Back to Basics

From AFP News:

A man in northern China has driven a car carrying a gas canister and firecrackers into a crowd of schoolchildren, injuring 13, state media reported Tuesday.
It follows a wave of recent attacks on children in China, which have prompted authorities to increase security around schools and led to calls for research into the root causes of such violence.
In the latest attack on Monday, the man drove into a crowd of students in Hebei province, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local police.
The report did not say how old the victims were, though the students at the school they attended would range in age from 11 to 18.
The man was identified as 48-year-old Yin Tiejun, who was described as divorced and without a stable job. . . .

Thanks to Jose A. Diaz Marrero for this link.

PHOTOS.COM

Manners, common decency and respect for others are lost American traits.

Interactions turn nasty at the drop of a hat. Name-calling and the violence now pass for discussion. Young children are resorting to theft.

I recently wrote about some of the signs of societal collapse here. Here are some more, taken from recent headlines:

A Pennsylvania man became irate after the replacement hamburger he requested contained a slice of cheese. The replacement was necessary because the first one he ordered at the drive-thru also contained a slice of cheese. He parked his car, entered the restaurant and demanded and received a refund. He then cursed the staff, knocked over a trash can and threw a children’s high chair across a room filled with diners. When he realized that a restaurant worker had followed him outside to get his license plate number, the man grabbed the female worker, put her in a headlock and smashed the phone she was carrying. He then threatened to fight another employee before leaving.

A 65-year-old priest waiting on a bus was attacked with pepper spray and robbed of $125 at a bus stop in Philadelphia in broad daylight.

A college student riding a Chicago Transit Authority train was attacked by a man who put a sock filled with feces in her face and hair and on her clothes. The victim said she did not know the attacker and he uttered no words and did not demand her valuables. “I don’t know why he did it,” she said.

A diner at a Denny’s restaurant in San Antonia, Texas, became irate at being made to wait on his bill, so he set fire to the restaurant’s Christmas tree and left the restaurant. The flames caused $150,000 in damage to the business.

An 8-year-old girl was caught on a surveillance camera stealing a package off her neighbor’s porch in Clermont, Fla. Police investigating a spate of missing packages from the neighborhood believe the girl is responsible for all or most of them. Some of the stolen packages were found at a nearby abandoned house.

In Wentzville, Mo., barbershop patrons were discussing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. One patron said the incident “makes me want to murder the suspect.” For unknown reasons, another patron took that as a threat against him. He retrieved a gun from his car and fired three times at the other patron.

In South Union Township, Pa., two women tussled over a shopping cart at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. When one of the women abandoned the cart and grabbed another, the other woman “still engraged” then “ran down” the first woman with the cart, pushed it onto her back and began punching her in the face.

On a single afternoon in Chicago, a city in the State with the Nation’s most restrictive gun laws, a series of eight shootings left at least 10 people wounded, including four teenagers.

We live in a Nation in which God has been removed from schools, prayers are banned from public places and babies are slaughtered by the thousands on a daily basis. Unemployment remains high and inflation is sapping the wealth of the elderly and savers.

Last Friday was evidently International Maniac Congruence Day. In Newtown a 20–year–old loser — whose newspaper photo bears a striking resemblance to the SS Totenkoph insignia — shot and killed 20 elementary school students and six adults. While in Chenpeng, China another maniac stabbed 22 children and one adult in an elementary school.

Yet there has been no outcry in China for more cutlery control and CNN International has not been broadcasting remote from outside the Henckels’ knife factory. In fact there has been scant coverage of the Chinese attack.

The obscure, knife–wielding Chinaman proves it’s not a weapon problem — it’s a maniac problem. For where there’s a maniacal will, there’s a maniacal way.

So in the wake of Newtown, I’ll endorse the first politician who designates schools as “maniac–free zones.” You may scoff, but this law will be just as effective as “gun–free zones” and has the added advantage of directly addressing the cause of the problem.

