VILE VIEWING
Re: Happy Feder’s NBC Loses It:
I wholeheartedly agree with Happy Feder’s take on NBC and their abhorrent decision to display any of the vile lunatic Cho’s videotaped gloating over his murderous rampage. Any thinking, sane person would have seen the video and photos for what they are — ghoulish rantings of an insane mass-murderer. If I was in charge at NBC news and were I the one to make the decision (if only!) I would watch the video in private, see it for what it is, and then perhaps “accidently” leave it stored next to a gigantic magnet overnight. That would erase it and I could perhaps claim that it was an accident. Then burn the pictures. Accidentally.
Giving the murderer the publicity he obviously sought is only going to make other weird loners do bad things. Very bad things.
— Bryan Frymire
Louisville, Kentucky
Happy Feder laments that Cho Sueng-Li’s creepy one man show has been broadcast. I disagree on several grounds.
Prior restraints against the publication of any information ought to be suspect. The First Amendment was intended to mean what it says. It’s bad enough that our politically correct speech codes suppress expression and information as much as they do. We were intended to let the mass of the populace encounter even disturbing or hateful speech, and let it separate the wheat from the chaff. That some may seize on such communications as fuel for their own diseased agendas is part of the cost of freedom.
In a nation of some 300 million, there are going to be a few wackos walking the streets. Most of us will never encounter anyone as malignant as Mr. Cho, and unless we are trained psychologists, precious few who do encounter such persons could recognize those who are dangerous. Apparently, officials at VT and local government were unable to make the distinction.
Anyone who watches the video and learns of Mr. Cho’s lifestyle will at least gain some insight into how such derangement as his might manifest. We will be better able to judge if that lonely loser down the hall or down the street ought to be watched closely or even reported to proper authorities. I’d be willing to make a sporting wager that lonely losers all over the world are being re-assessed by their neighbors and other associates in a new light this morning. Maybe some will be unfairly ostracized; maybe some will be led to the help they need. Who knows? Life will play itself out.
I don’t think that anyone watching the “vile video” will take it as instruction in “how easy it is to spit in the face of America,” and especially not terrorists. If anything, terrorists are most likely to be encouraged by revelations of the shortfalls of the police and university response to the initial assaults. They already know that we are a nation effectively disarmed, with ‘gun-free’ killing zones sprouting up like dandelions.
Furthermore, I, as an American, hardly perceive that Mr. Cho has spit in my face. On the other hand, for example, I perceive that my face was spit on by the depredations of Sandy Berger at the National Archives and the limp-wristed response of the Bush Administration to that outrage. I have no doubt whatsoever that the untold story surrounding those events would reveal much about the cozy relationship between the vile Clintons and our Republican leadership. Maybe its revelation would lead to some serious questioning among the sheeple of how the Republicans always manage to get pushed around so by the Democrats, even when they held the majority, and how the leftward drift of our culture into a lowest common denominator guided decline has come about.
But, the editorial judgment of the media and connivance by Congress and the Justice Department decreed that we ought not be subjected to such information. After all, it just wouldn’t do to have patriotically minded souls getting their knickers in a twist. You never know when some critical mass of them just might rise up and demand some accountability. Once you start letting the media and government wonks decide what news is fit to print, all manner of mischief can be safely concealed, and I don’t think that’s a good thing for the nation. The principle is the same. Would that NBC be as quick to lead the evening news with everything it knows about Washington skullduggery! Imagine the ratings bonanza!
As distasteful and painful as I found it to watch Mr. Cho’s lame bleatings, I’m full grown and able to form my own judgments about them. I don’t need or want any media mogul or government bureaucrat making the call for me. In my view, freedom brings with it a duty to keep informed about what’s going on in the world. I think that probably some 99% or more of adults can be counted on to bear that responsibility. Our Founders and Framers recognized the evil in prior restraints on publication, and entrusted us with the duty to act responsibly and in the public interest with whatever information we may acquire as a result.
Maybe some tortured soul will be inspired to seek his or her fifteen minutes of fame after viewing the available material. If so, he or she will have a tougher gauntlet to run than did Mr. Cho. More people will be more aware of, and willing to raise questions about such manifestly peculiar behavior as he displayed. In the end, one can only hope that people will be drawn together to keep an eye on their surroundings, and if necessary, give the police a chance to do something other than come around and pick up the pieces.
