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Liberals would rather be killed than defend themselves
Alex B. writes:
Jeffrey Goldberg asks another writer for The Atlantic, a mindless, blabbering black liberal named Ta-Nehisi Coates:
If you were confronted with an “active shooter,” do you think, in that moment, you might wish you had a gun?
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s answer gives us a look into the liberal mind:
I actually wouldn’t wish I had a gun. I’ve shot a rifle at camp once, but that’s about it. If I had a gun, there is a good chance I would shoot myself, thus doing the active shooter’s work for him (it’s usually “him.”) But the deeper question is, “If I were confronted with an active shooter, would I wish to have a gun and be trained in its use?” It’s funny, but I still don’t know that I would. I’m pretty clear that I am going to die one day. That moment will not be of my choosing, and it almost certainly will not be too my liking. But death happens. Life—and living—on the other hand are more under my control. And the fact is that I would actually rather die by shooting than live armed.
The liberal desire for control over life taken to its logical extreme leads to violent death. The uncertainty of living armed is worse than the certainty of death in the event of a shooting.
LA replies:
I first saw Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attitude expressed 45 years ago, in the flawed final episode of the great TV series The Fugitive. Richard Kimble has finally caught up with the one-armed man who is the real killer of his wife. There is an armed confrontation between them. The one-armed man aims at Kimble. But Kimble, holding a gun, cannot bring himself to use it in self defense. The one-armed man is about shoot Kimble, when Lt. Gerard, finally realizing the truth of Kimble’s innocence, shoots the one-armed man and saves Kimble’s life. Thus Kimble would rather let the murderer of his wife kill him, than shoot the murderer in self-defense. It was liberalism brought to the point of suicidal nihilism.
In its third and fourth seasons, extending from 1965 to 1967, The Fugitive had become increasingly characterized by sentimental, altruistic liberalism, in keeping with the change from the early ’60s, when America was still sane, to the late ’60s. The scene I’ve just described was the culmination of that. In its first two seasons, the show had a more sound, balanced, and traditional ethical perspective. On one hand, it was liberal—how could a story about a man unjustly accused of murder and being chased all around the country by a lawman convinced of his guilt not be somewhat liberal? On the other hand, Kimble, though he has been wronged by society, does not act like a resentful victim; he always acts in the ethically correct way and is a defender of the social order, though he himself is an outcast from it.
I had discovered The Fugitive at the very end of its second season, and watched without fail every episode of the third and fourth seasons. That was during my junior and senior years of high school. At the same time I was also reading and re-reading Les Misérables, on which the show was, of course, based. It was only many years later that I saw most of the episodes of the first and second seasons in syndication, and realized how far superior the first two years of the show were to the last two years.
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Terry Morris writes:
The liberal mental illness articulated by Mr. Coates comes in varying stages. I once had a conversation with a liberal family man, in which I asked a similar question concerning the protection of his family as the husband, father, and head of the home. His answer was that under no circumstances would he defend his family by killing another human being; that he preferred to allow his own children to be tortured, raped, murdered at the hands of criminals, rather than have the blood of criminals on his hands.
People that far gone ought to be institutionalized in my opinion.
LA replies:
This is similar to the common liberal attitude that it would be better to be killed by Muslim terrorists than discriminate against Muslims.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
The real question for Coates is why he thinks his nihilistic insouciance about being shot to death (which is an obvious lie in any case) ought to be forced on everybody and enshrined in law. A woman’s natural rights over her body are so absolute that they extend to murdering her baby in the womb, but no man has any right to defend himself from being murdered by an armed robber because, you know, like, death happens, man.
Besides, Coates’ answer to Goldberg isn’t even coherent, in the sense that it contains anything resembling a real thought. Nothing in his comments flows necessarily (or even plausibly) from what precedes it—life is under his control, so he would rather die than live armed? Come again? His whole response is a rambling wreck of contradictory sentiments and non-sequitirs, impressive only in that it reveals so much muddle-headedness in so short a space. He knows where he’s supposed to come down on the issue, he knows Goldberg’s question has him nailed cold, and so he just blusters about, implausibly suggesting that being shot and lying on the street with his life’s blood spreading out beneath him would be “not to his liking,” but certainly no cause for doing something crazy like taking responsibility for his own safety.
That such an unreflective hipster half-wit is senior editor for The Atlantic really is a symptom of terminal decline.
Steve D. writes:
I have long thought that the best way to sum up our present predicament is that, for a majority of modern Americans, there is no longer any such thing as “a fate worse than death.”
Apparently, I was wrong. For Coates, and millions like him, there IS something worse than death, and it turns out to be the same thing it is for us: becoming that which we abhor. The big difference is this: what Coates abhors is responsible adulthood, rational self-respect, and the entire tradition of Western civilization.
Paul K. writes:
Larry,
If I could stand to converse with such a repellent person, I would ask Ta-Nehisi Coates the following questions:
Are you saying that your personal choice not to defend yourself would override your concern for the lives of others? Since you say that you have to die someday, and you seem indifferent as to whether it should be at the hands of a murderer, can we assume you don’t feel outrage at the deaths of the children murdered in Newtown? After all, you would refuse to defend them and don’t they have to die some day too anyway? What’s the difference?
You have already decided that you will not provide for your own defense. To justify that stance, you claim that if faced with violent death you would accept it with equanimity, rather that—as is more likely—screaming in terror, begging for mercy, and willing at that moment to do anything to escape your fate? In other words, aren’t you choosing to live in denial rather than face up to reality? The reality being that you want to live.
Stewart W. writes:
I wonder if Mr. Coates’s response is yet another form of projection, rather like the liberal We. When liberals use the word “we,” they generally mean “the rest of you,” and mentally exclude themselves, e.g. “In this country, we are obsessed with guns.”
I suspect that what Coates really means is “the fact is that I would actually rather you die by shooting than that you live armed.”
Alex B. writes:
Terry Morris writes:
The liberal mental illness articulated by Mr. Coates comes in varying stages. I once had a conversation with a liberal family man, in which I asked a similar question concerning the protection of his family as the husband, father, and head of the home. His answer was that under no circumstances would he defend his family by killing another human being; that he preferred to allow his own children to be tortured, raped, murdered at the hands of criminals, rather than have the blood of criminals on his hands.
People that far gone ought to be institutionalized in my opinion.
Yes, that is madness. But we must also recognize the tremendous strength of conviction manifested in this attitude. This fanatical loyalty to their absurd, abhorrent beliefs, to the point of professing willingness to sacrifice their children to them, is a big part of what makes liberalism such a formidable, seemingly all-conquering force. We will be deluding ourselves if we think that liberals saying “I would rather die by shooting than live armed” is a sign of weakness; it’s the opposite. It’s their immoral, nihilistic way of turning the other cheek, and it gives them a powerful conviction of their moral superiority. And such conviction is a source of great strength.
LA replies:
Yes. People willing to die for their beliefs are strong, like the Muslim warriors who poured out of the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century and conquered everyone they encountered.
Paul M. writes:
Somehow I think that if Ta-Nehisi Coates were asked what he would do if he were about to be killed by a straight white man wearing a KKK hood, he’d come up with a different answer.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 27, 2012 09:42 AM | Send
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