This is the type of person who takes something like the Martin shooting and blame it on the stand your ground law. Not the person pulling the trigger or not even to think that possibly acting in selfdefense. Then takes cases were for some unknown reason a person loses control and goes crazy to paint anyone who ownes and likes to shoot firearms as a crazy killer in the shadows waiting to spread death. These are the types who are college professors teaching the next generation. To love all men, there are no dangers in the world that love can't over come along with a little weed. They are being tought to be victims not better humans along with losing their rights they are losing the ability to survive. AMERICA'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH FIREARMS IS NATIONAL INSANITY <CITE class="byline vcard">By Cynthia Tucker | Cynthia Tucker – <ABBR title=2012-04-07T05:02:06Z>Sat, Apr 7, 2012</ABBR></CITE> <!-- START article --> <!-- yog-5u --> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><ROOT></ROOT> It has been 46 years -- nearly a half-century -- since Charles Whitman, a troubled ex-Marine, climbed atop the iconic University of Texas Tower to use it as a staging zone for a shooting spree. He killed 16 people on and around the campus, including his wife and mother. The nation, while sobered by a second World War and stunned by escalating political turmoil, was still naive in many ways back then -- halfway through a violent decade that would rend the political and social fabric. The youthful president, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated just three years before. It's no surprise that Whitman's massacre horrified Americans from coast to coast. But in the years since, we've adjusted too well to the armed madmen in our midst. A massacre on a college campus barely garners notice outside its immediate locale. Last week, when disgruntled ex-student One Goh allegedly opened fire in a classroom of Oakland's tiny Oikos University, killing seven and wounding three others, the news drew low-key coverage outside California. After all, it was just the latest of several campus shootings so far this year. And Whitman seems an amateur by current standards of senseless carnage. In 2007, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 25 at Virginia Tech. By then, of course, the 1999 Colombine High School massacre, during which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 before committing suicide, had long since faded from the news. Cho came from an immigrant family, but his massacre suggests how thoroughly American he was. (The same is true of Goh, if he is, as suspected, the perpetrator.) Other countries have generated a few homicidal lunatics, but murderous frenzies by gun-toting maniacs are a particularly American form of madness. And that madness is stoked and sheltered, nurtured and fed by another kind of crazy -- a widespread denial about the price of our love affair with firearms, a disbelief that borders on delusion. Future historians will look back on the nation's refusal to enact sensible gun regulations with a wry fascination, much as present-day researchers ponder witch-burnings. We weren't always so irrational about gun ownership, though firearms were a more utilitarian household item 40 years ago, when more families hunted game for sport -- and for the dinner table. In 1968, after nearly a decade of high-profile political assassinations, Congress passed the most stringent firearms regulations since the 1930s, despite the vigorous protests of the gun lobby. In the intervening years, though, the gun lobby has only grown more powerful -- and more radical and more unhinged -- pushing past the limits of sanity. Its activists have battled to allow firearms on college campuses, in bars and in churches. Its members have persuaded state legislatures to pass notorious "Stand Your Ground" laws, such as the Florida statute implicated in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. All the while, voters have either acquiesced or applauded heartily. In some countries, the Republican Party's whole-hearted embrace of the gun lobby's reckless radicalism might have sparked a countermove by the opposition party. Not here. The Democratic Party caved in after Al Gore lost to George Bush in 2000 -- convinced (based on little to no evidence) that Gore's support for more stringent gun control measures was partly to blame. It came as no surprise, then, that the shooting spree last year in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was grievously wounded and six others, including a 9-year-old girl, were killed sparked no serious outcry for sensible gun regulations. Certainly, President Obama was silent on the subject. Despite that, the lunatic fringe continues to insist that Obama has a secret plan to confiscate their firearms. Did I mention that the lunatic fringe includes well-heeled lobbyists who frequent the corridors of power, such as National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre? At a February meeting of ultraconservatives, LaPierre revealed Obama's secret plan to ... well, read it yourself: "Lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters ... We see the president's strategy crystal clear: Get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms' freedom, erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S. Constitution." That's the very definition of crazy. (Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)
makes me wonder if Cynthia Tucker was born stupid, or had to work at it. Either way she has definitely achieved her goal & fully attained a level of stupidity on par with her whiny, liberal, feelgood crybaby, diaper wearing peers.
