Friday, July 20, 2007

Leftists to blame for a massacre of Americans

Did you notice how the trigger-happy "progressive" pundits have hastily assigned guilt for the Virginia Tech shooting to the American trigger-happy gun culture? How they use hateful epithets to project hatefulness on their fellow citizens? How they violently accuse Americans of violence, both physical and verbal? One has to wonder if the "progressives" possess the intellectual capacity to notice how ridiculous their method of psychological projection appears to an objective observer.

I can't help but deduce that the ugly picture they paint of America is something they see every morning in the proverbial mirror - a brainless, spineless, useless creature with an ego so huge that it obscures the horizon. It's the image they love to loathe, and they project this loathing on the rest of us with all the energy of their "progressive" synapses. "Take this, America! You made me do this!"

"Progressive" opinions about the Virginia Tech massacre differ in range, caliber, and precision - from gloating at Virginians over lax gun laws to such nightmarish mind-trips as giving semi-automatic weapons with plenty of ammunition to every thug, homeless guy, and crazy in the ghetto - throwing in some money for bus fare to the white suburbs - with the hope that then white America might finally wake up to its own immorality. To be a "progressive" you must also believe that everything is America's fault. No matter what happens, there can only be one culprit: rich white America. This country has become the formulaic murderous butler in just about every "who-done-it" Hollywood movie issued since the censure of Joe McCarthy.

Last week on Good Morning America Terry Moran famously advised, "Don't feel too sorry for the victims. They were probably all white, rich, and privileged." Referring to the falsely accused Duke University students, he unwittingly betrayed a moral stratagem that the "progressive" groupthink has been using to dissect any calamity that befell their fellow Americans, framing it in terms of politically correct class struggle.

In the days of "Beltway Sniper" shootings five years ago I debated a group of "progressive humanists" who "weren't too sorry for the victims" either, calling them exactly that - "white, rich, and privileged" - even though it wasn't always the case. The way these "humanists" could dehumanize their fellow humans by wrapping them into Marxist labels was confounding. Even more confounding was their compulsive need to look for redeeming signs of class strife in any sociopathic murder case.

Today the same "progressives" ritualistically claim high moral ground by deriding the mainstream media for hyping the murder of some 33 rich white kids at Virginia Tech .... let's take a look at the "rich kids" part of the formula. It's important because Virginia Tech's psychotic murderer didn't like "rich kids" either. The killer spoke about his hate at length in his final message. It seems that Cho Seung-Hui and the "progressive" authors who try to explain him share the same blistering class envy. Is it a coincidence - or is it something more profound? Is it perhaps a common denominator?

Considering their own privileged positions and mostly middle class backgrounds, the "progressives" loathing of "rich kids" can hardly be traced to meaningful personal grievances. They seem to be deeply infected by something else, something I like to call "second-hand envy" and "phantom grievances." This is similar to the Marxist concept of false consciousness, only not as far-fetched. Let's see what this means.

There's little doubt that Cho, a mentally disturbed kid, had been exposed to the "social justice" and "class strife" rhetoric in school. These teachings are a near mandatory supplement served to most American kids, explicitly or implicitly, courtesy of public education. Once in college the intake of the "progressive" formula only tends to increase, involving heavy doses of every grievance man, woman, or beast has ever had from the beginning of time, factual or imaginary. All this is served up under the generic label of "social sciences." So when a young student's budding paranoia begins to torment him with phantoms of horrific social injustice, prompting him to shoot indiscriminately at the dehumanized mass of "rich kids" while imagining himself a heroic avenger of the oppressed victims, is it really the fault of the National Rifle Association?

Was Cho denied privileges? Being a senior at one of the most prestigious engineering universities in the US and living on campus is a privilege by most standards. Yet his suicidal message contained a long diatribe about his hatred of the wealthy and the privileged.... In another time and place this passage might be hailed as a moving manifesto of an idealistic revolutionary hero fighting for social causes. Che Guevara, anybody? Who knows how many revolutionary "heroes" of the past who are lionized on today's campuses had been tormented by the same mental disorder that turned Cho into a mass murderer? Che Guevara also believed that "a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate." Che had killed many more "rich kids" than Cho - yet his deeds are glorified by Hollywood, his writings are published worldwide, and his pictures are plastered over the t-shirts of a new generation of "rich kids"...

