The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
UPDATED Out of the Agony, Memories of a Hero--and Signs of an Academic and Moral crisis in our Education system
UPDATE: my first take did not quite come out exactly the way I wanted, so I've made some revisions for readibility and understanding.
Glenn Reynolds is all over the VT tragedy from multiple angles, and he gets the hat/tip for finding this one too: at least one story of true heroism came out of yesterday's events. Go read it now, then come back and let's wrestle with some questions about that dark day I can't quite let go of...
Finished? Good, let's talk:
Obviously, the valor and sacrifice of Professor Librescu--a Holocaust survivor--is a great, heroic story of sacrifice. And one thing that popped out as slightly ironic is that the most notable heroic act we know about from yesterday was performed by an engineering professor of Israeli descent.
Allow me to explain what I mean: once upon a time not so many years ago (or so we are told by Hollywood), most of the Jews of Europe were led to their slaughter with little or no resistance, like sheep--victims who did not even resist when they could have. Hollywood especially portrays these lost souls as the archetypal "victims"--rather than historical ones (witness films like Schindler's List); still I doubt that the folks in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the prisoners who led successful revolts at the Sobribor and Treblinka death camps would completely agree with this post-modern assessment of the unwillingness of Europe's Jews to fight back. So now, we fast forward to sixty plus years later: we are told that American college kids--the same age as those fighting for us abroad--are killed, allowing one shooter to systematically shoot them (and reload)--one by one, execution style-- while meanwhile it is an elderly Jewish professor who fights back. Is it only me who finds this juxtaposition ironic?
Obviously Professor Librescu deserves great honor and accolades for his bravery under fire. And those kids certainly do not deserve our derision in this awful moment--their loss is a tragedy beyond words. So I really want to take care not to be insensitive here--what I have to say is not about them except in a theoretical sense, and I do not want to dishonor the dead; they don't deserve it--still I just can't help myself from asking why didn't more of them try to fight back? It has been a burning question in my mind--and having not been in that terrible room that answer will never be known. But nevertheless I cannot help but wonder, what if some of them had?
In any case it is clear now that this one professor, anyway, did chose another path to frozen, impotent surrender to madness. He made the decision not to go gently into that good night--and sacrificed his life for his students, knowing full well it might come to that. And lives were saved because of him. That, my friends, is honor. That is taking responsibility for one's own life and the lives of others, rather than handing over his fate to a psychopath. And what that is not--Ladies and Gentlemen--is the act of a "victim". Then or now.
But what of the students who either could not or did not fight back? What can explain this? Is it the case now that gradually, American generations in their protective bubbles have slowly but surely been taught to un-learn these concepts which made the counrty great in favor of concepts like: it's all relative; one man's terrorist is just a misunderstood freeedom fighter; that America, what it stands for, and everything we have here--is the result of imperialistic plunder; that our country is NOT worth fighting for; that America is the primary source of of evil, as opposed to being the last line of defense against it? We have taught our young people to believe we are the cause of monsters wanting to extinguish us in the name of their God?? That we are all "guilty" because of our country's success, and thus somehow deserve punishment? I would be remiss if I did not point out that this same guilt goes a long way towards explaining how easily people have been swayed by a false Global Warming "consensus".
I think it is high time to ask whether the incessant "pacifism"--which our Leftist teacher unions are indoctrinating our kids' to believe from birth--is a "good" thing. Is it? What about responsibility? What about the notion that there is something greater and more noble and more worthy than the almighty and all-powerful self.
And what of the false idol of "self esteem"--which comes very often at the cost of dumbing down reward and achievement to a least common denominator, just so the non-achieving kids don't "feel bad". As an example, my neice ran in a cross country meet and got a Medal for finishing in the top 15. I ran track, and to me a medal for 15th is not something that encourages excellence--it encourages and condones mediocrity. It demeans the accomplishment of those who work hard enough and excel enough to finish in the top 3. While this self-esteem-uber-alles mindset may work in the short term in preventing "hurt feelings", in the long term it teaches our kids that not "hurting feelings" is a more important and worthy goal than is succeeding--and that failure is not a bad thing either.
This is not to discount the value of decency. But the result serves to squelch the competitive drive--which is the one advantage which has kept America as the leader of the world when it comes to can-do innovation. And making sure we all "feel good" definitely does not teach the inherent value of the individual, and teach kids to scratch and claw and fight to achieve for themselves. And so, how we then expect these kids to compete in a cutthroat global economy?
Character comes from taking your lumps and getting back up again. Lather, rinse, repeat cycle multiple times. And every time you stagger again back to your feet after having been knocked down, you do not give up; you know to your core that you can DO this thing--with enough patience, persistence, and effort. It is "The Little Engine that Could." Today's Academia would have written a book that would have been titled something like "The Victimized Oppressed-Group Member who Cannot be Expected To--so give them Your job". We now seem to treat failure as a result equally as "worthy" as achievement, and teachers teach that the American Dream is an "illusion". This is unconscionable to me. But it clearly is the end result of a society that values the RESULT of "equality" for all (the least common denominator) over giving each individual an equal opportunity to succeeed--but teaching that individual that doing so is their responsibility. In other words: we no longer teach our children about the real world. But I digress from my original point...
