The Columbine massacre has been insufficiently analyzed, in my view — which is of course different than saying it has not received enough attention (it has that: maudlin, unserious, tendentious and ridiculously self-regarding attention [think Michael Moore]). Dave Cullen’s Slate article, which Brooks draws on, is a welcome corrective.

Columbine was another reminder of the reality of evil which much of America’s elite will not face. Moreover, it showed modern philosophy as a teacher of evil.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2099203/

Brook’s analysis is harly unique. It is evident to anyone who has read Crime and Punishment.
However, whereas Raskolnikov had the nobility to face punishment and find redemption, these two teenagers chose suicide. Theirs was not a blaze of glory, but the refusal to face reality by two who presumed to trancend the core of humanity.
This ultimate subversion or even annihilation of the soul and humanity is underlying terror of suicide attacks like thos perpetrated by Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Islamists, in their desire to prove their own superiority, turn themselves into mere instruments of death. For all the obfuscation from the claims of martyrdom, they are infact biological guidance units.
Their prideful refusal to face reality and desire to be worshiped for this cowardice makes them untermenchen.

I refuse to subscribe to The Old York Times and the link Mr. Auster gives to that column requires joining TNYT online. Since I refuse to do so or have anything to do with that rag, I must profess ignorance of that article.

Regarding those mass murderer teens, I wonder “why” they are worth commenting on. Weren’t they or wasn’t one of them on ridelin or some other psychotrophic medication? And didn’t the parents of one of them try to conceal that fact from the press? While they obviously had a death wish—both for their victims and for themselves—why is it necessary to drudge up those two, dead pieces of decaying filth?

Perhaps there are similarities between those teens and the Islamo-facists—and the Nazis. If someone would email me that article in the TNYT, I would be much obliged.

“Their prideful refusal to face reality and desire to be worshiped for this cowardice makes them untermenchen.”

No. Every human being is a human being, even an evil one. The free and equal superman juxtaposed to the oppressor untermensch is a modern pattern of thinking shared by liberals, communists, feminists, homosexualists, and nazis. But it is a false pattern of thinking; a false pattern that arises out of a refusal to face real difference, real inequality, real superiority and inferiority, real authority, real duty to obey, real nobility, real depravity, and real good and evil; all arising within and among real human beings.

Whenever I give thought to the tragic events of Columbine, my attention strangely averts to a situation which is so prominent today: misconduct on school buses. For reasons unknown, the drivers, in most recorded cases, seem oblivious to the shenanigans carried on by the students. We have seen on national television recorded images of violent behavior which was disturbing and even terrifying. Yet the driver continues on his merry route with cpmplete unconcern. But more mystfying is the reaction of school administrators in general. They become defensive and refuse to exhibit a rational response to such incidents. No punishment or severe warning or control measures of any kind are employed. Life goes on as usual. And then when we find oueselves viewing a ‘Columbine’ situation, we start to wonder what happened here? No one knew? All students were ignorant of earlier threats and the type of personalities they were close to? No written reports of misbehavior on school grounds? What I am feebly leading to is that without a firm and fixed system of discipline in our schools, the tragedies we have been confronted with will continue to our utter shame and failure!