Writes Michelle Malkin at RCP: Wanted: A Culture of Self-Defense

There’s no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated “safe spaces” to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions — while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University’s anti-Minuteman Project protesters).

Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.

And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.

What in the world is going on? First we have Derbyshire and Blake and now this. First, why do we have to find blame in places other than the fact that a truly disturbed individual simply did an unthinkable act and cracked. There is only so much that can be done in a free society to prevent such situations. This attempt to blame a general “liberal” attitude at universities and that this somehow has led to a culture of “conflict avoidance” that somehow, by inference, led to people not defending themselves on Monday–that is utterly ridiculous.

And I’m sorry, but this idea that we need to arm students is simply not a good one. How is that supposed to increase the level of intellectual debate that Malkin is allegedly so concerned about? That’s what we need: armed semi-adults failing exams–that’s a lovely image.

Yes, it is possible (though hardly a guarantee) that if there had been armed persons in the classrooms that Cho could have been stopped. However, given the degree to which Cho planned this attack, had he known that some students had been armed, one guesses he would have planned accordingly.

Need I remind Malkin and her ilk that Timothy McVeigh killed three times as many people as did Cho and he did it with fertilizer. So it isn’t as if arming students would guarantee that no mass murders would ever take place on a college campus ever again.

And the notion that good policy can be made based on one historical anomaly is not smart.

I am truly disgusted by this ongoing narrative by some that somehow we have to blame those slaughtered for not exhibiting enough self-defense. And the notion that campuses would be improved by having guns in classrooms is simply off the wall.

And really, there is a segment of US conservatism that needs to get over its irrational phobia of college professors and their eeevil ways. Are there some off the wall ideologues out there? Yes, there are. However, Malkin, David Horowitz and crew have got to get over this notion that universities in America are some kind of bizarre radical brainwashing camps.

h/t: Michael J.W. Stickings.

7 Comments

1. Dear Dr. Taylor;

   I wanted to write to thank you for your smackdown of Malkin and the others who dare to criticize the VT students who survived for not “fighting back.” I just emailed John Derbyshire to call him a coward for such criticism.

   I found this on the cross-post at Outside The Beltway. I read the right-wing blog aggregator at politicalwire.com. I also read Atrios, DailyKos, TPM, and Americablog, to give you an idea of my political outlook. With that in mind, I’d like you and the Beltway guys to know that of the various blogs which that aggregator grabs from, OTB is the most reasonable (I’d not seen Poliblog until I followed the crosspost link). I can respect your opinions, and even agree with you sometimes. Powerline? NRO? TCS Daily? Forget it.

   Sincerely,
   Thomas

   Comment by Thomas — Wednesday, April 18, 2024 @ 10:48 pm

2. Thomas,

   Thanks for the note–I very much appreciate it.

   S

   Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, April 19, 2024 @ 7:04 am

3. Let Malkin and Derbyshire show their courage by accusing a crowd of VT students of cowardice to their faces, this week. There ought to be some off-campus bars where suitable crowds are gathered.

   Comment by Jim Henley — Thursday, April 19, 2024 @ 8:19 am

4. These pundits have certainly put their feet in their mouths. Sometimes it just better to simmer down and not say anything. We can fantasize about how we would handle the situation but it’s just fantasy.

   I don’t see an irrational phobia about college professors. The trend is administrations allowing more of the kooks on campus so working to stop that is reasonable. Those who should be laughed out of academia are instead defended by many. Those few brainwash enough students to cause societal damage.

   Comment by Steven Plunk — Thursday, April 19, 2024 @ 10:09 am

5. There are literally thousands of professors out there and the vast, vast majority of whom we never hear a word about. Yet, to listen to Horowitz talk (and Malkin) there is a massive wave of utter loons brainwashing our children. This is simply not the case.

   Yes, the academy is more liberal than society at large. And yes, there are some extremely off the wall profs. However, it is nothing like what Horowitz claims.

   Further, if universities were these vast camps of crazy ultra-libs capable of changing the ideologies of their students and punishing those who will not submit, then one would think that college grads for the last several decades would be uniformly ultra-liberal while there would be a huge number of conservatives who had been failed-out of school by the machinations of the aforementioned ultra-lib profs. Neither has been the case.

   Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, April 19, 2024 @ 10:24 am

6. I have to admit, when I first heard of the tragedy, I thought about the Appalachian School of Law shooting ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting ). Well, I thought “why are insane people smart enough to never attack West Point, police academies, or places where the victims would be able to fight back?”

   Then again, I am a college student, and walking across campus I had to admit I wasn’t willing to give guns to most of the other students I saw. IOW, *I* could have a gun, but *you* can’t.

   My point is that shooters like this are bullies. That’s it. I don’t think gun control would have helped (he waited a month to buy one of the guns, and he passed a background check a few times, *and* guns were banned on campus, I can’t think of anything that would work where those didn’t), but aside from arming the professors, I don’t think more guns would be a good idea on a normal day.

   In fact, I am very impressed by the quick thinking of students and professors that saved several people on Monday.

   Comment by Max Lybbert — Thursday, April 19, 2024 @ 1:28 pm

7. [...] On this, see also Steven Taylor: “[W]hy do we have to find blame in places other than the fact that a truly disturbed individual simply did an unthinkable act and cracked. There is only so much that can be done in a free society to prevent such situations. This attempt to blame a general ‘liberal’ attitude at universities and that this somehow has led to a culture of ‘conflict avoidance’ that somehow, by inference, led to people not defending themselves on Monday — that is utterly ridiculous.” The Reaction’s Capt. Fogg also put it well in a comment to a post by Creature: “This guy didn’t go nuts because of television or rap music or gay marriage or any of the other shibboleths — he went nuts because he was human and going nuts is a human affliction. It’s an affliction that won’t go away despite lectures on personal responsibility or despite bans or laws or wiretaps appeals to family values or protests or rubber bands worn on wrists.” [...]

   Pingback by Don’t forget about Iraq | The Moderate Voice — Thursday, April 19, 2024 @ 1:42 pm

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