Another “randomness” barrier broken

Reader, for the second time in one day (here’s the first time), brace yourself.

We know that according to current liberal usage, every murder in which the perpetrator is unacquainted with the victim beforehand is, by definition, a “random” act; which means that essentially all interracial murders—including home invasions involving kidnapping, rape, and murder—are “random” acts; which means—since virtually all interracial murders are black-or-Hispanic-on-white murders—that virtually all black-or-Hispanic-on-white murders are “random” acts.

Which means that blacks and Hispanics when they murder whites do not actually intend to kill them. The act is just something that happens, unpredictably, like a gust of wind blowing off someone’s hat.

All of this is deeply sick and outrageous. At the same time, the liberal reconstructors of language have at least defined an objective boundary to their precious “random” murders: the murderer must not personally know the victim beforehand.

Now read the headline, sub-head, and final sentence of a story from ABC News that reader Stan has just sent:

Texas Teacher Stabbed to Death by Student in Classroom
Stabbing Death of Special-Needs Teacher Todd Henry Called a ‘Random Act’

… Reed said the attack was “not gang related or racially motivated. All reports suggest this was a random act by a single student.”

Stabbing his teacher was a random act????

Stabbing his own teacher was a RANDOM ACT????

This breaks down the heretofore solid barrier. If it’s not only the murder of a white by a black-or-Hispanic who doesn’t know the white victim that’s “random,” but even the murder of a white by a black-or-Hispanic who does know the white victim that’s “random,” then, by definition, ALL murders of whites by blacks-or-Hispanics are random acts.

The only remaining exceptions are those extremely rare cases in which the killers explicitly indicate through speech that they are attacking whites because they are white, and in which the prosecutors decide, on the basis of their discretionary prosecutorial whim, that the attack was indeed racially motivated.

In other words, only those vanishingly rare nonwhite on white murders that are formally designated as “hate crimes” are intentional and not random. All other nonwhite on white homicides, meaning 99.99 percent of them, are random.

We have thus reached the final, perfected state of racial nonjudgmentalism, in which ALL murders of whites by nonwhites, except those in which the killers explicitly stated that they intended to kill a white because he was white, and the prosecutor decides on the basis of his own whim to recognize that the killers said this, are relieved of the supposition of intentionality and the consequence of moral judgment.

As bad as this is, it does not mean that we have entered a state of complete anarchy. Blacks and Hispanics who rape and murder whites, even without saying that they are targeting whites as whites, will still be prosecuted and jailed for their crimes. But, as far as society as a whole is concerned, these rapes and murders have no larger significance, no moral or racial significance. There are merely random, unintended events that happen—events to which no blame can be attributed, in which no meaning or pattern can be discerned, about which no general conclusions can be drawn, and against which no cautions must ever be taken.

Here’s the article:

Texas Teacher Stabbed to Death by Student in Classroom
Stabbing Death of Special-Needs Teacher Todd Henry Called a ‘Random Act’
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Sept. 23, 2009

A Texas teacher who helped children with special needs by playing them the guitar was stabbed to death by a juvenile student at a high school in Tyler on Wednesday morning, authorities said.

Todd Henry, 50, was stabbed in the neck and shoulders in a classroom at John Tyler High School a little before 9 a.m. CDT, according to police.

The attacker, who is in custody, has not yet been identified. Police haven’t said whether the suspect was a special-needs student or what led up to the attack.

Henry was in the classroom with a paraprofessional and three students, one of whom is the alleged killer, said Randy Reed, superintendent of the Tyler Independent School District.

Following the incident, Henry was rushed to a local hospital. The school was placed on lockdown and the student was taken in to custody by school district police.

Reed said the attack was “not gang related or racially motivated. All reports suggest this was a random act by a single student.”

- end of initial entry -

John B. writes:

Doesn’t there seem to be a pattern here? Emma Niederbrock’s mother gets killed after joining her daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend at a horrorcore concert—because she (the mother) “needs to be there for” Emma. The Texas stabbing victim “worked as a music therapist with special-needs students at the school” where he was killed. Both of these persons were, in a sense, creations of the Sixties counterculture, which led them to regard normal human interaction as un-deep and in need of being replaced by therapeutic earnestness—which is annoying.

A. Zarkov writes:

I spoke with the reporter, Russell Goldman. He was quoting someone else and is not really sure what a “random act” means in this context. Evidently when no motive is apparent a crime is called “random” by police and other officials. He agreed that’s not very good terminology and is now aware of the problem. I don’t think calling these murders random is as sinister as you imply. It’s just a poor choice of words. We had an extremely pleasant conversation, and I found him reasonable and rational.

LA replies:

We’re not talking of a sinister intent on the part of individual police spokesmen and reporters. It’s an all embracing smog, the nature and premises of which are never examined, as indicated by the fact that Goldman used the word “random” himself without knowing what it meant, and without asking the authorities what they meant by it.

However, the fact that it is a smog that has never been examined suggests that if the police and reporters who used these expressions were questioned and confronted by the public, they may snap out of it, realize the problem, and start using more appropriate language.

These people are not reading VFR. We have to reach out and touch them.

LA continues:

Remember also the important principle that it’s not people’s subjective intentions that matter in politics, but the positions they publicly take.. Police and reporters who publicly use language of nihilism are nihilists and are spreading and enforcing nihilism, even if they don’t personally intend to be nihilists.

September 25

Clark Coleman writes:

I think I can clear up the mystery of the liberal use of the word “random” with respect to crimes. In the fuzzy thinking, fuzzy speaking, and fuzzy writing of today, “random” means “something I don’t understand.”

The liberal believes all crime is caused by the environment, by society. They can understand a poor person stealing or robbing, so they don’t call that a random crime. Even if the car thief does not know who owns the car being stolen, you will not see a newspaper story calling it a random car theft. Everyone can understand that the car thief stole the car to get some money.

However, crimes that are motivated by evil and hatred cannot be understood by the liberal mind. Hence, they are labeled “random” crimes. The liberal can understand why someone steal’s Clark’s money, but why torture him to death afterwards? The liberal mind cannot understand the existence of pure, transcendent (in a negative sense) evil. That is why the famous saying of Irving Kristol et al. is often re-phrased as “A conservative is a liberal who got mugged.” (Kristol added “by reality” on the end, which changes things a bit.) When you look into the eyes of the mugger, and realize that he might just shoot you even though you are meekly handing over your wallet, you confront the existence of evil. All the bromides about “victim of society” and “he just needs money” are unsatisfactory.

I believe you posted my comment years ago that the left went insane over 9/11 because it was a global-scale mugging that they had to confront. Evil stared them in the face.

So, yes, the Tyler, Texas, special-ed student can kill his own teacher and it is “random” because it makes no sense to the liberal mind. It makes perfect sense to my conservative mind: Evil people let anger and resentment and grievance fester until they commit evil acts. Happens all the time. But it is just a moral form of cognitive dissonance to the liberal.

Ferg writes:

Today, Germany invaded Poland in a random act of war that apparently had no motive, according to officials. There seems to have been no economic, racial, or territorial motive behind the attack according to witnesses. It was apparently just the result of the two countries sharing the same border. There is no reason for other nations to be upset about this or think that it is part of a pattern said one high official on condition of anonymity. This could just as easily have happened in reverse the offical said.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 24, 2009 05:56 PM | Send