Let's be realistic about reality
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article)
April 22, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

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.''

According to the Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan, a caller to her
local radio station went further and said she was teaching her
children to ''fear guns.''

Overseas, meanwhile, the German network NTV was first to identify the
perpetrator: To accompany their report on the shootings, they flashed
up a picture of Charlton Heston touting his rifle at an NRA confab.

And at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted
to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all
stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the
drama department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use
of obviously fake weapons" such as plastic swords.

But it's not just the danger of overly realistic plastic swords in
college plays that we face today. In yet another of his
not-ready-for-prime-time speeches, Barack Obama started out deploring
the violence of Virginia Tech as yet another example of the pervasive
violence of our society: the violence of Iraq, the violence of Darfur,
the violence of . . . er, hang on, give him a minute. Ah, yes,
outsourcing: ''the violence of men and women who . . . suddenly have
the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to
another country." And let's not forget the violence of radio hosts:
''There's also another kind of violence, though, that we're going to
have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence, but
violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week the
big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that
was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role
models for my daughters.''

I've had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I'd insulted
the dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn't show the
exquisite taste and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot
in the head to an Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether
even he knows. When something savage and unexpected happens, it's
easiest to retreat to our tropes and bugbears or, in the senator's
case, a speech on the previous week's "big news." Perhaps I'm guilty
of the same. But then Yale University, one of the most prestigious
institutes of learning on the planet, announces that it's no longer
safe to expose twentysomething men and women to ''Henry V'' unless you
cry God for Harry, England and St. George while brandishing a bright
pink and purple plastic sword from the local kindergarten. Except, of
course, that the local kindergarten long since banned plastic swords
under its own "zero tolerance" policy.

I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons"
but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear
guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we
ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a
"gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the
college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the
campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy
who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in
effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two
students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a
would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles,
grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.

But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration
has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've
created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy
medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would
make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just
because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in
the more important sense that the college was promoting to its
students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in
part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the
occasional murder, however. 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. Two depraved
misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had
nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the
twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not
merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals
to everyone that you're not in the real world.

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?


--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.


"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net

Let's be realistic about reality
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article)
April 22, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

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.''

According to the Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan, a caller to her
local radio station went further and said she was teaching her
children to ''fear guns.''

Overseas, meanwhile, the German network NTV was first to identify the
perpetrator: To accompany their report on the shootings, they flashed
up a picture of Charlton Heston touting his rifle at an NRA confab.

And at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted
to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all
stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the
drama department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use
of obviously fake weapons" such as plastic swords.

But it's not just the danger of overly realistic plastic swords in
college plays that we face today. In yet another of his
not-ready-for-prime-time speeches, Barack Obama started out deploring
the violence of Virginia Tech as yet another example of the pervasive
violence of our society: the violence of Iraq, the violence of Darfur,
the violence of . . . er, hang on, give him a minute. Ah, yes,
outsourcing: ''the violence of men and women who . . . suddenly have
the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to
another country." And let's not forget the violence of radio hosts:
''There's also another kind of violence, though, that we're going to
have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence, but
violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week the
big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that
was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role
models for my daughters.''

I've had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I'd insulted
the dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn't show the
exquisite taste and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot
in the head to an Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether
even he knows. When something savage and unexpected happens, it's
easiest to retreat to our tropes and bugbears or, in the senator's
case, a speech on the previous week's "big news." Perhaps I'm guilty
of the same. But then Yale University, one of the most prestigious
institutes of learning on the planet, announces that it's no longer
safe to expose twentysomething men and women to ''Henry V'' unless you
cry God for Harry, England and St. George while brandishing a bright
pink and purple plastic sword from the local kindergarten. Except, of
course, that the local kindergarten long since banned plastic swords
under its own "zero tolerance" policy.

I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons"
but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear
guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we
ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a
"gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the
college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the
campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy
who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in
effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two
students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a
would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles,
grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.

But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration
has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've
created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy
medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would
make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just
because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in
the more important sense that the college was promoting to its
students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in
part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the
occasional murder, however. 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. Two depraved
misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had
nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the
twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not
merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals
to everyone that you're not in the real world.

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?

--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.

"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette
dar...@NOSPAMcharter.net

From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend

From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves,

From 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others who were unable to

From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend

From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves,

From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves,

From 1975 to 1977, one million 'educated' people, unable to defend