The Folly of Geraldo

In the aftermath of the VA Tech shootings Geraldo Rivera (one of FoxNews many resident Liberals) said, “Our children need to be protected.”

The fact that so many otherwise rational people would agree with Rivera only proves that the infantilizing of America is nearly complete.

The “children” on America’s College campuses are, in many cases, older than some of the men and women serving in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

As the great Mark Steyn put it, “Nonetheless, it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.”

Just as terrible is the need for many to rationalize the actions of misfits and loners, deranged people who do such deranged things.

In the wake of Columbine, one of the primary myths that evolved was that of Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold as “bullied nerds who took revenge out for years of bullying.”

In fact, Kliebold was clinically depressed and Harris was a text book socio-path who took delight in bullying others. They planned Columbine to be the biggest mass murder in world history, not a mere school shooting and if the propane bombs they set up had gone off, it’s estimated that another 600 people would’ve been killed that day.

The same mythology is appearing in the wake of the VA Tech shootings – Cho Seung-Hui as a “shy and bullied immigrant taking revenge.”

Once again, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the end, Virginia Tech must be Liviu Librescu’s story, one of self-sacrifice for others and not Cho Seung-Hui’s story of pathetic pathological dysfunction.

Cho Seung-Hui was a failure, like Kliebold and Harris, Professor Librescu remains a hero in a defiant and heroic action that will live on as long as the memory of the Virginia Tech massacre does.