Politicizing Tragedy: Another Rampage Killing That Won't Go to Waste

Having had a gun-related death in my family, I have experienced the grief and witnessed firsthand the shattering, paralyzing grief of parents.  It's horrific.  And, in that context, I can say that I don't appreciate the ambulance-chasing Michael Moores that are waiting in the wings to turn the grief of family members into political fodder.  I sure wouldn't have appreciated Bob Costas throwing in his 2¢ (even if someone had 1½¢ to give him back in change) on our personal tragedy.

Now, when Obama declared (or suggested, rather) a very reluctant truce on his attacks on gun rights, I was sure that Nov. 6th was the expiration date for that truce.  He has a history of saying whatever will get him elected.  Whether you knew he never meant what he said about marriage, individual mandates, CSPAN, debt ceilings, etc. or simply have a media-induced case of Obamnesia, that history is there.

It's been less than two months. Obama is tearing up on television and talking about renewing the gun "discussion": “seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.”  Yes, in spite of Chicago practically being a liberal's ideal gun-free zone, criminals still manage to get weapons and kill unarmed citizens before the police can answer the 911 call.  And wait, the killings were accomplished with 9mm pistols, so is Obama's segue into cheap handguns mean that ordinary citizens should not be allowed to own cheap handguns for fear that they will walk into a school?

Remember that at Columbine Harris and Klebold were trying to outdo the Bath School Disaster of 1927.  With bombs.  Fortunately, they were not as good at terrorism as Andrew Kehoe, so they resorted to shooting several when what they really wanted a truly enormous death toll.  A bit more practice with their home bombs and they might have pulled off what J.D. failed to do in Heathers.  Most rampagers probably have less narcissism involved in their killing, but remember that Andrew Kehoe seemed to be making a statement that society was to blame for his troubles: "Criminals are made."  Was Kehoe made a criminal by the school he blew up?

As one might imagine, China doesn't like its ordinary citizens to have guns.  (They might have had a revolution long ago.)  So their rampages are mostly accomplished with "melee weapons."

On a related note:
Remember how CNN showed Obama tromping around the Hurricane Sandy devastation (and buried the disturbing follow-up), while interviewing a member of the E Street Band for political commentary on why Romney's nod to the 10th Amendment was all wrong?  (Message: After Romney throws your grandma off a cliff and counts his money as your wife dies of cancer, he'll make sure that your city gets no adequate help after a disaster, because he's rich and doesn't care.)  That sure wasn't politicizing a tragedy to plug a candidate, nope.

What if this school shooting had happened the week before November 6th, and CNN had shown Obama tearing up over the senselessness and then had George Clooney being interviewed as body bags are shown being wheeled off the campus:

"Mr. Clooney, what do you think of gun control legislation in light of recent events?"
"Well, I have to say that anyone that isn't willing to rethink the 2nd Amendment must not be as sick of these senseless tragedies as I am, Bob..."

And then, we could have had Chris Matthews say after the subsequent Obama win, "I'm so glad we had that shooting last week..."  Yes, what are a few lives considering the fabulous opportunity they afford to politicize the event and gain a political victory?

Think of all the lives that could be saved by restricting vehicle ownership and vehicle operation.  Especially in the 18 to 25 age group.  Why don't we do something about that?  The 2nd Amendment at least is about guaranteeing our right to democratic government.  Isn't vehicle operation just a luxury entitlement compared to that? 

The Non-Religious Right and the Militant Left

A twofer:   Two different subjects.  What can I say?  I'm tired and there have been some really good articles lately.

Issue #1: Goldberg has posted a little piece musing on why the GOP might be alienating Asians.  Dennis Prager (in addition to Goldberg) and S.E. Cupp have both spoken out in support of the cultural roots of America... Prager being a religious Jew and Cupp being a self-professed atheist; neither being threatened by leftwing rumors of a theocracy.  Many like to point out that several Founding Fathers were Deists.  Some certainly were, but there were many public and government-supported expressions of (general) faith from the very beginning that show that they had a very different take on "the separation of church and state."  However, America wasn't then a theocracy, and it has since relentlessly secularized from fear of being mistaken for one.