Banning “assault weapons” is a knee–jerk response from ideological jerks. It’s like treating a drunk for difficulties with his equilibrium, rather than talking about alcohol. What’s more, “assault weapons” have been banned in Connecticut since 1993 and a fat lot of good it did at Sandy Hook Elementary. The Bushmaster rifle used there was registered and legal. The only measurable effect discussions of an “assault weapon” ban have is increased gun and ammunition sales.

Another liberal bright idea is establishing a bag limit for mass shootings like we currently have for ducks. Duck hunters are often limited in the number of shells their shotgun magazine can hold. This encourages hunters to obey the law specifying the maximum number of ducks one is allowed to shoot.

The same logic applies to the limit on “high capacity magazines.” Unfortunately, limiting magazine size just means the shooter needs bigger pockets. Many semi–automatic pistols thoughtfully let you know when the magazine is empty by locking the slide back. One simply has to drop the empty and slap a full one in — a process taking under two seconds. Besides, I am unaware of any spree killing that ended prematurely because the gunman ran out of ammunition.

In 2011 there were 32,367 automobile deaths — more than three times the number of firearms murders. Based on gun control logic, we should also ban automobiles that look like racecars, because sleek design encourages drivers to go too fast.

No one bothers to ask why we have a rash of these mass killings now and not in the 60’s when there were no background checks and you could buy a handgun through the mail. As anti–gun legislation has become more pervasive so have spree killings.

An early WaPost article said the motivation for the murders remains a “mystery.” Maybe it’s a “mystery” for liberals, but not for those with common sense. If you’re a disaffected, disturbed loser, who wants the nation to feel his pain, you follow the template written by media vultures and go to the nearest sitting duck zone and start shooting.

The same saturation coverage that validates dollar store teddy bear memorials, validates the violence that inspires misguided bystanders to leave a mylar balloon as close to the bloodstains as the yellow police tape will allow.

I received an interesting e-mail this morning that I will share with you in a moment. The subject is video games. Yesterday, I touched on this topic in my post on “6 simple things parents can do in the wake of massacres without government.”

I believe it is parents’ role, not the government’s, to monitor their children’s online, smartphone, and gaming activity. Several politicians on Capitol Hill are making noises about new regulations on video games. I am against such post-Newtown political grandstanding. We don’t need kabuki. We need to take individual responsibility.

We parents need to keep ourselves up to date and informed on what’s out there in the marketplace. I’m part of the generation that grew up with Pong and Donkey Kong, witnessed the early days of bloody video games with the advent of “Postal,” then tuned out of the “Grand Theft Auto” and “Halo” era as we focused on raising our own children. I let my kids play “Burger Shop” on my laptop, “Family Feud” on the iPad, and “Wurdle” and “Tiny Tower” on my iPhone. My 12-year-old daughter has played “Big Buck Safari” at the arcade. My 9-year-old son gets an occasional kick out of “Kick the Buddy.” But that’s about as violent as it gets. We prefer interactive games offline that bring the family together — Boggle, Settlers of Catan, Apples to Apples, and Scattergories are our favorites.

Joseph, a 30-year-old reader and video gamer/aspiring game designer, wrote me this morning to share his thoughts and reaction to the new round of criticism of gaming. Parents, I hope this helps.

I’m writing you because I believe of all the talking heads, you might actually make this known…

A little about me, I’m a struggling game designer and artist. I’m 30, fit the ‘potentially unstable, quiet, smart guy’ profile to a T, and actually attended a different high school during the Columbine Shooting that was just two blocks down the road at the time. I’m a gamer, and if it hadn’t been for games connecting me to other people, I’m not sure I’d even be able to write you this letter because I would be afraid to reach out and contact other people.

In the wake of Columbine, basically everything about the sort of person I am was questioned, dissected, and essentially labeled as ‘signs of a disconnected person who might go on a shooting rampage.’ I’ve always been intelligent, I love video games, I’m quiet, creative, and possibly borderline autistic. Talk to me in real life and I get very nervous. I can’t help it, I’m socially awkward. And every time this happens, I feel like I’m being criminalized because I am awkward.

