Police, mass murder, and relativism
Police Chief Joseph Zikuski told NBC’s “Today” that people “degraded and disrespected” the gunman over his poor English. (AP, April 4, 2009.)
Richard S. writes:
A police chief uses the term “disrespected” essentially to excuse a mass murderer?! We’re finished. What’s left—since the state is more our enemy than our protector—but to go armed, everywhere?
Richard S. is right to underscore the significance of Chief Zikulski’s remark. I want to get the full text of Zikuski’s statement, but every
account I’ve found so far just echoes the AP story with the phrase that people “degraded and disrespected” the killer.
But I also find this:
Police say New York immigrant shooter’s act ‘no surprise’
Chris Michaud & Jackie Frank Reuters Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:33 UTC
… Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said on Saturday no motive for the shooting had been determined, but he confirmed reports that Wong, who also went by the name Voong, had felt degraded by his inability to speak English and by a recent job loss.
“From the people close to him … this action he took was not a surprise to them,” Zikuski told a news conference.
“He felt degraded from his inability to speak English and he was upset about that,” he added.
So, according to Zikuski’s logic, if a person immigrates to this country, and fails to learn the language, and is frustrated by that, we should
expect him to commit mass murder. Or at least we should not be
surprised if he commits mass murder. Which means that there are millions of immigrants whom we have allowed to enter in this country about whom we should not be surprised if they commit mass murder.
Such is the sickening, knee-jerk liberal way of talking about crime that is ubiquitous among all officialdom at all levels in the United States.
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Brett A. writes:
You wrote:
Calling a mass murderer who kills himself a “coward,” which was also President Clinton’s favorite way of describing terrorists, must be one of the most meaningless, trite comments there is.
That “coward” comment came from the police chief whose officers didn’t enter the building for an hour even though they knew at least one badly wounded woman was inside. Here:
Police said they arrived within two minutes at the American Civic Association.
Police heard no gunfire after they arrived but waited for about an hour before entering the building to make sure it was safe for officers.
LA replies:
You’re right! Thanks for reminding me of that.
Adela G.writes:
The police chief states in the article you quote:
“He felt degraded from his inability to speak English and he was upset about that.”
No mention of others degrading Wong, it was his own inability that made him feel degraded. That’s something quite different.
Also, I consider the word “disrespect” to have a far less serious connotations than the word “degrade.” So while others (and who’s to say these others were all white native-born Americans?) may have disrespected this mass murderer, we have no evidence as yet that they “degraded” him.
In any case, I wasn’t aware that degrading someone was, in effect, a capital crime. Even those loutish American soldiers at Abu Ghraib weren’t sentenced to death for deliberately degrading their prisoners.
The subtext, of course, is that whatever the circumstances, it’s white America’s fault when someone commits mass murder in America. Either a nonwhite was the victim of racism so virulent that it caused him to run amok or else a white racist simply ran amok.
Adela G. writes:
Richard S. writes: “What’s left—since the state is more our enemy than our protector—but to go armed, everywhere?”
Now you’re started to sound like a Midwesterner.
And to any lurking lefty who may be reading this, I’ll say only this: if you consider Richard’s question evidence of paranoia, please name just one major social problem here in America that is not blamed on whites by the media, academia and the state, local and federal governments.
As far as going armed everywhere, I should add that even with a conceal/carry permit, the ordinary citizen is not allowed carry a weaon in a school, a campus or any establishment that has posted a sign forbidding firearms on its premises. Other restrictions may apply in the various states that allow conceal/carry.
Adela writes:
Maybe I was unclear.
My point was that disrespecting and degrading someone is not a capital crime. And that the left has found a way to blame mass murder in America on whites, regardless of the circumstances of a particular case.
So the murderer is transformed into a victim and millions of law-abiding America citizens are, in essence, guilty of mass murder because they are white.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 05, 2009 09:20 AM | Send