I can't go into all the complexities of the relationship between the Christian culture and the distinctly American  elaboration of the British conception of political rights.  Most conservative Christians, I think, have a tenuous grasp of the basis of their conservative principles and would do well to understand that they are not straight out of the Bible.  (Christian socialists would do well to do the same.)

It is the social conservatism that is often a hard sell, and one of the problems with it is that conservatives haven't embraced Reagan's New Federalism (really, just a reaffirmation of the Tenth Amendment) and pushed for greater local autonomy and greater state autonomy in social issues.  When they do, they have difficulty not getting browbeaten by liberals with "states' rights" being equated with racism.

Communities need to have leeway in deciding what is appropriate expression of religion and First Amendment practices.  States need good rules to protect individuals in the process.  This is better than having 9 unelected experts-in-all-things-wise apply the same bad political theories to all Americans.  This is something that is arguably of great interest to other traditional cultures that come here.

I think social conservatism needs to be advocated in terms of allowing parents and communities of parents create an atmosphere in which their children can be raised in their values instead of the values of professional educators and entertainers.

Issue #2:  I think I've mentioned before recently the way the media and liberal pundits (but I repeat myself) have hyped any bad vibes at any event related to the Tea Party movement, while having a very different attitude toward the general awfulness of the Occupy movement and union activists all over the country.  The success that many states have had in getting their financial ducks in a row has followed clipping the hitherto unfettered power of various unions (especially in education).  Considering what has been attributed as "brownshirt" tactics of the Tea Partiers, the recent union tantrums should get a lot of notice.  But don't expect them to.

Legitimate Rape: What Kinds of Rape Are There?

I'll leave aside the topic of whether Todd Akin was correct about the rarity of rape pregnancies or the cause of the alleged rarity.  I'd like to focus on the semantics free-for-all over the word "legitimate"in connection to rape.

I remember seeing a survey about the prevalence of rape, and I thought it strange that the questionnaire asked women if they have ever realized the "morning after" that someone had had sex with them while they were inebriated.  What I thought was vague was that there was no reference to the condition of their (presumably) male counterpart.  Did they both get drunk and "not know what they were doing"?  If a woman gets drunk and has sex, does it automatically make her a victim?  If a man has sex with a drunk woman, does it make him.  The movie Jaws has a scene in which a married couple mention getting drunk and fooling around.  What if the wife doesn't remember the next morning whether she ultimately decided to have sex or not?  Does she have to remember it being consensual throughout?  What if she has a memory blackout?


People cited Akin's comments as proof of the "Conservative War on Women" in which conservative men and women are working hard to enslave womankind.  These same people didn't seem to find it controversial that Whoopie Goldberg said that while Roman Polanski technically (statutorially) raped a girl under the age of consent when he gave her drugs and had anal intercourse with her, it wasn't rape rape."  It was uncontroversial then that there was "rape" and there was rape rape.  Rachel Alexander in "Using Semantics to Take Down Conservative Representative Todd Akin" explains why she thinks that the poltical turmoil over Akin consisted of word games to avoid discussing the obvious:

It may have been a poor choice of words, but everyone knows Akin was referring to the distinction between what we traditionally consider rape - forcible rape - versus statutory rape and what some claim is also rape, having sex while drunk. Some women will have a one night stand while drunk, admit it to their friends afterwards, then change their mind and declare that it was rape. The FBI updated its definition of rape this year to include the inability to give consent due to intoxication. Any woman who has been drinking can now claim afterwards that she was raped. This may have opened a Pandora's Box considering how many people drink alcohol before sex.

This is the Pandora box I considered.  A man with a few drinks in him might be less cognizant of just how "out of it" his date is.  They are both acting loopy and having fun.  If she hasn't passed out, maybe his awareness of her state is also compromised.  She has drunk so much her memory of it is "blacked out."

