I’m willing to concede Yglesias’ point that exploitation of tragedies like the Virginia Tech massacre are a necessary evil, since most people aren’t paying attention to issue debates unless something dramatic happens. Gun control and gun rights are natural things to be talking about right now.
Michelle Malkin, however, is a special kind of ridiculous, and this morning she churned out another precious nugget of astonishing nonsense. She entitles her column this week “Wanted: A culture of self-defense,” in which she complains that American universities are turning their students into sissies. She actually begins by making a fair point, although in the aftermath of Monday’s violence we might be worried where she’s going with it:
There's no polite way or time to say it: American college and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments, and designated "safe spaces" to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions—while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).
Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.
Yes, I suppose this is all basically true enough (although in my opinion conservative victimhood is debatable and many far-left positions, particularly on the absurdity of religion, have increasingly been received by a cold shoulder). And since Malkin is a bad writer, I initially assumed that this was a tasteless and oblique way of introducing some tasteless and oblique commentary on classroom violence. But, alas, it was not to be. It seems she has discovered a connection between political correctness and mass murder:
And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.
Apparently, she’s not joking. She goes on to point to the case of a young man who had written an editorial for Virginia Tech’s student newspaper criticizing the university’s policy prohibiting concealed firearms on campus. Shockingly for free speech advocate Malkin, the editorial was subsequently critiqued by a faculty member.
How, exactly, is this an instance of “Big Nanny” P.C. mind control?
And how, exactly, did this instance – and even a thousand more like it, assuming they exist – lead to Monday’s bloodshed?
Enough is enough…. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense—mind, spirit, and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.
Fight back? Against what? Against homicidal lunatics or liberal faculty? To Malkin’s mind, evidently, it’s a false antithesis: “intellectual disarmament” and “physical disarmament” are pretty much the same thing. Well, of course they’re not – the right to express a conservative viewpoint is not a right to establish a conservative policy. Conservatives who make “intellectual” arguments for concealed carry permits were not the victims of Virginia Tech; the individuals who have been “physically” shot were.
Michelle Malkin’s article is not a necessary evil, a morbid but logical inroad to a crucial policy debate, because it’s not really about gun control or administrative incompetence or anything remotely relevant. It’s childish whining about being oppressed, all the more gruesome and clumsy when set against the backdrop of the murders of 32 people.
