The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Over the weekend, Wade Page, who appears to be a neo-Nazi who listened to music with hate-filled lyrics, entered a Sikh place of worship in Wisconsin and murdered seven people. He was then killed by police. Apparently, law enforcement had been aware of the killer's propensity to violence.
This was a horrible event. Given the killer's background, it's reasonable to infer that he killed these innocent people out of some sort of antisocial animus against a group that was "different." There have been suggestions that he thought he was killing Muslims; if true, this suggests that we're not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Now the president weighs in with this bizarre comment: “I think all of us recognize that these kinds of terrible, tragic events are happening with too much regularity for us not to do some soul-searching and to examine additional ways that we can reduce violence."
What precisely does this mean? Major Hasan, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, and now Page have committed multiple murders in the last three years. Hassan was a radical Islamist who killed American soldiers out of a perverse political/religious ideology; heaven only knows what prompted Loughner and Holmes; and Page was a Nazi. None appear to be related to each other in any way.
Why do I (as part of the "we" referred to by the president) need to engage in "soul-searching" over these events? I did that a long time ago. I abhor Islamism. My father fought and was badly wounded by soldiers of the Nazi state. I have not even the slightest animus against Sikhs (what little I do know is that they are a peaceful, accomplished people and that Nikki Haley, Governor of South Carolina, has a Sikh heritage, a fact that speaks well of them). I am unalterably opposed to randomly shooting members of Congress and the people speaking to them and I have never had the slightest temptation to kill people at the showing of a Batman movie. I even favor concealed carry laws so that we can protect ourselves from these kinds of evil men.
I'm sorry, Mr. President, I didn't commit any of these acts; all of them are morally repugnant; the perpetrators should be tried and punished. I believe that nearly 100 percent of Americans agree with me on this. So please explain why any of us need to search our souls? There are a goodly number of things I should be searching my soul about, but this isn't one of them.
Once we're through our soul-searching exercise, what will we learn? I suggest that it won't be a single thing, because everyone who would go through the exercise of searching their souls on this kind of violence are the kinds of people who would never murder another person. If anyone must search their souls, it would be Major Hasan, Loughner, Holmes, and Page (given his demise, someone may be helping him right now with his soul-searching session).
Mr. President, why is it you insist on collectivizing the guilt? Of the incidents described, the nation is not guilty: there are four people who are guilty. I suggest that they search their souls as the await their fates on death row.
Mr. Obama: why did you not make the same comments after the Fort Hood shootings, and why isn't your government willing to acknowledge a fact that is obvious to a three-year-old: Hasan killed people because he's an Islamist and the victims were American infidels? Did you ask Muslims around the world to "search their souls" about how we can prevent further violence? If you did, I don't remember it.
Finally, why is it that Major Hassan has not been tried? We're well past 2 1/2 years since he killed 13 Americans soldiers.
None of these events requires the citizens of the nation to search their souls. They require speedy justice and punishment commensurate with the crimes.
Is there some reason you are incapable of uttering anything other than meaningless platitudes? Real leaders provide clarity.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Obviously, the Obama solution is to disarm everyone that's easy to disarm--everyone that's not a criminal or a psychopath.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
I'm not certain how cogent it is. When I saw the quote, it hit a major hot button. My first reaction went something like: "Where does this condescending jerk come off telling the hundreds of millions of good citizens to search their souls about events that they deplore and did not cause?"
May '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
If anybody ought to do some soul-searching it's Obama, who chose to ally himself with people who foment racial, religious, and class hatred.
Apr '11
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
let BHO search his leftist, statist, Marxist soul for a moment and reflect on the murder, mayhem and manslaughter his ideologies and those of his ilk have perpetrated on the world for centuries. That should keep him busy on a part time basis through January 2013 when he can devote all of his time to plumbing the depths of that ungodly, empty place.
May '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
A fund has been established for the victims of the shooting:
Victims Memorial Fund
Sikh Temple of Wisconsin
7512 S. Howell Ave
Apr '12
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
"Soul searching" makes it sound like the answer is inside you somewhere, and while we could engage in St Augustine-like reflections on how the seeds of evil lie somewhere deep in all of our souls, I don't think that's really necesssary at such a time. However, isn't it of some interest to people to consider what sort of society we have in which people lash out in this particular way? I mean, before Jack the Ripper there don't seem to have been serial killers; now they pop up periodically. Just decades ago the dramatic murderous rampage didn't really happen in this country; why does it happen now?I'm confident you're not to blame, TR. But the question still interests me. In a distantly related vein, I'm also curious why "hysterics" used to be so common in women, and now are not.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
tabula rasa
I'm not certain how cogent it is. When I saw the quote, it hit a major hot button. My first reaction went something like: "Where does this condescending jerk come off telling the hundreds of millions of good citizens to search their souls about events that they deplore and did not cause?" · 1 hour ago
Well, your passion is eloquent, anyway.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Ain't that the truth -- especially about even visiting that "church" of Wright's.
He should do the soul-searching and then give us an honest answer about what he was in that church for.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Rachel Lu: ...
I mean, before Jack the Ripper there don't seem to have been serial killers; now they pop up periodically.
...
Other than the media, where would you have gotten this idea?
The sensation of Jack the Ripper and the modern media are surely inextricably entwined.
Whether such killers existed before the exploitation -- I am certain that serial killers have always existed.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
I agree with you. As my posts demonstrate, I'm semi-obsessed with the state of our society and culture. I also believe that analysis of these events is necessary: by all means, let's find out what makes this kind of killer tick.
My first problem with Obama is his apparent assumption that it will be useful for the great mass of good, kind, un-violent people to gaze into their own souls to find out why sociopaths act sociopathically.
