DirksterG30
Member
His article is proof that higher education and intelligence are not always directly related.
I always thought he was a ****.
Indeed, I would claim that a knife is not just a lethal device but a psychological actor in this terrible drama. Knives and sharpeners were at the heart of that man's elaborate orchestration of the event and of his Yojimbo-like self-presentation to the world. When you look at those pictures, you understand how a knife can merge so fully with a person that a man who makes regular use of it could (in the historical East and in Ikeda) become known as a "blade."
Some years ago, the distinguished Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told me that, after a lifetime of studying Japanese culture, what he found most deeply troubling was our country's inability to come to terms with the knife -- which in turn strongly affected our domestic and international attitudes. Emotions of extreme attachment to and even sacralization of the knife pervade Japanese society, and commercial interests shamelessly manipulate those emotions to produce wildly self-destructive policies.
I think this is more than "part of it." Our country was founded by those who thought there were values worth dying for, and they understood violence in this light. Much of today's society is as self-absorbed as Cho was, and they don't see anything as being valuable enough to die for. Unfortunately, one can become so self-absorbed that one also doesn't see anything worth living for, which seems to be where Cho ended up. But feel-gooders like Lifton have lost the idea that lawful violence against evil is a service to society.I definitely think it's true that attitudes towards violence in this country are... weird, in a way. Like it or not, this country (like many another) was founded on violence. And that may be part of it.
I think that guns should be regulated so that they were not so completely readily available, but an honest citizen should be able to acquire a firearm through a proper legal system with the proper police authority and a certificate from a doctor to the effect that there is no known adverse history of mental illness or depression.
Full article at this link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009988A lot has been made of the police failure to apprehend Cho for two hours. Fair enough, but that's not typical. In the Safe Schools 37 incidents, most of the attacks were stopped by administrator or teachers, largely because half didn't last longer than 15 minutes. The cops stopped only 25% of the attacks--an argument for deputizing and arming someone in the schools. (In testimony this week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the head of the association for all campus cops explained the "safety issues" that mainly keeps them distracted: "At the top of the list are issues related to high-risk drinking and the use and abuse of illegal and prescription drugs.")
I think that guns should be regulated so that they were not so completely readily available, but an honest citizen should be able to acquire a firearm through a proper legal system with the proper police authority and a certificate from a doctor to the effect that there is no known adverse history of mental illness or depression.
But while there will always be mentally ill people, a few of whom are violent, it is our gun-centered cultural disease that converts mental illness into massacre.