I do not know how well this will work in my WordPress blog format, but I want to use this entry to chronicle the use of the Virginia Tech tragedy for an agenda. So, my intent will be to update it as I see a new one. So far, we have:
Anti-gun control – Josh Claybourn at In The Agora, with a link to Instapundit, says that Virginia Tech’s “gun free zone” regulations assisted the killer.
Pro-gun control – The New York Times calls for stricter gun control and, in a news article, notes that Virginia has some of the weakest gun control laws in the nation.
Anti-evolution and abortion – Answers in Genesis (h/t Dispatches from the Culture Wars) blames the shootings on an era where students are taught that plants, animals, and humans arose from natural processes and where abortions are allowed.
Public health – I have suggested that public mental health concerns should be just as much of the debate as gun control concerns. However, at this point, I think that “just as much” should be close to zero. The tragedy is too recent for us to make good public policy decisions based on the incident.
Iraq – Blue Herald says that Iraq has “2 Virginia Techs a day.”
Immigration – When it was thought that the shooter might be a Chinese national here on a student visa, Debbie Schlussel concluded that this was “yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students.”
Movies and video games – Dragon Quill says: “[T]he bottom line is that we have created a society in which violence is an acceptable way of dealing with problems. Movies and video games idealize violence. Stress and frustration is our way of life. Children grow up with little supervision, and with pressures on them that were unheard of even a few years ago. We’ve created a society that in many ways resembles a pressure cooker. And anybody who’s used one of those things knows, there has to be a valve to allow the steam to get out, or the entire pot will explode.”
UPDATES BELOW THE FOLD
The need to engage against violence in our government and society (MP3 audio file). Obama suggests that the massacre should cause us to reflect on why the nation hasn’t moved forward in the last 40 years and the idea that our disengagement is part of the reason and that the disengagement leads to a feeling of powerlessness, hopelessness, despair, and a tolerance for violence. He makes it clear that he thinks perhaps nothing could have been done to guard against the kind of violence that took place at Virginia Tech, but perhaps we can get engaged and battle against the more abstract, subtle kinds of violence (which he notes does not rise to the level of the Virginia Tech violence) like the verbal violence of Imus directed at young women who were role models; the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country; the violence of children whose voices are not heard and communities are ignored who don’t have access to a decent education who are surrounded by drugs and crime. So much of this violence, he says is rooted in our failure to recognize that we are all connected, the failure to recognize that we are our brothers’ keepers.
Young men today are spineless wimps. “Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.”
Co-ed dorms Majikthise linked to someone named Carol Iannone but the link seems to be broken. Apparently Ms. Iannone suggested that if it had been a single-sex dorm, the killer wouldn’t have been able to enter so easily.
Nonjudgmentalism Ace of Spades: “our country has a culture — positive in many ways — of making no judgments about people based on looks or the vibe they give off, or, rather, at least not sharing such forbidden judging-a-book-by-its-cover thoughts with others. Especially not someone in a position of authority. We’ve been conditioned since infancy with thousands of morality plays that just because someone seems weird doesn’t mean they are weird. Or bad. Or dangerous. The trouble is that weirdness has a pretty high correlation with badness and dangerousness. ”
Drugs. Third hand report that Tucker Carlson said, “Kids that age have emotional problems. They take acid and go crazy.”
Rudeness and “a sea of pornography” – It’s the coarsening of our culture that led to this per Mark Noonan. When you read this one, it sounds a bit like bin Laden’s purported reasons for hating us.
Atheism Dinesh D’Souza up to his usual inanity.
One of my first thoughts was ‘what is the value of life ? As much as I get annoyed at certain positions by my RCC, I realize in light of this tragedy how I respect them for their doctrine of ‘respect for life from conception to death’.That may mean anti-abortion on one hand and anti-capital punishment on another,and it may mean government-sponsored programs for welfare and health, ,sometimes including refuge for illegal immigrants.Some of the church’s positions are indeed annoying to me ,but I do deeply respect the consistancy of the church on the doctrine of respect for human life. I guess that’s what I hope we keep in mind when we debate all the different agendas stemming from all those so wantonly killed.
Much of what I see from social conservatives (can’t speak for the RCC particularly) seems to be a valuing of life from conception to birth and from brain death to physical death, but not in between.
http://www.intheagora.com/archives/2007/04/the_debate_over.html
But who’s blaming “teh gays?” We can’t have a national tragedy without someone blaming queers. Someone get Robertson on the phone – stat!