— Mark Fallert
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
I almost wish Cho had lived to hear the jeering from everyone over 40 as proof positive that he was, among many other things, invincibly stupid. My six year old niece could have done a better job with her Leapfrog Media Maker than that michegoss of malarkey he called a Manifesto.
And after having skimmed the “disturbing” trash he handed in as his English assignments, I (who have a Classical Liberal Arts degree in English Literature with a side of Victorian History) have to seriously question the sanity of a school that would allow someone who can’t write any better than a “student athlete” in a Grade 3 Remedial English class to reach his Senior Year as an English major. Is everyone at Virginia Tech a hopeless illiterate?
And by the way, if you call that drivel “disturbing,” I hope you don’t ever read what I was writing at that age. Although even if I am embarrassed to death by its major premise 40 years on, I am pleased to say that it is 10,000 times better writing than anything Cho could ever hope to write. And it would have terrified the thong off every English professor at Virginia Tech.
— Kate Shaw
Who can come up with a quotation for any occasion?
Toronto, Kanukistan
NBC, ABS, CBS, and the cable 24 hour news organizations are no longer institutions of journalism, in fact I don’t think they even realize what trash peddlers they have become. The mentality or it should be said, “Consensus” is these:
News organizations have convinced themselves that they are just practicing cutting edge journalism.
Many so-called journalists within these institutions are lazy, incompetent, and plagiaristic. The editors and owners of these networks are flaying in the wind at anything to gain market-share, at the expense of people’s careers, and lives. The students that were murdered are not even buried yet and the wounds not even beginning to heal yet and NBC put market share and ratings above human decency.
The publics, “Right to Know,” has single handedly given Cho Sueng-Li the celebrity status that he craved for so long. The cutesy phrase of, “The publics right to Know” is network executive speak for absolving them of any responsibility of the trash they put out. If anything could be relayed to Mr. Steven Capus, NBC president, I would like to say to him, “I don’t want to know or need to know.” The only thing that I do want to know is that Cho Sueng-Li buried in an unmarked grave with the shortest route to hell as possible.” That’s right Mr. Corpus I want to know that Cho Sueng-Li is writhing in hellfire and damnation and suffering a million times more pain than he caused his victims.”
But that isn’t going to happen, because by NBC giving Cho Sueng-Li his celebrity status will only fuel those that are still out there who want the short cut to fame. Unfortunately, there is worse human garbage out there than Cho who are dreaming up more heinous, and viscous schemes of stardom. By Mr. Capus giving Cho Sueng-Li national and world exposure the sick and warped minds that are still out there realize that they don’t need UTube anymore, why should that have to settle for this small outlet, when they can thrust upon the world in instant celebrity status by the network trash merchants of the likes of NBC.
NBC President Steven Corpus cannot entirely shoulder the reasonability of this because if it weren’t for those bottom feeding Americans out there that feed off the garbage that the networks produce then there wouldn’t be a need for market share and ratings would there?
— Melvin Leppla
Jacksonville, North Carolilna
Have you ever hit the nail on the head with this one. In my local rag, a person mentioned what is needed in this nation is a revival, while I mentioned about the music and video games out there. We were both attacked vehemently by a couple of the lefties as ignorant savages who are imposing our “values” on society, the poster even ranting about the crusades In my case, I was taken to task for daring to suggest the music and games had anything to do with this type of behavior. Of course I replied in my usual succint manner to point out the misconceptions which resulted in another tirade. This vehemence on the left towards anything that remotely suggests they have it wrong is the same type of behavior manisfested by this perp, though in his case, it was far more extreme.
— Pete Chagnon
I dont know what channel Happy is watching but I suggest he switch to Fox News. Shepard Smith can’t say enough bad words about this nutjob!! He calls it as he sees it. And O’Reilly, too. No mincing words with them or the rest of Fox. No wonder he didn’t send it to Fox.
— Joan Moriarty
Stuart, Florida
Yes, contrary to Happy Feder’s assertion, or perhaps because of it, there has been commentary on the evil of Cho. Shep Smith, just this morning, pronounced that there was a “special place in hell” for him. But then again, he’s employed by Fox News, so I suppose that, if I were Democrat (God forbid), I would have to take that with a big grain of salt. Well, at least it’s a start.
— Warren Mowry
So who watches the, “Nothing But Crap” (NBC) news anyway? My guess is mostly the left wing fringe or the graduates with low honors, from the fourth grade.
— Jim L
East Sandwich, Massachusetts
Rush had a caller the other day who suggested that maybe Cho’s anger and hatred were fostered by the drive-by media’s constant anti-Bush, anti-America drumbeats. Sounds right to me.