On a related note, a very dear family member narrowly escaped being taken advantage of by a creepy guy that slipped something in her drink.  This is a more clear cut case of lack of consent and a deliberate attempt to evade consent.  However, she curiously added that she doesn't think it would have been so traumatic as it would have been had she been taken advantage of while conscious.  What does this mean?  Less trauma without the conscious experience of an assault?  Is there a sliding scale of experienced trauma with the various sorts of non-consent?

So there is yet another wrinkle to this:  A man that is sober enough to realize that his date has passed out while they were getting familiar or realize that she is much less lucid than he is -- proceeding further may show him to be a shady human being (and the more lucid he is, the more shady).  But are these men of the same moral caliber as those that assault women to dominate them, to take their revenge on them, or because the act of violence contributes to the pleasure of it?  Are 1 in 16 college boys like the Indian men that recently brutalized a woman to death?  Perhaps 1 in 10 people you know is a sociopath.  Or maybe Whoopie is right: there is rape and then there's rape rape.

But coming back to Rachel Alexander's point: that some women will avoid responsibility for their participation in intercourse because they were in some state of intoxication (even though they are responsible for what they do behind the wheel of a car in a similar state of mind).  This is likely to get even worse if women find an abortion exemption in claiming rape; would many women claim this to avoid carrying a baby to term?

Reliving trauma is being advanced as an argument for destroying a life.  It isn't always clear from the personal stories on this web page being aimed at Todd Akin's gaffe exactly how the stories do relate to the right to destroy a life that results from a violation, even though that appears to be the point of the outrage.  For example, one of the women on the page relates an account of sleeping with a man at the end of a night of partying.  "I ended up sleeping with him." What are the criteria for determining that rape has occurred?  It is completely swept under the rug by the "rape is rape" chorus.  If the woman is less drunk than the man, is he exempt from child support, or might he be "punished with a baby" for 18 years rather than 9 months?  How does the law distinguish the relative inebriation in order to determine fault?  (Note: Ms. Rothenbach has since replied to this post and I have revised this paragraph based on her clarifications.  I continue to have a concern that in reading these anti-Akin blurbs, people think ever more uncritically about whether there truly are gray areas when it comes to rape.) 

In the movie 40-Year-Old Virgin, the title character attempts to go home with a woman that is falling down drunk who is ludicrously intoxicated after his moral-impaired but otherwise well-meaning friend tells him to "try some wrong."  This ends comically in the movie, but the context makes the potential conquest out to be only a little wrong.  Yet in real life, would it have been be a traumatic event to be relived years later, as it seems to fall into that general "date rape" category for which there are more obvious non-consensual yet non-forcible acts and others where there may be more shared responsibility between the man and woman.  But if the pundits and talking heads are right, 40-Year-Old Virgin actually portrayed a date rape in progress, much to the amusement of the audience.

Curiously, there is a man (identified as Charlie S.) also quoted on that page who claims he was "drugged and sexually assaulted by a female acquaintance" and that this event has caused him PTSD for years.  I won't be dismissive and claim as many women claim that this is necessarily not "legitimate rape" because it is female-on-male.  He believes it is a terrible thing for women who have been in his situation to not be able to terminate their developing baby.  "She will have to have the child, and then her whole life, she will be thinking about the person who did that to her. She will have to say to her son: ‘You are the product of rape.’"  Ryan Bromberger has apparently heard that speech from his own mother, and as a "product of rape" he has some choice words for the anti-Akin crowd.  Apparently, Mahalia Jackson's and Winona Judd's mothers had to tell them the truth eventually.  Were their lives worse for that?

In the wake of the Todd Akin upset, Republicans ran for cover using Akin as a human shield and eagerly threw him under the bus.  Ann Coulter opined that the GOP needs to resolutely give up saving the prenatal children of rapists, since there will never be a majority consensus to protect prenatal children in the context of rape.  She may well be right that these prenatal babies are political fodder and can't be saved.  And it may well be true.  But that is a concession that the GOP has already been making for a very long time.  I think such a concession should be made explicitly if it is to be made at all:  Yes, we believe that these are children that are being punished for a crime they didn't commit, but since this is politically untouchable we have to settle for rescuing who we can.  In the words of a great man, "Sure, a bill of divorce is legal -- but it's there because of the hardness of your hearts."

