The message of the Virginia Tech massacre:

We are all very vulnerable.


While parents, poets, pundits, and politicians struggle to make sense of the senseless, we all grapple with the sad reality that evil is among us and tragedy could visit us at any time.

Not encouraging words, I know, but a stark reality that, when faced with an open mind and a soul yearning for meaning, can lead one to a deeper lesson of the Virginia Tech massacre:
cherish and celebrate life while we can.

"You never know when your time is up" sounds cliched, but like many cliche's it's really a truism. We don't know when our time is up. (Excluding suicides & death row executions.) Did any of those poor souls at Virginia Tech that day think that they were going to be murdered, would never see family and friends again? Of course not. And yet, it happened to be true.

The morning of September 11, 2001 the people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon went about their normal routines, never giving thought to the possibility of the evil that would soon visit them. It's given the phrase "...out of the blue" an all-too literal meaning.

As they dropped them off at America's Kids Day Care Center on a fine spring day in 1995, the parents of 15 children never dreamed their kids would join 153 other people as casualties, and over 800 injured, in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Even the men and women stationed at Pearl Harbor on the quiet morning of December 7, 1941 never saw it coming. Though there's debatable evidence of some in FDR's administration having some prior knowledge, the 2403 souls lost that day and the 1178 injured never foresaw that their idyllic Hawaiian morning would be so menacingly shattered. Even on a naval military base and while much of the world was already at war, somehow, they never saw it coming.

If even those who don uniform and prepare for battling evil forces can be caught so unawares, how then shall the rest of us ever be prepared for the capricious nature of random acts of violence?

As Peggy Noonan reflected in her Wall Street Journal column, "...all those big cops, scores of them, hundreds, with the latest, heaviest, most sophisticated gear, all the weapons and helmets and safety vests and belts. It looked like the brute force of the state coming up against uncontrollable human will."

Barricading oneself in a castle-like fortress and never leaving would be one approach to prepare for unforeseen violence, but hardly practical, and hardly living.

The inescapable truth is that we are all very vulnerable, nearly anywhere and at anytime, to the unpredictable actions of a lone lunatic with malicious intent. This is especially true when the element of self-preservation is absent. When a violent psychopath isn't concerned about his own safety (intends, in fact, to kill himself anyway) than no risks are too great for him to take, and our response options are limited. And this only pertains to the recognized threat anyway, if the duration of an attack even allows time for a defensive response.

The entire idea of trying to prepare for or reduce the likelihood of attacks like the one at Virginia Tech seems naively misguided, if not impossible. In the vast expanse of our United States with 300 million inhabitants, it's simply not practical for us all to be guarded against the unpredictable threat of "uncontrollable human will", even if we lived in a police state.

Rather, our time and energies should be focused on living our lives to the fullest, on embracing and celebrating life while we have it, on enriching it's value for ourselves and those around us, and contributing what we can to make our little corner of the world a better place to live. And that, in turn will help to make it a safer place, for all of us.

Brad

The mystery of Leftist thought

Okay, thought may be an overly generous adjective (if not a contradiction in terms) to apply to the mindset that plagues most Lefties. Perhaps we'll just stick with mindset, as it can also evoke lockstep, which describes the manner in which most Lefties march when it comes to undermining and weakening the work of our armed services. Embarrassed apologists for even the most benign presence of our military anywhere in the world, other than safely tucked-in behind our own borders (and not on any school campuses), the Left simply doesn't understand the proper mission of our military and their central role in the Global War On Terror.

Perhaps the college-bound Bill Clinton's infamous draft-dodging derision for our armed forces is, ironically, the most honest admission of the Left's general view of our men and women in uniform: "I despise the military."

This often hidden contempt for the very people who purchased and now maintain our freedom begins to explain the Left's rush to defeat in Iraq today, and their decades of opposition to America's influence for human liberty around the world, even before the ungrateful 60's radicals started destroying college campuses. But this anti-military malevolence doesn't fully satisfy as rationale for the Left's opposition to the current U.S. military deployments. Not when one considers the suicidal aspect of destroying the strength and effectiveness of the forces which preserve our precious freedoms.
They do, after all, benefit from those same freedoms.

So, what is it that drives the Left's thought processes? How can they possibly look at America's role in defending liberty around the world for generations, and yet repeatedly conclude that America is somehow a greater threat to world peace than those who've stated and demonstrated their evil desires to destroy us and our allies? Is it merely a spirit of rooting-for-the-underdog, taken to insane extremes?

Using that analogy, they root for the rabid street-mongrel who's come into our neighborhood, and threatens to harm our children, meanwhile scolding our own St. Bernard for protecting them and guarding his territory. They'd rather kennel our watchdog/protector for being too aggressive and confrontational, for presuming the mongrel is a threat just because he's snarling, baring his foamy teeth, and bristling his back.
They insist that, surely, our dog must have provoked him somehow, and all we need to do is feed the rabid street-mongrel, show it some affection, and try to understand it, and all will be well.
Oh- and send our dog to diversity trai-- I mean, obedience training.

What if it's not the underdog in our enemy that liberals are sympathizing with? Could it be our enemy's ideology itself? Could it be that they favor the intolerance, misogyny, antisemitism, antichristianism, anticapitalism, and antimodernity quest for a global Islamic theocracy? That seems an unlikely motive, even for the staunchest Leftists.

Is it possible, then, that Democrats and other Lefties (here and in Europe) actually believe that if we get out of the Middle East, stop supporting Israel, and just leave the Islamofascists alone, that we'll all be safe, and we can put all this self-induced conflict behind us?

A naivete born of innocence in a child, we embrace, even cherish. It's precious and sentimental. The naivete born of ignorance on the Left, is damnable. It's dangerous and sorta mental.*

Here are a few simple questions that demand answers from the opponents of the GWOT and the war in Iraq:
Why do they want our military to be weaker than it currently is?
Whose military would they favor to be stronger than our own?
What, exactly, do they believe is the proper role of our military in the GWOT?
Do they believe there is a GWOT underway, or should there even be one?
If there is an Islamofascist terrorist enemy that threatens us, then where , when , and how shall that threat be met?

These big questions that beg for answers from the Left never seem to get asked of national Lefties, be they major Democratic officials or leftist university professors. If we could get rational, indepth answers to some of these questions, perhaps we could begin to unravel the mysteries of Leftist thought, and move them beyond sloganeering and cliches, but don't hold your breath.

* mental: "Of, relating to, or affected by mental disorder." Webster's II, New Revised Dictionary