Depression and paranoia do terrible things to the mind regardless of ideology, turning the individual into a loose cannon. Throw a radical ideology into the mix and it quickly removes the safety lock and points the weapon in a certain direction. Why is it that in the previous decades, when life was tougher, guns were just as available, and the ratio of mental disorders was about the same, mass shootings were unheard of? Some would say that those people had not yet been corrupted by moral relativism, desensitized by Hollywood's fantasy violence and glorification of crime, nor addicted to gory point-and-shoot videogames. All valid points - yet one major reason for this hardly gets any notice. I mean, of course, the dehumanizing effect of the so-called "progressive" education.

The truth is that the radical "progressive" ideology (a broad term embracing many offshoots of Marxism) dehumanizes people more effectively than any violent point-and-shoot video game ever could. It pits various groups of people against one another by cultivating envy and grievances that are mostly imaginary and second-hand. In the politically correct book of "progress," man is no longer judged by the content of his character - but by the color of his skin, class, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other secondary attribute. The trick is that when a secondary attribute becomes the primary one, man loses his unique individuality and becomes a mere social function, a drone in a collective, a peg in the machine, a sacrificial animal on the altar of "progress."

"Progressivism" remains more or less benign as long the nation on which exists like a parasite remains wealthy. But as soon as the wealth is squandered and there are no surpluses left to redistribute, human sacrifice begins. The final argument behind every well-meaning "progressive" scheme is always a gun pointed at those unwilling to be enslaved or give up their wealth for redistribution. Planned mass murders and incarcerations of "enemies of the people" committed by every communist regime on the planet provide enough evidence of that. "Progressive" ideology denies moral absolutes, yet it assumes the moral authority to give a license to kill in the name of a delirious utopia....

Under Che's brief management Cuban economy hit an all-time low, quickly turning one of the wealthiest Latin American countries into one of the poorest. To accomplish this great feat Che murdered thousands of "rich kids" of the bourgeois class who stood in the way. If this isn't criminal insanity, what is? Yet "progressive" educators in the U.S. continue to decorate classrooms with Che Guevara portraits and arrange "educational" school trips to Cuba. Tell me this is not a mind-trip of madmen. The inmates are now running the asylum. Which brings us back to the issue of school shootings.

Besides acting as a catalyst on a depressed mind, "progressive" education is also a major cause of depression in itself. Imagine growing up while believing that yours is the worst country on the planet, guilty of death and suffering of millions of poor people worldwide, who are being wantonly killed, robbed, enslaved, raped, and tortured so that your mom could shop at the mall and your dad could fill up the tank. The species are dying, the rainforest is dwindling, the ozone hole is growing, and the globe is warming. If it is frightful enough to turn a sensitive adult into a guilt-ridden neurotic, think about a ten-year-old who, in addition, lives with the fear that if we all don't die of skin cancer by the age of thirty, global warming and raising sea levels will finish everyone off anyway.

Somehow these particular paranoid fantasies cooked up in the mind of a madman have not yet caused anyone to be detained and evaluated at a mental health facility. No court has determined that they constitute an imminent danger to society. While there is plenty of fingerpointing with regards to the Virginia Tech shooting, someone should also mention the responsibility of those who poisoned Cho's disturbed mind with class hatred, envy, and falsely interpreted ideas of justice and social duty.

Could those educators who impose such insanity on their students please explain if there is anything, in their view, left in this world for our children to live for? Other than, of course, to continue the struggle for "progress." But that is manifestly not a skill or a trait of character that will help them to become happy, self-sustaining, professional individuals. All it can do is replenish the cancerous growth that is consuming this society, replacing its productive and vibrant cells with mutated dysfunctional neoplasm.

