You waltzed joyfully into his trap of words.

Now stop trying to use it for political advantage.

This may be an example of the unintended consequences of liberalism, and it’s not at all wrong to explore this possibility, just as it was not wrong to explore what drove Timothy McVeigh to commit his atrocity.

Obviously, and understandably, many people have been deeply hurt by this tragedy.

Some cry on others shoulders. Some go into seclusion. Some flame Cho on blogs.

Natural human responses… anger, reticence, and tears.

Those whose response is to flame Cho will of course accuse him of believing in opposite ideology as them. Who would attack someone by saying “he must have agreed with me, that’s why he did this evil act!”

So please… let it slide. At least for a few days. If people are still trying to blame this horrific situation on liberals next Friday, then you should be worried. But now… now they are still hurting.

Anonymous said on 19 Apr 2007 at 12:06 am is an idiot and the wide brushstrokes being painted by Greg and others is nothing but cariciture of those on both ends and in the middle of the political spectrum.

I hope that NovaScout is correct is his analysis of Riley’s intentions, because if he isn’t, Riley and the people who want to break this down into something political have no heart or compassion for what has happened.

If you take the time to read about each of the victims or talk to someone who was there you would know that politics has no place in this discussion. It has taken me several hours to get thru the bios of the victims because their loss is so tragic and I can only get thru a couple at a time.

There are issues, like immigration, that I had hoped to work on with Greg and others on the Republican side but that is made much more difficult b/c of this blind hatred of people who don’t see things in the same way as you. You can’t paint those who disagree with you as raging Marxist liberals. Not all Democrats are Marxists and not all Republicans are Fascists; we all just need to get over our tendency to profile those with whom we disagree or we will never be able to work together to solve problems that affect us all.

When you spew marxist class warfare rhetoric, sometimes the results are somewhat different that the noble goals liberals are trying to accomplish. Fundamentally, this is the problem with liberalism — while it attempts to accomplish some great things, the means and methods of liberalism create outcomes far more serious than the problems they were trying to address.

Right?

Both were influenced by radical - I repeat radical - belief systems. They may have been on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the result was the same… Mental depravity. Death.

Riley might have been a bit hasty with his post (c’mon… at least wait a week) but the principle there stands. Hatred of people leads to death - whether it be hatred of black or white, rich or poor, man or woman.

The lesson should be taken to heart by both liberal and conservative extremists.

BDB - He should have failed out of Tech, judging by the quality of his writing. How did he make it to his senior year? The media keeps reporting how his professors were afraid of “setting him off,” so they didn’t report his behavior, press him for explanation, or flunk him… apparently they failed. Miserably. You are right that the warning signs were there. It is heart breaking that no one picked up on it earlier. But who is to say that we would have done any different, in their shoes? Now 33 families have a gaping wound where a relative used to stand.

However, the answer is not to go out and arm every man, woman, and child in the Blacksburg area.

Nor is it to stop selling guns to anyone.

Nor is it to point your fingers at the VT faculty, the VT police, and the VT student body.

This was an example of pure evil enacted upon humanity.

The only person to blame is dead. Cho, an obviously disturbed young man.

No Jonathan, we are dealing with evil here.

And I’m tired of hearing “tragedy” from the drive-by media. It was not a tragedy — it was evil.

The leftists have a hard time dealing with the reality of evil; the atheists even more so.

Riley is right, correct, accurative.

Also, the VT campus bans any and all handguns in dorms, and conceealed carry on campus. They can’t bring criminal charges against anyone who is in possession, but the can threaten expulsion for violations of school policy. What did this do? It disarmed the law-abiding. If one student or professor would have been permitted to carry, Cho could have been stopped. Instead, you had the VT police picking their noses at the first crime scene, and the administration sending out emails, two hours after the first shooting. They had two students dead, and no weapon, which would indicate that this wasn’t a murder suicide. Pretty clear there was still a shooter on the loose. Did they lock the campus down? Make announcements over the PA system? No.

When are liberals going to wake up and realize that candle-light vigils and the like are nothing more than the sheep standing together in a herd. Stricter gun laws would not have prevented this. Identifying this individual as a potential threat could have. Allowing law-abiding students who have been vetted by the state as part of the CHP application process to carry on campus may have. A competent response by the VTPD and the VT Admin most defintely would have.