The leftwing side of this hot potato is, implicitly if not explicitly, that rape is vague so abortion should be allowed for anything that might possibly be unwanted sex.  If she would not have wanted the sex had she been sober and/or has regrets the morning after, well, it was not consensual and there's a tiny heart that needs to stop beating.  And social conservatives, Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Christians are in an awkward place with there being many sex acts that may or may not qualify as statutory rape (all rapes recognized as crime are "statutory") that result in pregnancy, and definitely many situations that leave women thinking "I didn't choose this and therefore I shouldn't have to deal with this."  Even many women, especially single women, who consider themselves Christian are afraid to not have that option available in case they find themselves "with [unwanted] child."
  
Many left-leaning citizens are surprised to find that there are prominent pro-life organizations that shoot down "personhood" legislation (laws that would declare fetuses to be legal persons for 14 Amendment protection), not because they believe they are wrong, but because such laws will fail to be approved.  (Left-leaners who rely on CNN and HuffPost to be informed are protected from such complexities about the opposition.)  Personally, I think that pro-lifers need to unite in informing the public about the suffering and terror of fetuses that are chased around the womb by a curette or are born breached in order to have their brains vacuumed out (did sex ed not teach you what a partial birth abortion is?) so that teens and adults at least see the fetus as an intelligent feeling creature, if subhuman.  After all, people who merely blink at ads for starving children write checks for abused animals.  Imagine if fetuses had the empathy afforded to puppies?  Planned Parenthood (what ghastly irony in that name!) purposefully cultivates a culture that disanthropomorphizes prenatal babies to a status below that of cats and dogs.

Liberals that claimed authoritatively that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were a political euphemism to desensitize people to the awful reality of "torture" consistently substitute "fetus" for baby or preemie (think of Obama's quip about a "fetus outside the womb").  Now, does that seem ironic to anyone?

I'll address some other time what specifically was unfortunate about Akin's comment, aside from him giving the news outlets the very opportunity for which they'd been slobbering many months.

What the Designer Had In Mind: Progressivism and Homosexuality

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
  ~ G.K. Chesterton, The Thing.

Brand, God put that rock there for a purpose... and, um... I'm not so sure you should, um... move it.
  ~ Stef, The Goonies

I was talking to an engineer once who is mostly of a libertarian persuasion, and he hinted once that he leans on the side of caution when it comes to social issues.  An interesting perspective from a very "live and let live"-oriented person, but then he deals with guessing at what happens to complex systems when relatively minor changes are brought to bear.  Engineers are more likely than many other professionals to respect the existence of Unintended Consequences.  At least as much because of experience as due to theory...

It is said that one of the hallmarks of a certain kind of engineer is hubris.  It is often the case that a software engineer isn't content to merely maintain someone else's work, and proceeds to tread into the unknown, oblivious that changes he/she makes may be incompatible with the design.  Or to change the fundamental architecture unaware that the original architect might have spent a lot more time thinking it through.

Sometimes, an engineer has no choice.  There may be an absence of information about what the designer had in mind, and the engineer might not be given enough time to understand the design as it is and be forced to "kludge" in some new functionality that is not necessarily compatible.  There might be a latent issue that is more subtle than can really be detected with the battery of tests to which the altered design will be subjected.

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is an interesting idea.  Or rather, an interesting way to play with ideas.  However, I think it has mostly turned into a way to avoid ideas-- or more importantly, a way of neutralizing moral claims.  You like Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" quote but don't like his ideas of liberty applied to fiscal matters?  Bring up that he was a slave-owner.  You like Jesus as some kind of hippy social reformer but don't like some other things he said?  Eh, he probably never said 'em (and religion is lame anyway).  Ad hominem, there is always some alleged motivation to dispel the solemnity of any formidable idea.  Or, as Martin Gardner suggested (quoting Mencken), you can just skip to the "horse laugh."  Deconstruct sincerity into bombasticity, love into sex, ambition into greed, affection into social "transactions," humans into automata.  At what point do we deconstruct deconstruction into mere narcissism?

