Mark Steyn comments on the VT massacre:
On Monday night, Geraldo was all over Fox News saying we have to
accept that, in this horrible world we live in, our "children" need to
be "protected."
Point one: They're not "children." The students at Virginia Tech were
grown women and — if you'll forgive the expression — men. They would
be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our
planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where
twentysomethings are "children" if they're serving in the Third
Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if
they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton's Oval Office.
Nonetheless, it's deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults
as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to
understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect
yourself — and, in a "horrible" world, there may come moments when you
have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor
reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has
to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor
Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.