Now we can only guess if the injection of "progressive" class hatred had aggravated Cho's madness, but it surely had given him a frame of reference and the direction to channel his rage. Without it, perhaps, a certain amount of medication could help him to move on and focus on writing more of his disturbing plays, maybe even joining a circle of his peers in Hollywood. He could make a career by scripting those shockingly dark, violent movies that demonize Western Civilization, Christianity, Capitalism, and Family - always a winner in the Movie Academy circles. If his student play McBeef is any indication, Cho could have become our next Tarantino, conditioning a new generation of movie goers with irrational violence and high scatological drama. No need to stalk "hedonistic brats and snobs" anymore - they'd be stalking Cho themselves, some of them offering free sex for an autograph.

Source



Ayaan Hirsi Ali Squashes an anti-American fanatic

Post lifted from Moonbattery

Ayaan Hirsi Ali escaped from Muslim oppression in Africa and the Middle East only to meet up with it again in the Netherlands, where she became a member of Parliament, but was then driven out of the country by dhimmis after incurring the wrath of Muslims for daring to criticize their barbaric cult. Her autobiographical Infidel comes highly recommended.

Hirsi Ali has shown not only tremendous courage in standing up to the Islamic thugs who murdered her friend Theo Van Gogh, but an incredibly strong stomach in being able to sit through an interview with the gut-wrenchingly vile Avi Lewis of Canada's taxpayer-financed CBC. The interview featured a relentless barrage of cartoonish anti-American propaganda from the insufferably condescending Lewis, who accused America of being a theocracy where abortion doctors are routinely shot, "homophobia is rampant," etc., etc.

When Hirsi Ali effortlessly shot down his hyperbolic allegations regarding America's oppression of Muslims by pointing out that if Muslims really were oppressed, they would leave, Lewis started to lose his composure, sneering nastily:

Your faith in American democracy is just eh eh delightful.
Her calm reply:

It's the best democracy in the world. It's the best place to be.
On CBC, this constitutes blasphemy. Lewis was becoming visibly unhinged as he sputtered:

Tell that to the people who believe there have been a couple of stolen elections. That the democracy is completely broken.
When she countered his allegations that the USA is a plutocracy by observing that you can arrive penniless in America and become fabulously wealthy, Lewis completely lost his composure:

Is there a school where they teach you these American clichés? Is it part of your application process that you have to… I'm sorry… I'm so upset that I'm losing my cards here. I can't believe you just said that.
The time had come for Hirsi Ali to stop pretending Lewis was mature enough to conduct a rational conversation, and to put him in his place:

I've lived in countries that had no democracy, that had no Founding Fathers […] so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom, because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.
That about sums up the mentality of the liberal media.



Australia: Hate-filled Leftist broadcaster in trouble at last

Note the following comment from Carlton on George Bush: "Not so this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his sleight of hand"

BESIEGED 2UE radio jock Mike Carlton is "on borrowed time" as management yesterday publicly outed him as "despicable", "disgraceful", "pathetic", "appalling", "unreasonable" and "unbelievable". Setting up a clear mandate to dump the breakfast host, Carlton was hung out to dry by a furious Southern Cross Broadcasting management yesterday after telling listeners he "loathed" and "hated" his former colleague Stan Zemanek. Carlton said he would only go to his funeral "to check he was actually dead."

The comments, said to have made Zemanek's wife Marcella "sick to the stomach" and devastated his two daughters as they prepared for the funeral, were born of "a despicable hatred of the kind seen only in the Middle East", Carlton's boss Southern Cross Broadcasting's group general manager Graham Mott said yesterday. "It's just despicable. As I said to Mike it's hatred like you see in the Middle East, it's absolute rubbish. "There's no going back, no recovery from those words," he said.

Carlton's contract is up for renewal at the end of the year but the stinging attack from management - which was reiterated in an unprecedented memo to all Southern Cross Broadacsting staff yesterday - gives ample cause to sack Carlton for bringing the station into disrepute, a station source said. "This is totally unheard of. He's got to be out the door," a 2UE source said last night. Leaving open the option to dismiss Carlton, Mott said it was a matter for behind closed doors. "That's not for public consumption," he said.