This is not to say that everything deconstructive is intellectually lazy.  But so little seems to be motivated by insight that it's neither philosophy nor method for most, but something more akin to chemical dependency.   Also, there is the simple fact that deconstruction requires something constructive to begin with--it's very dependency will border on the parasitic without a certain amount of humility.

The ONLY Way to Teach Civics: Involve the Parent

My title sounds a little absolute, but if there are other ideas out there, I would like to know.  My prime concerns are competition and parental authority; the more removed responsibility is from the government, the more removed is control. Control should be with parents.  Yes, vouchers are an important solution; whatever puts the options available to the wealthy available to more of the middle-class is a step int the right direction (and I think an argument can be made for this reaching lower-class families as well).  However, there is no reason that public schools can't involve parental choice more, and this post is about parents' role in their children's upbringing -- not the more general issue of education quality.

In one of my recent posts about the susceptibility of youth to the "vote for Big Government and in return we will make stamp out immorality (intolerance) and give you more freedom and less responsibility" narratives.   I would have linked to Dennis Prager's insightful post about the change in the Cuban American vote.  (Note: Some conservatives have objected that these statistics are skewed and that the Cuban American populace hasn't been so completely won over . This is a valid point, I think, but how many of the 42% that voted for Obama are 18 to 30?)  I'll probably add the link to the older post eventually.

In recent years I became aware that Richard Dreyfuss wants civics to get more attention in schools.  From an actor that has twice portrayed The Evil Republican politician with apparent fiendish glee, I worry about the specifics of this plan. I recently read a high school student's poli sci paper on comparing the Presidential candidates.  It was like reading HuffPost.  There was no comparison of parties' positions or attempt to understand what is going on from both perspectives.  It was just "this is what I believe based on what little I've heard and read." Nothing I experienced in college assures me that any deeper (just more research supporting the HuffPost talking points).  I shudder at what Dreyfuss has in mind to "fix" this.  This is not to say that I believe that Dreyfuss has some conspiratorial agenda--but leftists tend to gravitate policies that further marginalize conservative opinion whether or not it's what they had in mind.

I agree in theory though that children leave high school very unprepared to discuss citizenship and what it means.

Here is my idea:

The First Black President

"I was working out in a local gym shortly after the elections when my trainer, a soft spoken black man in his 30’s, told me that he never dreamed he would see a black president in his lifetime. Other black men and women told me what this meant to them as parents: They could genuinely tell their kids that anything was possible in America. I was deeply moved to hear these things and took them to heart, encouraging my radio audience to pray that Barack Obama would be the greatest president in our nation’s history, which would have made for an incredible story."  
~ Michael L. Brown, conservative radio host, 11/2/2012

"I remember three and a half years ago, when Mr. Obama won the election. And though I was not a big supporter, I was watching that night . . . I just thought, this was great. Everybody is crying, Oprah was crying. I was even crying."
~ Clint Eastwood, RNC Speech 2012

When Clint Eastwood spoke of crying, I thought back to that time.  Even though I had a strong premonition that Obama's term would play out much as it did, I was moved to tears by how clearly moved members of the black community appeared on tv.  I was moved by the depth of their emotions.  With their faces they told the same story that Michael Brown's trainer told him.  Even though I thought Barack Obama was a poor choice for America I was glad for what it meant to so many.