Now, back to the topic at hand-violence in video games. I keep seeing news personalities pick at it, but they aren’t asking any real questions. One of your partners on The Five said this new kid [Adam Lanza] played a lot of Dynasty Warriors, and how that’s a very violent game. I’m not sure how he measures violence because I’d rate Dynasty Warriors as a T, or to use a more familiar rating system, PG-13 level of violence. There is violence in it, but it’s generally toned down and not very graphic.

Fires, vandalism, and riots broke out again in Anaheim, Calif. late last night during protests against police brutality. It’s the fourth night of lawlessness in the city that’s supposed to be the “happiest place on Earth.”

Demonstrators smashed Starbucks windows and set dumpsters ablaze. Way to send a social justice message.

Police fired pepper balls into crowds and both sides braced for violence, stoked by social media instigators.

Full overnight coverage of the unfolding chaos at Twitchy.

Where are the adults in the room?

Might this be the time for Obama to calm racial anger?  Has the media hyping of the case and misinformation has endangered lives?

Gainesville, Florida:

A teen charged with a hate crime in Oak Park says he attacked and beat up his victim because he was angry about the Trayvon Martin case.
Alton Hayes III, 18, of Oak Park, is charged with attempted robbery and aggravated battery. He is also charged with a hate crime.
Hayes and his 15-year-old alleged accomplice are African-American, while the victim is white.
The Oak Park-River Forest Patch reportsaround 1 a.m. April 17, Hayes and the Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old victim in the 1600 block of North Kenilworth Avenue in Oak Park.
Police say Hayes and his accomplice and pinned the victim’s arms to his side, police said. Hayes then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy,” police said.
The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. After being arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the Trayvon Martin case, and said he beat the victim up because he was white, Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said. . . .

Mobile, Alabama:

A white Alabama man’s brutal beating by a mob is not being investigated as a hate crime, despite eyewitness reports that one of the assailants referenced Trayvon Martin during the attack.
The attack on Matthew Owens, 40, is currently being investigated as an assault, said Ashley Rains, public information officer for the Mobile Police Department, to Fox News.
Owens, of Mobile, remains in serious condition after cops say about 20 African-American adults showed up at his home Saturday and beat him with chairs, pipes, brass knuckles and paint cans.
Owens’ sister and another witness say that as the group left, one assailant said: “Now that’s justice for Trayvon” following the assault. . . .

The flash mobs in America or the Blackberry mobs in London have one thing in common. It isn’t race, though they tend to predominantly be minorities. It’s identity.

The counterculture has not changed dramatically since the 70′s, but it has tossed aside any appearance of idealism. The new counterculture draws in two groups, disaffected upper middle class white youth and lower class black youth. Their goals are purely materialistic, looted iPods and government subsidies for housing, education and anything else they can think of.

These are the children of the welfare state with little in common except a rejection of the commercial way of life. Neither the entitled white university brat or the posturing ghetto teenager has any interest in working. The businesses they smash are an alien thing to them. Small businessmen do not go about smashing stores. The people who do think of commodities as something they trick or intimidate others into giving to them. And that covers everyone from municipal unions to thugs driving around BMW’s.

Rand’s looters take on a more literal meaning in Tottenham. Smashing store windows and grabbing what’s inside is only the protest for more government handouts taken directly to the businesses who fund it without the bother of a government middle man.

This lawless materialism is the essence of the welfare state. “Loot as much as you can, or someone else will.” If you don’t grab government benefits or sneakers in store windows, someone else will. The rich are grabbing, the pols are grabbing– time to queue up and loot your share. Communism made this way of thinking so commonplace that all of Russia became one black market. And we are not far behind.

What kind of people behave this way? Those who have come to think of wealth as an infinite pile from which everyone grabs as much as they can. This is where the ethos of the socialist left and hip-hop comes together. Obama gleefully spending millions on himself and trillions on national giveaways for his donors and supporters is the most obnoxious fusion of this phenomenon.

Technological savvy melded with barbaric behavior, the 21st century mobile devotee turned raider is a wake up call in more ways than one. These are not mere race riots, they are the self-organization of the end of our civilization.