As I said, the purpose of this is not to criticize any of those unfortunate kids who did not fight back in Blacksburg--they were after all only reflecting the fatally flawed mindset of their 60's-generation teachers: "All you need is Love", "Everything is relative", "Imagine there's no countries...", "ALL people are good at heart"... etc. But clearly we live in times (and yesterday was a stark example) when this paradigm is completely inadequate to equip someone to handle a life or death situation without freezing into terrified submission or surrender. As I mentioned earlier, Forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Smith addressed this phenomenon yesterday, and it definitely is worth a click (if you haven't gone there already).
So part of the tragedy of 4/16/07 is that many of those kids in Blacksburg may not have had the emotional or ideological wherewithal to resist in that situation, because they simply did not have the world view or strength of character that would have come from a strong belief in self, duty, country. But I do not blame these innocent kids for this: I blame a broken Leftist "seniority over competence" educational system which has helped to transform scores of our kids into pacifist, relativist automatons. Again, I wasn't there and we will never really know for sure exactly how it happened. But the very sound of reports of the "execution style" killings really disturb me.
What is the solution? Well how about starting by insisting our educators teach our children things that we were taught which our kids are not being taught: about the greatness and goodness of their country and the rightness of the American dream and of our form of government; about Adam Smith, and Capitalism being the foundation upon which all successful societies are built--and that in this competitive age Capitalism is not a dirty word, but rather the greatest force for good for the planet; about the Founders, and the brilliant and heroic pioneers who made what we have possible; about the blood which has been shed by so many hundreds of thousands before them--just so that their lives could be so comfortable and easy today; about honor, and duty, and sacrifice for your fellow man; about doing whatever is necessary to protect the innocent and to keep this magnificent experiment we have going strong; about the kinds of things those frightened adults on Flight 93 did spontaneously--and also under no illusions--and which other brave American men and women do every day in far away places like Anbar province and Afghanistan and Sudan and Baghdad.
In the end, the seeming contrast yesterday of students allowing their own murder without resistance--weighed against the heroic deeds of an Israeli-immigrant Professor--appears to make some disturbing suggestions of how far we have fallen in our teaching our children the values and character they will desparately need for a self-sufficient and noble adult life; and it speaks to the drastic shift in priorities needed in our educational system to get us there.
As Tom Petty so aptly put it: "It's wake up time..." Let's get started.
Glenn Reynolds is all over the VT tragedy from multiple angles, and he gets the hat/tip for finding this one too: at least one story of true heroism came out of yesterday's events. Go read it now, then come back and let's wrestle with some questions about that dark day I can't quite let go of...
Finished? Good, let's talk:
Obviously, the valor and sacrifice of Professor Librescu--a Holocaust survivor--is a great, heroic story of sacrifice. And one thing that popped out as slightly ironic is that the most notable heroic act we know about from yesterday was performed by an engineering professor of Israeli descent.
Allow me to explain what I mean: once upon a time not so many years ago (or so we are told by Hollywood), most of the Jews of Europe were led to their slaughter with little or no resistance, like sheep--victims who did not even resist when they could have. Hollywood especially portrays these lost souls as the archetypal "victims"--rather than historical ones (witness films like Schindler's List); still I doubt that the folks in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the prisoners who led successful revolts at the Sobribor and Treblinka death camps would completely agree with this post-modern assessment of the unwillingness of Europe's Jews to fight back. So now, we fast forward to sixty plus years later: we are told that American college kids--the same age as those fighting for us abroad--are killed, allowing one shooter to systematically shoot them (and reload)--one by one, execution style-- while meanwhile it is an elderly Jewish professor who fights back. Is it only me who finds this juxtaposition ironic?
Obviously Professor Librescu deserves great honor and accolades for his bravery under fire. And those kids certainly do not deserve our derision in this awful moment--their loss is a tragedy beyond words. So I really want to take care not to be insensitive here--what I have to say is not about them except in a theoretical sense, and I do not want to dishonor the dead; they don't deserve it--still I just can't help myself from asking why didn't more of them try to fight back? It has been a burning question in my mind--and having not been in that terrible room that answer will never be known. But nevertheless I cannot help but wonder, what if some of them had?
In any case it is clear now that this one professor, anyway, did chose another path to frozen, impotent surrender to madness. He made the decision not to go gently into that good night--and sacrificed his life for his students, knowing full well it might come to that. And lives were saved because of him. That, my friends, is honor. That is taking responsibility for one's own life and the lives of others, rather than handing over his fate to a psychopath. And what that is not--Ladies and Gentlemen--is the act of a "victim". Then or now.
