room. You’re in the room, the threat to all of you is real, immediate, and likely inevitable.
If you “play dead,” maybe he won’t remember that he didn’t shoot you already. Maybe you live, but others die. Alternatively, you can take some kind of action, pick up one of those deskchair thingies as at least some protection, and charge the SOB. Hopefully, others take your queue and do the same thing. Maybe you don’t survive, but you may have just saved everybody else as well as yourself. And even if you don’t make it, if somebody else does, then lives were saved. (Even the SOB who caused the carnage in the first place.)
Wei, rather than view us as scum and unworthy of your lofty intellect and superior morality, why not drop down into the virtual mudpool of humanity and consider (try) why someone might hold the views we hold? We’re not stupid, we aren’t bad people, there might just be a reason we think the way we do.
(Queue BDS, DNC talking point, or related pathology, to dehumanize your adversary so that you don’t have to consider possible error on your part.)
I see a substantial difference between preparing my children in self-defense and an avowal unsupported by evidence or experience that when the time comes, I will be courageous and heroic. The former is common sense. The latter is the song of the blowhard and I don’t think it’s worth much. Perhaps in these days, when seeing bad news on TV is “sacrifice” the bar for heroism seems to be set awfully low.
AJL, I must have missed it, who’s avowing that he will be courageous and heroic?
“Passivity”
“Lack of consequences”
“liberalism teaches passivity”
Predictably a lot of psychological projection here, when we don’t know the facts. Pscyological rehearsal for a possible shooter, fight or flight? I’d run for the exit first, but I don’t really know what I would do. In any case this is a singular and extraordinary tragedy, not a good example for general social rule making.
‘That Was the Desk I Chose to Die Under’ (Hour by hour narrative)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/18/AR2007041802824.html
“Kevin Granata had heard the commotion in his third-floor office and ran downstairs. He was a military veteran, very protective of his students. He (and another professor) was gunned down trying to confront the shooter.”
“The first attack came in Room 206, advanced hydrology taught by Loganathan. There were 13 graduate students in the class, all from the civil engineering department. There was no warning, no foreboding sounds down the hallway. The gunman entered wordlessly and began shooting. Students scattered to get as far away from the door as possible. One bullet hit Partahi “Mora” Lumbantoruan, an Indonesian doctoral student. His body fell on top of fellow graduate student Guillermo Colman. Then the shooter aimed his two guns around the room, picking off people one by one before leaving. Colman, protected by his classmate’s prone body, was one of only four in the room to survive.”
“In Jamie Bishop’s German class..Someone suggested that Bishop should place something in front of the classroom door, just in case. The words were no sooner uttered than the door opened and a shooter stepped in. He was holding **guns in both hands**. Bishop was hit first, a bullet slicing into the side of his head. All the students saw it, an unbelievable horror. The gunman had a serious but calm look on his face. Almost no expression. He stood in the front and kept firing, barely moving. People scrambled out of the line of fire. Trey Perkins knocked over a couple of desks and tried to take cover……”It took about a minute and a half, and then the gunman left the room.
Perkins and two classmates, Derek O’Dell and Katelyn Carney, ran up to the door and put their feet against it to make sure he could not get back in. They would have used a heavy table, but there were none, and the desks weren’t strong enough. Soon the gunman tried to get back in. The three students pressed against the door with their arms and legs, straining with their lives at stake. Unable to budge the door, the gunman shot through it four times. Splinters flew from the thick wood. The gunman turned away, again…..”
“Like those in other classes, the French students had heard the banging, or pops. “That’s not what I think it is?” asked Couture-Nowak.
Violand, feeling panicky, pointed at her and said, “Put that desk in front of the door, now!” She did, and then someone called 911. The desk could not hold back the push from outside. The first thing Violand saw was a gun, then the gunman. “I quickly dove under a desk,” he recalled. “That was the desk I chose to die under. After every shot, Violand thought, “Okay, the next one is me.” But shot after shot, and he felt nothing. He played dead.”
“By the time the gunman reached the room, many of the students were on the window ledge. There was grass below, not concrete, and even some shrubs. The old professor was at the door, which would not lock, pushing against it, when the gunman pushed from the other side. Some of the students jumped, others prepared to jump until Librescu could hold the door no longer and the gunman forced his way inside….
