VPI & SU, Good Grief Dept. 1

Speaking at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network event in New York, (Senator Joe) Biden said President Bush, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove are responsible for what he called “the politics of polarization.”

Biden said Republicans have created an environment that brings bad things to the United States.

“I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what’s gone down at Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus. Take a look. This didn’t happen accidentally, all these things,” he said.

This is only the most outlandish of many outlandish things that have been said and writen about Monday.

Mr. Biden, and many others, would have done well to listen to Virginia’s Governor Kaine:

. . . Kaine said that he’s got ‘nothing but loathing’ for people who want make the event political.

I’ve already discussed the foolishness of thinking that gun control–or absence of gun control–might have had any bearing on this. The shooter was determined to kill. If not guns, it might have been Molotov cocktails or a car crashing through a crowd.

The Virginia Tech shootings are in no way comparable to a domestic dispute that might have ended in a fist-fight, had a gun not been in a desk drawer somewhere. Or an argument on the street that might have ended in a knifing (with, mind you, no stray bullets hitting bystanders), had someone not had a Glock in his pocket.

Then there are some who would say (but, unlike certain reporters, I will cite at least one who says) that the University should have issued a warning immediately after the first shooting. On what grounds? Does your town or city of county go into lockdown mode whenever there’s a shooting and the perp appears to have fled?

And there are others who would say that the University is somehow responsible for, heaven’s sake, not predicting the future. As I said earlier, it appears that the University and its faculty, staff, and students did everything they reasonably could have done.

The plain fact is that there is such a thing as original sin. I’m not referring to any particular theological group’s doctrine of original sin, but, rather to the larger truth:

Persons will make wrong choices and bad stuff will result from those wrong charges.

I do not mean with that statement that it is pointless to try to do anything about the bad stuff.

We should try to understand why persons choose to do wrong so that we can help them–and others–not to do wrong when we can.

We should do all we can to prevent evil when we can and to mitigate it when we must.

But, at some point, we need to say to “some who say”:

“We cannot wrap ourselves and our loved ones or anyone else in a bubble. We cannot predict what might happen tomorrow or even in the next instant (hell, I might drop dead of a heart attack before I click ‘Publish’).

“In short, my dear some who say, it’s time to grow up.”