But he was so incensed by Carlton's behaviour - and by that of drive presenter Steve Price who replayed the comments on his show and condemned Carlton's "bad taste and bad behaviour" - that he described the incident in his memo as one of 2UE's "darkest moments". "This whole episode is one of our darkest moments and I hope we can move forward with the knowledge that while we may not always agree with each other and we may not like each other; we should at least respect the dead along with their family and friends and we MUST NEVER subject our listeners to such disgraceful behaviour ever again," the memo to more than 100 staff read. "Mike has gone too far and his comments are despicable," it said. Mott said it was a cowardly act to publicly attack a dead man just hours before he was due to be cremated. "I knew they didn't like each other but you don't use airtime to play it out - and it's not exactly very brave to do that when the guy is dead is it?"

Source



A return to paternalism that might do some good

This has a lot of similarities to how Australian blacks were managed in the '50s and earlier

ABORIGINAL leader Noel Pearson yesterday hailed a $48 million program aimed at wresting four Cape York communities from the grip of passive welfare as "the most significant reform in welfare since the Second World War". Under the plan announced yesterday by Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough and Mr Pearson, the 3000 residents of four key Aboriginal communities on Cape York will have to accept responsibility for the healthy upbringing of their children, properly maintain and pay rent on their homes, and work to get off "sit-down money" welfare payments. Failure to accept responsibility could result in having a significant portion of welfare payments made to individuals taken from them and managed by a responsible family or community member.

Mr Brough said $48million had been allocated for the four-year trial at the Aurukun, Hopevale, Mossman Gorge and Coen communities, commencing early next year. Under the plan, the Queensland Government will introduce legislation establishing a Family Responsibilities Commission to enforce the welfare obligations. The commission would be chaired by a retired magistrate and include respected Aboriginal members of each of the four communities participating in the trial.

Mr Pearson explained that the commission would work with families and communities to deal with issues of drug and alcohol dependency, violence, child neglect and truancy, gambling and poor financial management.

The federal funding commitment was made after Mr Brough's cabinet colleagues accepted recommendations in a report titled From Hand Out to Hand Up, compiled by the Cape York Institute, which is headed by Mr Pearson. Mr Pearson, who has fought for nine years for reform of what he calls "welfare passivity", said the Government's support for the institute's plan would allow comprehensive reforms to rebuild social norms and create incentives for economic development and growth in Cape York.

Mr Brough said the Government's support was "an expression of the overwhelming desire of people in Cape York to ensure their children grow up in a safe home, attend school and enjoy the same opportunities as any other Australian child". "The trials in these four communities aim to promote engagement in the real economy, reduce passive welfare and rebuild social norms, particularly as they affect the wellbeing of children. "A major feature of the reforms is the introduction of a set of obligations attaching to welfare payments, which will require parents to send their children to school and protect them from harm and neglect. "The housing reforms require tenants to comply with lease conditions. "If people do not uphold the law, welfare sanctions may be introduced to those convicted of domestic violence, drugs or alcohol offences."

Mr Pearson was careful to emphasise that people would not have welfare money docked before a "help" process, including interviews with relationships and violence counsellors and-or financial managers, was exhausted. If recalcitrant or criminal conduct persisted, the Family Responsibilities Commission would determine whether there had been a breach of any of the "obligations". The federal Government will amend legislation to enable Centrelink to redirect a person's welfare payments as directed by the commission.

The federal funding also provides for the establishment of a trust to assist parents to contribute to their children's education and, in some cases, to help send them away to secondary boarding colleges and university. Mr Pearson said Hopevale was "the best home in the world" when he was a child, despite being brought up in poverty. "It's going to be a very rocky road," he said, "but if we get these changes made, I believe that one day soon my community will have children who will look back on their childhood and say, 'This is the best place in the world'."

Source

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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