The first shot hit Librescu in the head, killing him. Webster ducked to the floor and tucked himself into a ball. He shut his eyes and listened as the gunman walked to the back of the classroom….
I felt something hit my head, but I was still conscious,” Webster recalled. The bullet had grazed his hairline, then ricocheted through his upper right arm. He played dead. “I lay there and let him think he had done his job. I wasn’t moving at all, hoping he wouldn’t come back.” The gunman left the room as suddenly as he had come in.”
Fight or flight? Who can presume to say. Not the keyboard commandos.
Certainly, talking about what you might do in a situation may or may not indicate you are a blow-hard and/or a coward. Though, it would seem that there’s no way to optimally prepare for a situation without examining possibilities and talking about it.
As you say AJL, it’s possible that there’s no benefit to this. Perhaps someone with military leadership experience can tell us whether training and preparation helps green solders perform when first thrown into battle. I wonder if there’s any talking about what they might do involved in their training?
I disagree that only the shooter is responsible for 32 deaths.
The president and police chief of the university, who stubbornly refused to allow students and faculty the opportunity to defend themselves are responsible as well.
Why not say what you really mean, Biff:
“The argument is about whether ordinary people – not policemen or servicemen – should be prepared to take violent matters into their own hands when confronted with serious threats, rather than hoping and waiting for help to arrive in time to save their bodily integrity.”
You think they should be conditioned and forced to be sacrificial victims.
All right Joe, I give up. You clearly aren’t interested in honestly addressing what anyone here has actually written.
Training helps. But does it help to the extent that one can guarantee putting it into practice? Weeks of boot camp and being put in a situation with other like-minded recruits (plus officers) is one thing. A few hours of hypothetical training and then suddenly confronting a madman without a chance to coordinate is another.
For Rob: to “decide to fight” (original post) is not the same as fighting. And it’s a big stretch to talk about the ones who didn’t from the perspective of one who hasn’t yet been called.
Thanks Chew2, I don’t think “apparent passivity of the students” accurately describes the events at Virginia Tech. Nor do I think the events of 9/11 support A.L.’s thesis.
AJL,
Effective action doesn’t need be coordinated with other random folks to a huge degree. Individual action can count for a lot, as we’ve seen from some of the VT anecdotes.
In the case of training, I’m sure that the Army has a very good idea about how often green soldiers will fail to perform in their first action. They likely have studies out the wazzu. The response of any given person may be more unpredictable; but in aggregate, training has been shown to reduce the failure rate. If not, then rag tag third world armies would perform as well as well trained western ones.
It seems so obvious that any preparation at all would be better than nothing at all, that I’m not sure if I haven’t lost your point. Perhaps you mean only to say that there’s no panacea????
Michelle is very specific in her blame of campus culture – specifically progressive campus culture – for the apparent passivity of the students, and blames the passivity of the students – in some part – for the scope of what the evil madman was able to accomplish.
I’ve also talked about the roots of the modern terrorist movement as being closely aligned with mainstream academic thinking, and will have more to say about that later, as well.
Anyone see the contradiction there?
I’ve always been a fascinated by how people react to situations like this. Strangely enough, the tendency to passively respond to immiment execution is quite strong across cultures. I know it’s fashionable ’round here, but blaming it on progressiveness might be a little presumptuous.
Mental preparation is important, perhaps key. Thats why veterans dont run into the problem. Its like being in a fist-fight, until you’ve been hit, you havent fought. Once you’ve gotten your ass handed to you once or twice, you might run away or dive into the fight but you probably wont freeze up. Ratchet that up to someone sticking a gun in your grill and i dont think many school kids (thankfully) have any experience to draw on. The mental gears just dont turn like they would somebody that has been in a a life threatening situation before (hence the Holocaust survivor’s ability to act). Being mentally cognicent on a general level that somebody you might find yourself in the @#^& can help, but its no substitute for the real thing. Its hard to hold those kids as examples of anything but victims. There are many a story of soldiers voluntarily lining up against the wall to be shot. These kids didnt have much of a chance- and it could have happened the same way at Bob Jones University as at VT.
When I was a student pilot, one thing my flight instructor drilled into me was always to be looking for a place for an emergency landing. He emphasized that pilots who thought that nothing would ever go wrong would meet only two fates – very lucky or very dead.
What was the motto of that Roald Dahl show, “Tales of the Unexpected,” a few years back? “A wise man believes only in lies, trusts only in the absurd – and learns to expect the unexpected.”
