Issue du Jour

The Virginia Tech massacre

Instead of mourning with the rest of the country, right wing radio stations are obsessing about the possibility that gun restrictionists will use the Virginia Tech massacre as a causus pacem. But there's a deeper issue, and as is so often the case, the righties and the lefties have both contributed to it.

It boils down to the fact that righties and lefties agree--without admitting it in so many words--that there's no such thing as insanity. Lefties call nuts "differently mentally enabled." Righties act as if they just sat down one day and decided to misbehave, and if they break a law, they're just criminals who get locked up in jail with real criminals who do terrible things to them.

So nuts like Cho go around scaring people until they go completely around the bend. His teachers knew he was nuts. The girls he was stalking knew he was nuts. The school authorities knew he was nuts. But he was over 18, so they all had their hands tied because our current legal system won't act--it will just react after the damage is done.

There are exceptions. We prosecute people for possessing drugs or for driving high even if they haven't caused an accident. We prosecute people for verbal threats. But in general we wait until someone harms someone else.

Lefties want this because they place individual rights above the common good--and so do righties. They're absolutely the same about this.

Back in the day people got committed for bogus reasons--heck, in the Soviet Union they often put dissidents in insane asylums. But now we've swung over to the opposite extreme. We all have an obligation to society if we choose to live in society. It's a two way street, folks. And one of those obligations is to do something about people who are nuts before they do something bad to themselves or others.

If you think I'm blowing smoke, go Google what happened several decades ago when Raygun was guv of California. He closed down the insane asylums to save money. At the same time the leftie icon became Jack Nicholson's role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was a clever screed against nuthouses.

So now the nuts run loose and we get the Virginia Tech massacre. Gun rights are the least of our worries.

How's this for a proposal: society gets to require that insane people be put on meds in a reliable way or get locked up.





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L'affaire Wolfie

So..Paul Wolfowitz is under fire at the World Bank for getting his squeeze--who'd worked at the bank long before Wolfowitz showed up--a new gig that pays more than Condi Rice makes.

Lefties and righties have reacted predictably. In duelling editorial pages, the New York Times called for his ousting (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/opinion/16mon3.html?pagewanted=print), while the Wall Street Journal Editorial page called it all a Euro-leftie media putsch and demanded that everyone else apologize to Mr. Wolfowitz for smearing him (http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009948).

What's a centrist to do?

First, you have to find out what the facts really are. For that I turned to The Economist, which, while ideologically conservative, tends to get its facts straight. And in its coverage of L'affaire Wolfie the Economist answered every one of the points raised by the WSJ opinion piece. See it at http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009948. If you go to www.economist.com they'll give you a free one day pass.

I wanted to not only rebut the WSJ "smear of the smear" but find an honest conservative response to show what the WSJ could have done if it were truly conservative and not simply a direct extension of the Republican National Committee. I found it in, of all places, The Independent, a Brit paper with at least one conservative columnist. See the column at: http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/bruce_anderson/article2452376.ece.

This columnist, one Bruce Anderson, argues that Wolfowitz has the right attitude but insufficient organizational skills to turn the bank around--and now insufficient moral authority as well. Some quotes:

The World Bank's Washington head office is full of able people who all work hard. One-third are trying to do something. The other two-thirds are trying to stop them. Never has the doctrine of unripe time been preached so eloquently. The Bank's motto ought to be "Better not".

...

A speech by Paul Wolfowitz on corruption. Imagine. Shuffling feet and downcast eyes while he was at the rostrum: as soon as he left the room, derisive laughter. He cannot stay on...Every African dictator will now be summoning his juju men to cast their spells to keep him in post, and impotence.

...

In the short run, there is an obvious candidate to succeed Mr Wolfowitz: another neo-con, the former UN Ambassador, John Bolton. No-one ever accused him of lacking grip. Nor is he overburdened with sentimentality. Confronted with obstruction or incompetence, he uses his temper as a bulldozer. Mr Bolton is the man the World Bank needs, and deserves.

That would certainly give the NYTimes what its editorial asked for--especially since that editorial did not suggest a possible replacement. Watch out for what you don't wish for...