— Kitty Myers
Painted Post, New York
Too bad Cho Sueng-Li didn’t have a cigarette hanging from his mouth during his video shoot. There is no way NBC would allow that to air — it would be sending a wrong message to the kids.
Disgusted in Indiana,
— JP
Dear Happy! Thanks! Amen and Amen!
— Clasina Segura
New Iberia, Louisiana
BARGAIN VALUES
Re: W. James Antle III’s The Real Deal:
A politician is someone who swears he’ll never sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, while thinking to himself, “Unless I can buy it for a really good price first.” If politicians don’t believe their own rhetoric, why should we. Liberal Republicans are responsible for appointing some of the most egregious leftist mouthpieces to high courts throughout the country. Like used car salesmen, they’re always ready to tell you what they have to get you to buy their beast of burden. Conservatives have plenty of erstwhile candidates who’ve demonstrated under the glaring lights of public scrutiny who they are and what they believe. I will vote my convictions for someone with convictions.
— Marc Molinari
JUDGE NOT
Re: Enemy Central’s Attention Grabbers:
Ever notice that the “Enemy of the Week” is someone who is wrapped up in their own self-importance? Whenever the conservative dissenting opinion has been written it is usually founded on the grounds that the “Constitution makes no provision for…” or the Constitution does not mention a particular “law” or “function” of a state or its citizenry. The dissenter in these cases is rarely personalized in their analysis.
Most, if not all, liberal opinions seem to emanate from the jurists’ own worldview rather than addressing whether the Constitution specifically addresses the subject before the bench. We are not only stuck with poor interpretation of the Constitution (and the draconian mandates that usually follow), but also we have foisted upon us a personal declaration that specific words really mean all sorts of things that they don’t literally mean simply because some self-interested jurist thinks they should.
— P. Aaron Jones
Huntington Woods, Michigan
I recently wrote re an earlier (last month) EOW that the US Supreme Court had earned “Enemy of the Century”in two centuries. I guess it should not be surprising that Ruth Ginsburg considering her total lack of judgment and apparently total lack of moral values should alone outdo the whole Court and earn “Enemy of the Ages.” What an awful old woman. To advocate the torture and murder of thousands and perhaps million of human babies this creature will do and say anything. God have mercy on us all. Surely the end of the world is nigh.
— Jack Wheatley
Royal Oak Michigan
COBURN COUNTRY
Re: Michael D. Bates’s OK GOPers Would Rather Wait:
It is a source of continued amazement to me that the majority of GOP politicians, GOP consultants, GOP advisers, GOP activists are too dumb to figure out that stand up folks like Sens. Inhofe and Coburn are precisely the ones that the rank and file of the conservative base are crying for. Inhofe and Coburn are precisely the kind of politicians that the conservative base can get fired up over, and will come out in droves to volunteer support of both money and time.
But no, the stupid party elite from the Northeastern Rockefeller wing continue to say, “Where can they go,” to suggestions that the conservatives will opt out. Well, perhaps the GOP elite will have another chance to learn their lesson when Fred Thompson jumps in the race, and McCain, Romney, and Mayor Rudy plummet in the polls.
— Ken Shreve
New Hampshire
RADICAL CHICK
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s More Immediate Ectsasy:
I do not have an issue with what Hillary thought or how she looked in the ’60s. No one looked good in that era because the clothes were awful in those days.
My issue is that she still thinks what she thought then. After the collapse of the utopian societies that they looked to for inspiration many 60’s radicals grew up and faced the real world. Even Bill faced the facts and signed into law sweeping welfare reforms. But not Hillary. She is still the true believer now that she was then.
What is frightening is that in the face of all of the evidence of the last twenty years she still believes in utopia. I do not believe that she would be able to be totalitarian but she could and would do a lot of damage trying to bring about utopia.
— Jeff Seyfert
Columbia, Missouri
Well, gee Emmett, I don’t like her either. But I thought she looked kind of cute in the picture.
— C. Shea
A PARTIAL DEFENSE OF “DUKE”
Re: Bernard Chapin’s Everything Bold Is New Again: An Interview With Jackie Mason:
I regret that I have to agree that disgraced Congressman Randy Cunningham brought dishonor to himself and a setback to the Republican Party by his admitted behavior with regard to bribes from a defense contractor. But I take issue with the word used by Mr. Mason.