But what of the students who either could not or did not fight back? What can explain this? Is it the case now that gradually, American generations in their protective bubbles have slowly but surely been taught to un-learn these concepts which made the counrty great in favor of concepts like: it's all relative; one man's terrorist is just a misunderstood freeedom fighter; that America, what it stands for, and everything we have here--is the result of imperialistic plunder; that our country is NOT worth fighting for; that America is the primary source of of evil, as opposed to being the last line of defense against it? We have taught our young people to believe we are the cause of monsters wanting to extinguish us in the name of their God?? That we are all "guilty" because of our country's success, and thus somehow deserve punishment? I would be remiss if I did not point out that this same guilt goes a long way towards explaining how easily people have been swayed by a false Global Warming "consensus".
I think it is high time to ask whether the incessant "pacifism"--which our Leftist teacher unions are indoctrinating our kids' to believe from birth--is a "good" thing. Is it? What about responsibility? What about the notion that there is something greater and more noble and more worthy than the almighty and all-powerful self.
And what of the false idol of "self esteem"--which comes very often at the cost of dumbing down reward and achievement to a least common denominator, just so the non-achieving kids don't "feel bad". As an example, my neice ran in a cross country meet and got a Medal for finishing in the top 15. I ran track, and to me a medal for 15th is not something that encourages excellence--it encourages and condones mediocrity. It demeans the accomplishment of those who work hard enough and excel enough to finish in the top 3. While this self-esteem-uber-alles mindset may work in the short term in preventing "hurt feelings", in the long term it teaches our kids that not "hurting feelings" is a more important and worthy goal than is succeeding--and that failure is not a bad thing either.
This is not to discount the value of decency. But the result serves to squelch the competitive drive--which is the one advantage which has kept America as the leader of the world when it comes to can-do innovation. And making sure we all "feel good" definitely does not teach the inherent value of the individual, and teach kids to scratch and claw and fight to achieve for themselves. And so, how we then expect these kids to compete in a cutthroat global economy?
Character comes from taking your lumps and getting back up again. Lather, rinse, repeat cycle multiple times. And every time you stagger again back to your feet after having been knocked down, you do not give up; you know to your core that you can DO this thing--with enough patience, persistence, and effort. It is "The Little Engine that Could." Today's Academia would have written a book that would have been titled something like "The Victimized Oppressed-Group Member who Cannot be Expected To--so give them Your job". We now seem to treat failure as a result equally as "worthy" as achievement, and teachers teach that the American Dream is an "illusion". This is unconscionable to me. But it clearly is the end result of a society that values the RESULT of "equality" for all (the least common denominator) over giving each individual an equal opportunity to succeeed--but teaching that individual that doing so is their responsibility. In other words: we no longer teach our children about the real world. But I digress from my original point...
As I said, the purpose of this is not to criticize any of those unfortunate kids who did not fight back in Blacksburg--they were after all only reflecting the fatally flawed mindset of their 60's-generation teachers: "All you need is Love", "Everything is relative", "Imagine there's no countries...", "ALL people are good at heart"... etc. But clearly we live in times (and yesterday was a stark example) when this paradigm is completely inadequate to equip someone to handle a life or death situation without freezing into terrified submission or surrender. As I mentioned earlier, Forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Smith addressed this phenomenon yesterday, and it definitely is worth a click (if you haven't gone there already).
So part of the tragedy of 4/16/07 is that many of those kids in Blacksburg may not have had the emotional or ideological wherewithal to resist in that situation, because they simply did not have the world view or strength of character that would have come from a strong belief in self, duty, country. But I do not blame these innocent kids for this: I blame a broken Leftist "seniority over competence" educational system which has helped to transform scores of our kids into pacifist, relativist automatons. Again, I wasn't there and we will never really know for sure exactly how it happened. But the very sound of reports of the "execution style" killings really disturb me.
What is the solution? Well how about starting by insisting our educators teach our children things that we were taught which our kids are not being taught: about the greatness and goodness of their country and the rightness of the American dream and of our form of government; about Adam Smith, and Capitalism being the foundation upon which all successful societies are built--and that in this competitive age Capitalism is not a dirty word, but rather the greatest force for good for the planet; about the Founders, and the brilliant and heroic pioneers who made what we have possible; about the blood which has been shed by so many hundreds of thousands before them--just so that their lives could be so comfortable and easy today; about honor, and duty, and sacrifice for your fellow man; about doing whatever is necessary to protect the innocent and to keep this magnificent experiment we have going strong; about the kinds of things those frightened adults on Flight 93 did spontaneously--and also under no illusions--and which other brave American men and women do every day in far away places like Anbar province and Afghanistan and Sudan and Baghdad.
In the end, the seeming contrast yesterday of students allowing their own murder without resistance--weighed against the heroic deeds of an Israeli-immigrant Professor--appears to make some disturbing suggestions of how far we have fallen in our teaching our children the values and character they will desparately need for a self-sufficient and noble adult life; and it speaks to the drastic shift in priorities needed in our educational system to get us there.
As Tom Petty so aptly put it: "It's wake up time..." Let's get started.
Labels: Heroism, Indoctrination not Education, Sacrifice, The Left, Virginia Tech Rampage