I here quote John Podhoretz approvingly. Please don’t make me do this again.
[SNIP]
Hey, Andrew, if I can cite Micheal Moore…
Let me make one thing very, very clear. I lay not blame or challenge at the feet of the students. No one should, because no one knows enough to comment, and it may be that no one ever does.
I do think that a lesson to take from this – what I’d teach my kids – is the need to react, and to do whatever you reasonably can to condition yourself not to freeze if something like this happens.
That’s based in a large body of real practice and research, and it may be that our disagreement is narrower than everyone is suggesting.
A.L.
Biff —
I think you are delusional in your view that the safe, suburban existence that has characterized the post WWII West will continue unabated into the future.
Pre-emptive surrender is not wise. Which essentially is what we have done in the West. To psychotics like Cho (who was well known to the VT Admin as a nutcase threat but posed a PC-discrimination lawsuit if they expelled him). Or to psychotic nutcases abroad.
I agree that too much aggression is bad for society, makes it unable to function in abstract tasks that require intensive focus etc. BUT that economic efficiency has it’s own costs in being unable to respond to aggression by others which in a globalized world is far more common than you think. The Cold War is gone, the stasis it induced is gone. Back to the normal state of affairs of human beings which is very violent unless suppressed by social controls backed up by strong young men willing to use violence to stop socially unacceptable violence.
Mr. Joyner: the strong young men SHOULD be ashamed that an elderly Holocaust survivor had to save their asses. Or that they by their own words sat and waited to die instead of acting to stop the killer as he RELOADED.
The passive PC – feminized values that Andrew J Lazarus seems to celebrate means that many young men who had the most physical tools to resist did nothing in a killing ground. The profound PC feminization that has taken place has left our society completely unable to face any threat at all with anything other than unconditional surrender and “waiting to die” in the words of one survivor who recounted his terror as he waited for the killer to reload and kill him.
Who is responsible for this sorry state of affairs? The inability to fight back on obvious killing ground as the survivors themselves understood they would be next? A feminized, surrender-victim oriented culture that despises heroism and celebrates defeat and victimhood. Turning the nation into a Lifetime movie has left us incapable of acting when it’s needed. Wei is Exhibit A. At no time or place are Liberals EVER capable of fighting back. [Note the emphasis on feminized “feeling” rather than actual arguments based on logic.] Of course Harry Reid has said Iraq is lost and we are defeated. Of course. No Liberal at any time or any place is willing to fight for anything. Not at VT, or Iraq, or Afghanistan.
This culture as a result left the students mostly unable to perceive the threat clearly and then unable to act.
For the Record: Psych-Cho was profoundly mentally ill, but PC rules and fear of discrimination lawsuits (he was Korean) meant the University did not kick him out. He recorded anti-American, anti-Christian Rants and posed like the character from “Oldboy” a violent and anti-American South Korean film he obsessively watched.
Sounds like Daily Kos type guy to me.
Well, the Scouting motto is “Be Prepared,” and one of the students was an Eagle Scout:
bq. _When doctors spoke to his family Monday evening, before he went into surgery, they said he would not have lived long enough for help to reach him had he not done something quite remarkable._
bq. _Sterne, in trying to escape the shooter, ran. His wounds were all to the lower part of his body, including the potentially fatal bullet to the femoral artery in Sterne’s thigh, Bennett said. Damage to that major artery leads to substantial and quick loss of blood. But Sterne, an Eagle Scout, pulled an electrical cord out of the wall, Bennett said, and managed to wrap it around his leg in a makeshift tourniquet before he passed out._
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_5692940?source=rss
There is stronger evidence of the value of Scouting.
Keep in mind that the immediate fear of the attacker may not be the only thing holding people back. Even if you succeed in taking down your assailant, your life could still be made miserable in the aftermath:
1) There’s always the chance you could end up in legal trouble and/or disciplinary action from your school or employer (depending on where the incident occurs).
2) If it’s a high-profile case like this one, the MSM won’t leave you alone, be it to lionize you as a hero or (more likely) revile you as a vigilante and a murderer.
3) If the assailant dies or is arrested because of your actions, there’s even the off-chance that his next-of-kin, “homies”, fellow gang members or whomever will come calling for revenge. (This is rare but hardly unheard of, and if the nascent movement to immunize self-defenders from legal liability gains traction, it’s entirely possible that more people, deprived of legal means of retribution, will resort to illegal ones.)