The classic raid has come to the cities of West, its hallmarks are not frustration but careful planning, followed by a violent rush. The raids may have a profit motive, but often they are there only to terrify.  Mostly there is no larger political agenda, only the emergence of an old way of life that most people think died with the Vikings.

The law banished the raider back into the dim pages of history,  but law depended on a civilization which is now collapsing. Police officers alone won’t be enough to stem the ride. Law enforcement depends on the fear of the average person to step out of line and break the law. The lone criminal pits himself against the well-oiled machine of the police and the federal authorities. But when gangs defy the authorities, then it’s the beginning of a civil war.

An understated civil war is already raging in Europe, between Muslim and African immigrants and the society they have penetrated.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Sctxx7AD4

When the police aren’t present what should people do to protect themselves and their property? In the UK, the answer is nothing. From Fox News:

A wave of violence and looting raged across London and spread to three other major British cities on Tuesday, as authorities struggled to contain the country’s worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.
In London, groups of young people rampaged for a third straight night, setting buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps alight, looting stores and pelting police officers with bottles and fireworks. The spreading disorder was an unwelcome view of London’s volatility for leaders organizing the 2012 Summer Olympics in less than a year.
Police called in hundreds of reinforcements — and made a rare decision to deploy armored vehicles in some of the worst-hit districts — but still struggled to keep pace with the chaos unfolding at flashpoints across London, in the central city of Birmingham, the western city of Bristol and the northwestern city of Liverpool. . . .

If 1900, twenty year before the UK had really any gun control laws, there were only two gun murders and 5 armed robberies. That in a city of 6 million people where gun ownership was extremely common.

It was the body slam heard around the world. When some Australian schoolboys decided to videotape themselves bullying 15-year old Casey Heynes, one of them got more than he bargained for. Casey, who had been pushed around and humiliated for years, responded to a punch in his face and other attempted blows by hoisting his tormentor WWE style and introducing him to the pavement. The result was a video that went viral in a way the bullies had never imagined and for a reason they certainly had never hoped: Casey has become a hero worldwide.

That is, a hero to everyone except the “experts.” Ah, the experts, uncommon people you can rely on for all-too-common senselessness. As The Sydney Morning Herald writes:

[P]olice and bullying experts are concerned by…the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the older boy’s retaliation against his attacker.

“We don’t believe that violence is ever the answer,” Mr Dalgleish [John Dalgleish, head of research at Kids Helpline and Boys Town] says. “We believe there are other ways that children can manage this.”

Yes, Casey could have done a ‘50s-style duck-and-cover. Hey, kid, don’t you know you should just cower and curl up into a ball? And, for sure, violence is never the answer…except with the Nazis, Mussolini, and Napoleon; during the American Revolution, the Barbary Wars, and the Battle of Tours; and when stopping the criminals during the North Hollywood Shootout, University of Texas Tower Shooting, and incidents every single day in which someone, somewhere uses physical force to thwart a crime. It’s never the answer—except, sometimes, when you actually have to deal with reality.

It’s hard to say what is more irritating about the “Violence is never the answer” nonsense, the stupidity or the insincerity of it. It’s much like the mantra “Our strength lies in our diversity.” It’s something people say because it’s a repeated big lie that has become “truth” and is politically correct; it’s a reflexive platitude uttered politician-like because that’s what “experts” are expected to say. But if Mr. Dalgleish’s wife or child is attacked on the street, will he not find violence a very good answer?

Perhaps he’ll take the advice of another expert, child psychologist Susan Bartell, and find some other way to “manage” it. When analyzing Casey’s response, she said, “A better course of action…would have been for him to walk away. Would have been for him to immediately take the power away from the bully, who was punching him in the face, and just run away, walk away….” “Take the power away from the bully….” Good psychobabble that. Lady, Casey did take the power away from the bully by making sure the bully couldn’t walk away.

The problem today is that we elevate experts above wise men. And one of the signs of a decaying civilization is when those in authority prescribe unrealistic rules for the population, rules that they themselves would never, and could never, follow. As to this, here is the rest of Dr. Bartell’s advice: “…walk away, and go and find the principal, the guidance counselor, teacher and tell them what had just happened to him.