I am fascinated by everything to do with aviation. For all of his failings, Randy Cunningham is a noteworthy figure in the history of aviation and in the military exploits of American flyers.
In the jet-age battles over Korea, American pilots were victorious over their Korean, Chinese, and Russian adversaries at a 15-to-1 ratio (some say it was only 12-to-1 owing to how such victories were recorded). Over the skies of North Vietnam, American pilots were being fought to a draw by what some considered to be a Third World country flying second-rate Soviet jets. Of course North Vietnam relied on Russian guided missiles instead of interceptor aircraft, the North Vietnamese pilots were cautious about the fights they picked, and the mission was to put bombs on ground targets and to avoid the NVAF when possible. Our pilots were armed with beyond-visual-range missiles but restricted to combat with visual identification. And there were technical factors. But the 1-to-1 ratio in air combat was a peril to our pilots and a disgrace to our aviation traditions.
Randy Cunningham and his team member William Driscoll in the Navy F-4 Phantom, trained at the newly-formed Navy “Top Gun” school, were the first and by some accounts only American aces in the Vietnam War. Their fifth victory making them aces was in combat against an unknown NVAF pilot, a supposed “Colonel Toon,” regarded as the most victorious pilot in the NVAF, and their combat was the longest-running “dogfight” of the jet age. After prevailing, Cunningham and Driscoll lost their aircraft to a SAM, and were recovered in a daring rescue from the sea.
Perhaps the kind of man who is an aggressive warrior is out of place in civilian society. A man who disregarded the rules of physics to maneuver a heavy, supersonic jet in a low-speed combat with an agile subsonic MiG-17 may be out of control in other walks of life. On the other hand, we do not bestow our aviator heroes with any special privileges or treatment apart from celebrity status at the Oshkosh air show. What Randy Cunningham did more recently is tragic, and perhaps even more disgraceful considering who he is. But I will not call him by the name used by Mr. Mason.
— Paul Milenkovic
Madison, Wisconsin
ALL HAT, NO CATTLE
Re: Philip Klein’s Anatomy of a Withdrawal:
Well, Mr. Klein’s article couldn’t have defined our country’s inability to stand and defy our enemies any better. The culture of “feelings” has over ridden the culture of freedom at any cost. The libs with their “If we can only talk to our enemies we will solve the problems” has won. The thing is this is just what our enemies wrote about us in the scenarios drafted in the 1990’s. A country that is far removed from hard manual labor and lives with ease and comfort and luxuries that abound, soon loses its understanding that this freedom we have loved and so cherished was hard won and must be kept with the same diligence.
My mother, now in her 80s, had a wonderful phrase she would land on us kids the minute she saw laziness or indolence creeping in. She would intonate, “Get up and get with it. Life is hard and you need to stay busy working hard with your hands. Find something to do now!” We were ranchers and we did all our own work. Life was hard on the ranch and you had to stay tough and fit. We did all our own work and that’s the way it still is now. Even at 87 my father gets out each day to check on his cattle. He broke a hip at 85 while working cattle. Frankly, I was proud of his ability and determined efforts.
And what does all this have to do with surrender? Well, in a few weeks I will send my son, a pilot, back for his 5th time, to war. He is clear, as am I, that we have folks that truly desire to see our end, as a civilization and as a people. We know the threat is very real. We aren’t ready, this family, to be a part of the culture of surrender and the culture of let’s talk it to death, surely they will understand us. We know better.
We have rattlesnakes that live on all our ranches. They are a part of Texas and Texas ranches. We are mindful of their unseen presence and always carry a gun with us in every vehicle. If we encounter a rattlesnake we kill them. As ranchers we know the threat of a rattlesnake bite is very real.
Many years ago, while we were stationed in Killeen, Texas at Ft. Hood, I helped take a friend’s sick child to the Emergency Room at Ft. Hood’s hospital. While there a man was brought in who’d been bit by his “pet” rattlesnake. I found myself staring at him. What a fool! The worse part of the story was, when the snake bit him he quickly dropped his pet back into the box he stored him in. Then at the ER this man looked at his wife and said, “Did you remember to lock the cage?” She replied she didn’t know then ran out of the hospital. Later, I asked the doctor why the wife had hurried out. “Well, he replied, It was because when they hurried off to bring this foolish man to the hospital it appears they’d left their toddler alone asleep in his crib.” Imagine, fool enough to keep a rattlesnake close by and fool enough to leave a child alone with him.