4) Last, but not least, even in the absence of (1) through (3) above, someone who’s not accustomed to violence who must resort to it to protect self and others will be a forever changed person, and not necessarily in a positive way. S/he could become wracked by guilt and unable to function, or even suicidal. Or, s/he could have experienced such a rush from the incident that s/he becomes “addicted” to violence, and sorely tempted to make it his/her default method of conflict resolution. (I suspect that this is what Wei et al have in mind in their criticism of this thread.)
If you see fit to mentally plan a defense against attack (as I have), it’s a good idea to also consider how you will handle the aftermath, assuming you survive it.
Damn Joshua, You are one cool cat if you can think of all that while getting shot at.
Mr. Rockford, While I agree with some of your sentiments, I think characterizing everything you see as weak, illogical, passive or politically correct as “feminine” damages your argument and may betray a deep resentment of women. Additionally, assuming that a University did not suspend Cho because of PC issues rather than limitations of law and policy in Virginia, is short sighted and probably incorrect. Asians are rarely treated in Academia as a traditionally oppressed group due to the fact that they are more numerous in higher education than most other ethnic groups, including those of Northern European descent.
Damn Joshua, You are one cool cat if you can think of all that while getting shot at.
You don’t necessarily need to think of all that while getting shot at. Once you become aware of all those consequences, that fear just adds to the immediate fear of the attacker. Unless, of course, you’ve thought of all that before getting shot at.
Andrew –
I just read the Washington Post article you cite – “That was the desk I chose to die under”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/18/AR2007041802824.html
…and yes, some of the students did try blocking doors, andtwo professors did confront him. But if the descriptions are accurate, what went on in two of the classes he attacked as
That’s enough for now.
Look, I’m no more blaming the students for what they did than I would blame someone who didn’t know CPR for not saving a heart attack victim. The problem is that no one trained them in what to do. But just as you might look back and recognize that sitting down and holding the heart attack victim’s hand and offering water isn’t an effective response, it’s reasonable to note that hiding under your desk waiting to die isn’t one either, and that we ought to be training the people under our care or supervision to do what is an effective response.
If there is one area here that I have substantive knowledge of, it’s small arms tactics. And I can tell you with some absolute certainty that if I’m alone in a room with a handgun and four aggressive unarmed people – much less 15 – I’m in trouble. I’ve done drills on it, and while the drills were unrealistic in that the attackers knew they wouldn’t die, they were realistic enough to make me certain that I’ll never put myself in that tactical position voluntarily.
A.L.
Joshua
I have been thinking about your comment. All of the “thought” you post are frankly beyond your control. The media, the courts, OTHER people can judge you any way the wish, but I would rather know that if I took down the assailant that *I* did what I could do. The OTHERs judgement means little to me. They would not have to live with my inner thought and doubts. Now I am only talking from the sideline here and I certainly don’t hold anything those college students but I would hope that I would be prepared to fight back and try to save as many as I could. The phrase “Tis better to die on ones feet, than to live on ones knees” is not, to me, just an argument against tyrannical governments but it is also a way of living a life. Taking your own life and your safety into your own control is not vice, it is an asset. Let the OTHER be damned.
They say the people who got out of the 9/11 towers first were the people who thought about what would happen in case of a fire often. So, it makes sense (on some level) that planning for an encounter with an assailant (at least a little mentally) makes sense too. I also have to wonder if the time of year made a significant impact on student reactions. STudents are tired, they’ve been working, thinking hard, not sleeping, trying to run (mentally & physically) on their last legs. This is also true of the faculty, although it sounds as if faculty reacted a little faster in general.
Once that adrenaline kicks in, if there’s no plan you do what’s instinctual (especially if you’re tired). Fight or flight. And when you’re looking at the jaws of a tiger for the first time (or down a barrel) flight kicks in first.
It’s funny, I’ve always been a big fan of cheesy zombie movies. People are always stuck in a house, and have to build barricades, find weapons, shutter the windows, and then implausibly escape. Whenever I move, I always think “what could I move to barricade things with if I needed too? What could I use as a weapon if I absolutely had too? How would I escape those darn zombies?” It’s not nearly the same thing, but I wonder if that thought process would translate to other scenarios…