Even I was shocked later at the boldness of Newsweek to claim that there was no legitimate criticism of Obama since it simply had to be motivated by racism--it's white people ganging up on a black man. The criticisms couldn't be taken on their own merits.  Then there was the complicit dismissal of the Tea Party movement on presumed racist motives.  While all sorts of mayhem were being perpetrated at Occupy demonstrations, and racial slurs were being hurled by union activists, the media outlets focused on the alleged acts of unidentified racist bozos as somehow typifying the movement.  While Obama won by a larger margin in 2008 than any recent Democrat, it was presumed to not be about fiscal responsibility in the wake of the financial crisis--it was somehow all about Obama's "blackness" (and his foreign-sounding name).

Andrew Breitbart couldn't get anyone of the people with camera-phones and video-recorders to cough up evidence of the alleged N-word slurs at civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis.  If you watched Hating Breitbart, you would have seen that the much-trumped figure of an armed Tea Partier to go with the concern of armed white people camped out to protest a black President was actually a black Tea Party member, apparently neither frightening nor fear the other Tea Partiers.  The news people simply didn't show him above the neckline as that wouldn't fit their narrative of white people arming themselves in their xenophobic, lynching fervor.  It would have been non sequitur enough if there were some racist idiots that joined the movement and embarrassed them; it's worse that the whole incident was unsubstantiated.

I listened to an answering machine recording filled with messages by a hateful leftist mob, violent threats directed against a conservative non-profit group for being "Tea Party brownshirts."  I tried to find out what was considered so "brownshirt" about the Tea Party.  (Keep in mind that the Sturmabteilung was about terror, intimidation and violence.)  I finally found a site with the evidence.  There was a line of Tea Party protesters and a few were making fun of an old man that was sitting down in their space protesting their protest!  I think they should have behaved better but they weren't threatening him, and wern't seeking out people for intimidation. (Although some activists on the Left seem to do so without much hurrah.)  OWS Occupiers defecating on doorsteps bore more resemblance to "brownshirts."

Wikipedia reported that the Tea Party did not have a significant deviation in terms of race--though it did have a deviation in terms of gender.  It would be easier to argue prima facie that Tea Partiers were unfriendly to women (which would be a major theme for Democrats in ) than to blacks, though either argument would be pretty superficial.  Yet, even the Wikipedia article repeated the non-news that was ubiquitous that the Tea Party was "mostly white."  You mean, like the line I stood in at Target today?  Like my workplace?  Like America?  This irrelevant datum is a calculated distraction.  

And TIME editor Richard Stengel calling the ultra-radical Salafis the Tea Party of Muslim democracy?  Well, all I have to say to that is: Joseph Goebbels was the Richard Shtengele of German journalism.

After the Republican National Convention showed so many faces of America, why did the perception linger that Republicans were only about electing pasty white males?  Could it be that the public was shown what would fit the popular "Republicans are racists" narrative?

The marginalization of fiscal conservatives and social conservatives and traditional religious people (aside from Muslims, ironically) in media and pop culture has made me have much less of a sense of humor about the Left's hegemony in news and entertainment.  I believe that many well-meaning people are seduced by the superficially warm and caring positions of progressives, but as a movement progressivism has gone past the point of losing credibility and appeared as a virulent leviathan.  This is, of course, crazy wingnut talk to you if you happen to be "left of center," but if you are, hopefully you might still be able to acknowledge that the Left veered in 2012 from the usual political nastiness into the ugliest combination of demagoguery and ad hominum attacks that we've witnessed in some time. Hell, you might even have the decency to be embarrassed about it; unless you think that the ends always justify the means.

Obama's famous 2004 rebuke to "those who are preparing to divide us" (his DNC keynote address) seems like a cynical joke after this election year.  It was a nasty, nasty subterfuge.  Obama has demonstrated by his actions that he believed none of the words he was saying that night (unless his views on division have "evolved" since then), but was deliberately projecting the vices of the Democratic Party onto conservatives.

The base level of anti-conservative warfare has done as much as anything to make me realize how seriously unhinged America has become.  Liberal writers and reporters did more to awaken me to this anti-conservative intolerance than anything conservative commentators have said or done.  The Left made it so that the bias can't be ignored.

The Divider-in-Chief puts arm around the man elected in 2008. 

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