Purveyors of Passivity Promote Death

The Virginia Tech shooting highlights two different factors in American life that facilitated Seung-Hui Cho’s mission of slaughter: society is divided into those who take action and those who don’t; and the “non-violence” crowd doesn’t recognize the appropriateness of selected violence. The end result is that a large segment of the population has no ability to come to its own defense. They resemble panicked, bleating sheep running around or cowering as they are slaughtered.

The reason that there are police officers and soldiers is because society realizes that there are evil people and countries that need to be corralled, and most of the general public has neither the stomach nor wherewithal to do deal with the problem individually.

These people who watch over the flock are called sheepdogs.

But, what happens when an individual in society is confronted with a violent situation and there is no sheepdog available? It is really quite a simple answer: live or die fighting; or die cowering. Admittedly, sometimes you can cower and survive. Here’s an example, as recounted by Canadian Mark Styne:

Every December 6th, my own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the “Montreal massacre,” the 14 female students of the Ecole Polytechnique murdered by Marc Lepine (born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you’d never know that from the press coverage). As I wrote up north a few years ago:

Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lepine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate — an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The “men” stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.

Mark Styne hopes for a better America. There are examples, such as the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, who took down the 9/11 hijackers before they could accomplish their task. Or, a second example is the airline passengers who subdued Richard Reid as he tried to light the explosives in his shoe. And, there are many stories of average citizens who accomplished phenomenal feats on the mean streets because there was something in their nature that propelled them to action when need be. I call those people situational sheepdogs.

Why is it that a group of healthy, able bodied body people take no proactive action as a single person methodically kills them? Of course, it is a given that aggressive action by resistors is likely to result in death or injury to some, but the odds are that a group of individuals can often overcome an aggressor at close quarters.

When faced with the mortal danger from a potential killer, it is understandable why a person might not react in an immediate aggressive manner. However, when the first shot is fired, there is nothing to be lost except your life to inaction. That is the lesson of Virginia Tech, Ecole Polytechnique and Columbine. An account of the killing in Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall showed that some students and teachers did take some defensive actions, but no one went on the offensive. No one started to hunt nor set-up an ambush of Cho.

The reason for the lack of proactive action is that there is no culture of survival built into the psyche of these people. Here’s how that happens.

In 1999, Littleton, Colorado, had the Columbine High School shooting incident where two armed punks methodically executed cowering students. You would think that the Littleton community would have learned a lesson about the necessity to indoctrinate its children with a will to resist and fight. Apparently that is not the case.

Trumpeting a song non-violence, some residents of Littleton, Colorado, are seeking to block the display of the statue of deceased Navy Seal Danny Dietz. Dietz, a Littleton resident, died in a personally heroic action in Afghanistan. To memorialize Danny, a statue has been constructed depicting him holding his rifle.

Opponents of the statue have said, in light of the 1999 Columbine High School tragedy, kids shouldn't be walking past something that depicts violence.

As I recall, a number of Littleton area police officers risked their lives in an attempt to save students by engaging the Columbine punks in a gun fight. I have not heard of anyone arguing that the police should have refrained from using violence.

Also objecting was Emily Cassidy Fuchs, who didn't want the statue at Berry Park because of its proximity to three schools.

"I don't think young children should be exposed to that in that way - unsupervised by their parents or any adults," said Emily Cassidy, one of the mothers.

Here’s the message sent out by the opponents of the statue:

It has come to our attention that the southeast corner of Lowell and Berry (which is open-space land owned by the Left Bank Condominiums) is the proposed location for a memorial statue honoring a young Navy Seal. While our hearts go out to the family of this brave young man, we have serious concerns regarding the graphic and violent detail the statue portrays. As a community, we cannot allow the many young children in this area to be exposed to a larger than life-size grenade launching machine gun.

In light of our community's experience with the Columbine tragedy, and the clear message of non-violence that we teach in Littleton schools, what is our city thinking?

For the Littleton detractors, a statue of a person merely holding a weapon is an unacceptable image of violence. Were the armed police officers rushing to the aid of the Columbine students unacceptable images of violence?

While this is going on, there is a school district in Texas that is training their students to take action.

Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got — books, pencils, legs and arms.

“Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success,”…

But, even in Texas there are the detractors,

That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.

Get children killed? As I stated in my blog, Are Sheepdogs Born Or Raised?:

…no kidding Buckwheat! That is exactly the mentality of sheep, otherwise known as a majority of educators and others. Somebody is going to get killed. The question is who and how many?

Those of society who counsel passivity, while undoubtedly meaning well, are unworthy of the sacrifices made on their behalf by their betters, the professional and amateur sheepdogs. The non-violence at any cost agenda is responsible for furthering a self-destructive philosophy. And, the non-violence message will be responsible for more deaths as it saps the very life blood out of the best society that the world has to offer. Non-violent advocates can not recognize the evil staring them in the face, and they don’t have the personal fortitude to do anything about it if they did. Jesus was wrong; the meek shall not inherit the earth. They never have and they never will, unless God smites the evil doers himself. And, that would be violent; wouldn’t it?