Somehow as I call each Congressman or woman on my list of folks to talk to this week I imagine them as being this man in the story. They are desirous of surrender and think if we could talk to our enemies that surely diplomacy would win out. If they just understood us, maybe we could live together.
Well, I know that toleration of that degree is no smarter than living with a loose rattlesnake in the house. The compliance required will still get you bit.
So, I pray over my son and send him to fight during our declared retreat. And I pray that our Congress wakes up and figures out just what surrender will look like.
— Bev Gunn
East Texas Rancher
THE LINE OF FIRE
Re: John Tabin’s A Disarmed Campus, Reader Mail’s In the Face of Evil, and Reader Mail’s Guns on Campus:
I don’t know about the guns, the carry permits. Anyone who has seen a knot of drunken twenty-two year olds trash a hotel corridor would have to pause before that one. But I do suggest another possible source of felony prevention.
The killer was an English major, adrift in a land of math jocks and computer technicians, a place where how matters far more than why. When he graduated with his mostly useless degree he was destined to fight with millions of other liberal artists for the poorly paid, low prestige jobs available to such people, while his former schoolmates made great big bucks designing surveillance equipment, and video games. And the guys with the money usually get the great ladies. That was the future he faced every morning, and dragged around with him all the day long.
But now it isn’t the science departments that scorn philosophy and find it unequal to the task at hand, whatever that might be. Most of the humanities have in these last years replaced philosophy with ideology, literature with agitprop. I will bet any amount of money, and give generous odds, that if one were to look into the content of the courses he endured in these last years one will find more than a few weak men and bitchy women behind the podium; and that they told him, and thousands of other captive young minds, that Othello is really about the inability of white men to coexist with the possibility of Black African success, and that no American poetry written prior to the emancipation of Negro slaves is honest about the sinister character shared by all Americans in the presence of autonomous women and minorities. Etc, etc.
He heard about the world from people who have never lived in it. He heard he was a victim because he was a member of a minority group, an oppressed ethnic, a seeker after truth in literature rather than an evil money-mad science major; the world view supplied to him detests people who are secure, industrious and prosperous. He was told, in the misty, self-forgiving tones of left wing rhetoric, that such people are to be regarded as enemies, and that the duty of decent people is to strive for a revolution that will liquidate them.
But they didn’t mean it this year any more than they meant it 40 years ago, when it was a decorative accessory to be donned for committee meetings and cocktail parties. Too bad he didn’t understand that all left wing pronouncements, especially those that deal with self-sacrifice and risk, are amateur kabuki. He thought they were serious, and sane.
If we are driven to reexamine our gun laws, let’s at least certify the sanity of anyone awarded a Ph.D. in bull***t, and encourage those who can’t successfully get around the ink blots to seek their fortunes elsewhere. It’s just a thought.
— Edmund Dantes
Coshocton, Ohio
The recent events at Virginia Technical and Duke Universities, though completely different, cast a harsh light on what is happening in this country — we’re becoming a nation of weenies. Self-righteous, hypersensitive, unhinged complainers whose delicate sensibilities are always offended. Pathetic weaklings who won’t even take their own side in a fight. Obnoxious prigs who think they should tell others how to have fun. “New age” men so in touch with their own feelings they’ve completely forgotten what it means to be a man.
Consider the Duke lacrosse players and the scolds who are just so horrified that young men might like a strip-tease. Many, perhaps most, not all, young men engage in ribald entertainment. This historically includes exotic dancing. My all-male (at the time) college had a tradition of holding a party 100 days before graduation. I was in charge of entertainment for my unit, and procured the services of a stripper. Before her act I set the rules; no one was to touch her, insult her, use foul language or molest her in any way. When the performance was over she was free to leave without hindrance. To a man all twenty-plus of us obeyed the rules. After we had finished our several cases of beer we piled into an extended-bed van and our nondrinking colleague performed his designated driver duties and got us home. A great evening we all still remember. And I’ll bet dimes to dollars that guys like me and my pals treat gals with far more respect than these women’s rights zealots and “progressive” men who never heard of an abortion they didn’t approve, who disdain the Miss America pageant because it “exploits” women, and the rappers and hip-hop “artists” who refer to women in the crudest terms yet never seem to draw the ire of NOW or NARAL.