My other problem with Obama is his empty-headed platitudes. I sincerely believe that he thinks that when he utters words (no matter how nonsensical) they are magically endowed with moral authority.
Edited on August 7, 2012 at 11:29pmApr '12
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Sure, I agree with all that, TR! And also, when the mainstream media comes up with an explanation for the violent behavior of social rejects like this, it's usually something incredibly hackneyed and stupid. Generally either video games or guns are the main suggested culprits.
Larry, what makes you so certain that there have always been serial killers? I agree that there have always been evil people of some kind, but evil can manifest itself in different ways, some of which are culturally conditioned. The world has always been filled with violence (sadly) but not always the same kind.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
We do know. Loughner had been - I believe the word used by high-school friends who were there - "furious" that Giffords responded so poorly to his brilliant question "What is government if words have no meaning?" at a forum some years before.
Man, if I had that kind of provocation...
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Eeyore
We do know. Loughner had been - I believe the word used by high-school friends who were there - "furious" that Giffords responded so poorly to his brilliant question "What is government if words have no meaning?"at a forum some years before.
Man, if I had thatkind of provocation... · 37 minutes ago
Gosh. Who'd have suspected he was so rational.
I just read on Drudge that he just entered a guilty plea on condition that he doesn't get the death penalty. I assume the prosecutors talked to the families about that, but I find it surprising.
Frankly, given his crazy manifesto, I thought he might pull off an insanity defense.
May '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
I'm sure that you are mistaken, and that there have always been such people. (How many newspapers were there in the Middle Ages? What judicial records have survived, and who besides scholars read them?) Furthermore, there is nothing particularly American or Western about hate-killings, they can be found all around the world. (Recall, for instance, the French Muslim who knifed to death a neighbor and then proudly announced to his neighbors "I have killed my Jew. I will go to Heaven.") In fact, actual massacres occur quite frequently.) As Ibn Warraq and others have noted, in much of the world racial and religious bigotry are prevalent, open, and entirely unashamed. If anything, the West is notable for its efforts to fight bigotry and oppression. So, to restate what I wrote earlier, if anybody should do any soul-searching, it should be Barack Obama, who should ask himself why he is so disgracefully ignorant.
Apr '12
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
I'm seriously fascinated that people are so insistent that there have always been serial killers. What makes you so sure? Why couldn't this just be a modern phenomenon? As a medievalist I'm strongly inclined to think that we would have heard about them if they existed in anything like the numbers we've seen in the modern era. Of course I can't be certain that there couldn't ever have been one, say, off in the wilds of the Caucuses during the Dark Ages, of whom no record exists. But serial killers, for obvious reasons, tend to be drawn to population enters. And they leave a strong impression on the imagination, even without media blitzes to broadcast all the gory details. It definitely seems like the kind of thing my medieval moral philosophers would have found interesting, if they were known to exist. I have read serious scholarly works that referred to Jack the Ripper as "the first serial killer" so I have to assume that there's some kind of semi-consensus about it.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Well, Rachel, I have to admit that it might be increased by the present society that allows so much more free time than ever before -- and for more people than ever before. Also, the ability to travel in a more anonymous fashion with cars, etc. -- that has to contribute the efficiency. But, human nature is surely fairly stable from all historical indications.
The new thing in the last hundred years is the higher literacy rate of the average person and the more ubiquitous and more predatory media. So, it seems likely to me that this is blown up by the media and it only now comes into the consciousness of the nation.
The next question is does the media make it worse -- not just make it seem that it's happening more these days.
Jul '11
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
tabula rasa:
Mr. President, why is it you insist on collectivizing the guilt?
Because he is a true believer in socialism. EVERYTHING is collective.
-E
Apr '12
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
But see, this is the fascinating thing: human nature stays fixed, but it can develop in such an amazing variety of ways! That's why culture matters so much. And, when you're looking at an extreme aberration like the serial killer, it definitely doesn't seem reasonable to me to assume that every culture would have them.
Let me give a couple more examples. Eating disorders. They don't seem to have existed before a century or so ago; now they are common. On the other hand, Freud talked about all kinds of female "hysterics" as though they were common, and we don't see those kinds of behaviors much at all today. Perhaps eating disorders are the new hysterics? Thought-provoking.
Also, look to the other end of the spectrum and consider human greatness. Cultural relativists try to make it sound as though all cultures have their extreme geniuses, but this just doesn't hold up if you look at intellectual history with anything like a fair eye. Certain times and places have produced a number of great men (ancient Athens, the Italian Renaissance, 19th century Russia, etc.), and others hardly anything worth talking about. Again, culture matters.
Jun '10
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Rachel Lu: But see, this is the fascinating thing: human nature stays fixed, but it can develop in such an amazing variety of ways! That's why culture matters so much. And, when you're looking at an extreme aberration like the serial killer, it definitely doesn't seem reasonable to me toassumethat every culture would have them.
...
I see your point, Rachel, but this seems different than eating disorders or hysterics. But, we definitely don't have data on serial killing so this is just an assumption on my part -- as you say.
Still, in another way what supports your notion is the media -- it might be that serial killers are only a modern creation that plays on the stage that only the media can give him.
Apr '12
Re: The Sikh Massacre: Obama Collectivizes the Guilt
Below is a quote from Wikipedia about Burke and Hare, who operated in Scotland in 1827-1828. Jack the Ripper seemed an amateur compared with this pair. The Scots took a perverted pride in that. :-) Probably still do! Scots really are a "wild shower". I wonder if Americans understand what that means? :-)
"The Burke and Hare murders (nickname West Port murders) were serial murders perpetrated in Edinburgh, Scotland, from November 1827 to October 31, 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 17 victims to provide material for dissection. Their purchaser was Doctor Robert Knox, a private anatomy lecturer whose students were drawn from Edinburgh Medical College " Wikipedia