Fred Phelps is apparently on the move, so I have to believe it won’t be too long before he, at least, tries to tag this one on the homersexshuls.
My greater point in my above post was that religious or Christian belief doesn’t always dictate the same agenda. At what stages of life is there an agenda and when isn’t there? What agendas will the VA Tech tragedy bring to the surface,and how and when will life be respected? Is gun control a ‘pro-life’ agenda,or is that only for abortion? The RCC has always been in favor of government welfare programs to aid the poor .Other Christians just look at that as ‘socialism'( so it would never be an agenda).There is great diversity in agendas yet on the surface for non-Christians all Christianity is one belief.I guess ‘my agenda’ is to point out the diversity of thinking of those who call ourselves ‘Christian’.
If we’re playting this game we might as well throw in race: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0407/Obama_on_Virginia_Tech_and_Violence.html
I, for one would just like to see everybody shut the hell up about all the ancillary causes of this tragedy, and for once just blame the freak that did it.
There doesn’t have to be 36 underlying reasons for why this guy snapped. Let the families bury their dead, for God’s sake.
Tim,
You and I agree on this one. Screw the scapegoat searches, it’s happened, there’s no way for it to unhappen, and why? Because the guy was screwed up. That’s it.
Let’s shoo the vultures away and get to healing.
There are so many issues regarding the horror in Blacksburg yesterday, it is really difficult to sort it all out. I am dating someone whose son will be starting college in the fall of 2008 and she is really concerned about safety on college campuses. It seems like a different eon when I started college, (of course many years have passed since then, before The Branch Davidian debacle, The Oklamoma City bombing, Columbine, the school shooting in Paducah, Ky, 9/11, and all the rest) that parents who send their children anywhere, be it preschool to college, always have to think of these things now. Our office was really subdued today, a day we should have been celebrating the end of tax season (not that we aren’t grateful that tax season is over, but a pervasive sadness), like those everwhere feel.
What–no one’s blamed this on the lack of prayer in schools yet?
The co-ed dorm thing is a bit silly. This guy wasn’t deterred by the illegality of murder, but would have been thwarted by dorm visitation rules? This nitwit also speculated that being an English major played a role.
One sad side effect of these mass tragedies is that it seems to cause a lot of the otherwise normal-appearing nutjobs in our society to spout off their various scary or stupid worldviews.
Tragedies like this result in a lot of folks telling themselves, “See, I was right all along. Now I’m righter than ever.”
Just spit-balling here, but I’ve read that times of adversity lead to more conformity in animal populations. I wonder if big tragedies trigger something in the human mind that demands the person cling even tighter to their personal beliefs (which, no doubt, they believe to be beliefs held by a majority of the community). By contrast, diversity is encouraged or more readily tolerated in times of plenty. So, maybe it’s only during good times that people are really open to changing their minds about whatever.
Probably I’m reading too much into whatever it was I read.
Doug –
You comments align with a theory that I’ve been considering – that we have more stupidity these days because, as a society, we are materially successful enough to afford it.
Societies where everyone works 18-hour days just to eat don’t seem to debate song lyrics and nose rings, very much – then again, they don’t get to sing a lot, either.
I think there is some truth to that Doug, I am trying to calm Denise down (the girl I have been dating), about not letting this get us all down. A terrible tragedy but we can’t let this run our lives. As was pointed out, there are always going to be nutcases out there, and it is impossible for college administrators to have “20-20” on every conceivable problem regarding the asshole who did this. The Muncie Star-Press had an article about how Ball State may change their security procedures as no doubt other college campuses will be doing. We can’t live in fear, it definitely gives one pause for thought though. Sorry for my continuing typos, meant to say on last night’s post everywhere not everwhere. Our office is having a party tonight to celebrate the end of tax season. Sorry for my ranting, (I think I am going through post tax season decompression, our office will be closed until next Monday, April 23), it’s going to be great having 5 days off, after working 7 days a week since February 26, a nice period to recharge the batteries. I agree that the 24-7 news cycles of Fox and CNN don’t really give folks a chance to absorb what happened and to let the folks who lost loved ones a chance to grieve. Go DUBIOUS county, sorry for the lame joke. In honor of my post tax season goofiness and to give recognition to good secretaries and spell checkers!
An interesting essay of some applicability to the events at Virginia Tech (though it was written a year and half ago) by Hans Magnus Enzensberger:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/493.html