Virginia Tech. Interesting how some people can only argue by creating a straw man to tear down because they can’t debate honestly. Letter writer Stephen Main responded to Mr. Tabin’s article, “Stop and think for a moment. Does it really make sense for an entire community of 18-22 year old kids to be walking around armed to the teeth?” No, Mr. Main, none of the gun rights supporters are advocating that every student at VT have a gun. But even if 1%, 250 students, had weapons, that might be enough to dissuade some nut case from shooting people. It’s the uncertainty of an armed response that deters people.
Our America today: Mandatory seat belt laws (not applicable to governors). No smoking in a bar. No fried foods made with trans fats. Toilets that can only use 1.6 gallons per flush. Confiscatory tax rates. Preening, phony, corrupt, two-bit politicians. Speed limits (also not applicable to governors) designed not for safety but to raise revenue. Gun laws that only hinder the law-abiding and not the criminal. Abuse of the eminent domain laws (Kelo decision). Speech codes at colleges (think Summers at Harvard). Race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who are feared, but not scorned. Abortion “rights” that hurt the weakest among us. Men who don’t offer their seat to a lady on a crowded bus or train. The “Blame America First” Crowd. These are different issues but are all cut from the same cloth. The cloth of a nation made up of whiners, wimps, weenies and wussies.
Thank God for the U.S. military. Pray that it does not become infected with this virus that is destroying this country from within.
Cordially,
— Paul DeSisto
Cedar Grove, New Jersey
Imagine a classroom of students armed with semi-automatic pistols. A student walks in a shoots the professor. Everyone else pulls out their weapons and starts firing, not knowing if others in the classroom are in on the crime. Does anyone seriously think this would help? Just ask any military or law enforcement officer how much training they go through and how difficult it is to hit a target under a high stress situation.
I have no problem with law enforcement and hunters having single shot rifles or shotguns, but anyone who thinks they need a semi-handgun or rifle should have to pass a rigorous certification and safety program, a note from a doctor stating that they are not on any mind altering prescription medication, submit to random drug testing, as well as re-certification on an annual basis.
— R. Sanchez
Virginia Tech official praised the defeat of a student self-defense proposal in 2006.
Perhaps, your readers would also like to provide Larry Hincker with a few of their thoughts on his position against the Natural and Constitutional Laws forbidding the infringement of our right to defend ourselves.
Do we contact our representatives and politely demand illegal legislation is repealed or shall we sit back and watch the slaughter continue??
Thanks for your article, John!
— Chris Sanders
Colorado Springs, Colorado
I’m sure that I’ll be one of many to reply to Mr. Main’s musings. Normally I don’t reply to letters to the Editor but his ravings have more holes than pasta colander. I too live in the Bay Area and I wouldn’t expect him to understand the need and right to defend oneself. The liberals from San Francisco are just like that.
I rather doubt the entire 18-22 year old sector would want to have a CWP just as the entire population does not. By the way, most 18-22 year olds are quite capable and raised well. We just happen to see the outliers in the news.
Funny, the law enforcement folks I know fully support our constitutional right just as I’m sure, as a liberal, Mr. Main fully supports abortion. So my questions is this… You trust them to end a life without you batting an eye but not to defend it? Go sell your hypocrisy to someone else…
— Tom Borchelt
Danville, California
Rich Ruffin of South Korea writes “All statistics show that carrying a gun just makes it more likely that you will die by a gun.” Numerous other letters to the editor state a priori the same religious belief. No effort is made by any letter writer to state the source of the statistics or the justification for the a priori religious belief.
As with many other issues facing America today, the first question really needs to be: how do we know that what we “know” is true? In my professional world, the engineering world, everyone understands that no assertion is immune from challenge, and that every assertion must be rigorously documented and proven.
How would one go about documenting and proving that legalized concealed carry on campus makes the campus safer? Or more dangerous? To date, the only evidence, or at least the only publicized evidence, is that making concealed carry on campus illegal renders students defenseless in the face of individuals intent on mass murder. That is the limit of the experiment to date. Nobody can point to one example to sustain the opinion, not fact, that legalizing concealed carry on campus makes the campus less safe. To people who intelligently and professionally discriminate between “known” and “not known”, that is called “not known”.
So what do you call people who “know” things without concrete substantiation? Religious zealots? Jihadists? Congressmen?
— Frank Natoli
Newton, New Jersey
ORIGINAL SINS
Re: R. Andrew Newman’s Failure of the Secular Mind:
Mr. Newman, Thanks! Amen and Amen!
— Clasina J. Segura
New Iberia, Louisiana
Amen, indeed!
— David Shoup
Grovetown, Georgia
