Posted by
Kenneth G. Davenport on Saturday, April 21, 2007 1:39:38 PM
Peggy Noonan has a great column in the Wall Street Journal this morning where she asks a question that's been on my mind for the past several years: Where have all the grown-ups gone? Doesn't anyone take responsibility anymore or is it now acceptable to parse, justify and rationalize everything away?
The answer to this is, sadly, "no one" and "yes". The most immediate example of this is the savage, senseless murder of those 32 kids on the campus of the University of Virginia. It seems that the killer was a disturbed student with a history of bizarre, violent and dangerous behavior known to both the campus authorities and local law enforcement. He had been caught stalking female students, had set his dorm room on fire, had written a series of violent, morbid scripts and stories for his creative writing class and had actually been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill". His former roommate claims that in the entire time that they lived together the killer never said a single word to him. Not one. This is the personification of anti-social menace. So why was nothing done to remove him from campus?
Because there were no adults in charge at Virginia Tech. In fact, in the aftermath of the killings, both the counseling staff and the administrative leadership at the school claimed that nothing could have done preemptively, in large part because of the "lack of mental health services" in the United States. So, it's the federal government's fault (yet again). Forget about the fact that the University had the right to expel the killer from school and have him forcibly removed from campus. Forget about calling the parents and asking them to take him home to get help. Forget about taking responsibility for the campus population at large and making a decision. Oh, yes. I forgot. That's what adults do.
The unfortunate thing here is that this is now de rigueur in all of public life, not just on college campuses. The rights of the minority now trump the rights and safety of the majority. It is more important to protect a person's civil rights than it is to act decisively in the face of a potential threat to public safety. This is the product of the insane political-correctness that has taken over our culture, buttressed by an overly active trial bar and groups like the ACLU which see everything in terms of power and oppression. The inmates are now running the asylum.
And of course, it permeates so many of the very serious and critical issues we now face. Look at the way the U.S. Congress plays politics with the Iraq War -- choosing political expediency over what is truly good for this country. Just yesterday, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader of the Democrats in Congress, declared (unilaterally, I might add) defeat in Iraq: "The war is lost". Is there anything more irresponsible than the leader of the United States Senate claiming defeat while our soldiers are in harm's way in Iraq?
Where have all the grown-ups gone?