I dont know if its just me or does it seem that alot of people the more education they get the dumber they get. My granddad called them educated fools.
Just about old enough to be a flower child. Cynthia Tucker to leave AJC for UGA | ajc.com Cynthia Tucker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
However, she does make a good point. We read of this type of crime more regularly now than we did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. What is different? I'm of the opinion that we have become a culture of malcontents and social misfits seeking satisfaction and notoriety - the new 15 minutes of fame. Family structure has deteriorated, discipline, both at home and in the schools, has become almost non existent, easy money has replaced hard work, a subculture of "I deserve" has replaced "I hope I can earn enough to buy...", "gangsters" have become urban heroes, and a fair proportion of society lives in fear of the actions of the criminal minority. We have stopped making demands of people, personal responsibility, respect for others, work ethic, the list goes on an on. If I had ever spoken to an elder, or even a contemporary, the way I hear some young people speak today, the consequences would have prevented a repeat performance on my part. A good healthy swat on the seat of the pants will now land a parent in police custody. We have become a culture of excuses - we side with our children against their teachers, the police, the neighbors, the coaches...and by doing so, we deny them the necessary lesson in personal responsibility. This cultural shift has created the belief in entitlement and unfulfilled demands now become rage rather than disappointment. I think we have already fallen over the waterfall and there is no going back. We had best all be prepared to protect ourselves because any of us could become a victim of that rage.
The vast majority of institutions of higher education are nothing more than liberal training grounds. Some of us are capable of seeing BS for what it is and research and write our papers in a manner that proves the book and/or professor wrong, but the sheeple are happy to accept whatever the books/educators claim without a second thought. Many students don't even seem to realize that it is perfectly acceptable to go against the book with their research papers. I admit I was nervous as all heck when I went against the sociology books claim that the death penalty is racist. I ended up being pleasantly surprised when the professor was delighted that I rather easily presented a case to the contrary even using statistics from a source who should have been biased against my opinion (NAACP's Legal Defense Fund research).
In academia today most of the "soft subjects" have very liberal profs. If you get into the science, math, engineering side you will find the profs aren't all liberal at all. My phd advisor was former military and a conservative. Usually though they tend to be more finacially conservative and a libertarian view on social issues. Just from my personal observations.
Geeze guys... thanks for the votes of support for the academics among us.... as an academic i would like to put in my two cents <SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comIt's important to stop and review our history... our current department chairs in most larger institutions were students in the 60"s-70"s and rather than go to Vietnam chose to get a deferment... and play flower child and antiwar protester... unfortunately the initial deferment ended after their first degree... realizing this they immediately applied for graduate school... and received another 2 year deferment... keeping track that’s 6 years so they are still in the prime age group for getting a welcome letter from their local Draft board... once again there are not slow and what works twice may well work a third time so they become doctorial students... and bingo 5-7 years later they graduate and have met their goal no military service they are in their early 30's outside of prime draft age group and by now probably have knocked up a girl and been forced to get married ( why ? it's another deferment that’s why...) Now we have people whose sole reason for getting an education was to avoid government service... some go to the peace corps but most finally need to repay student loans... so what can they do.... not much they have little common sense, and a lot of book learning... so the white towers of academia look like nirvana (not the band) to them... besides the chairs of most of these departments are getting old most are second world War vets... who to their point of view are war mongers anyway so they become teachers and or professors.... notice that I do not use the term educators.... there are however many of us who have served and are conservative it’s just that we spent the initial years in service to our country and didn’t have the tenure that they did when we finished our degrees… so cut us some slack… much like those of us who don’t wish to be lumped under the liberal gun nuts psychobabble… there are those of us who teach and educate our students who don’t wish to be painted with a liberal paint brush…
The single thing that bugs me about tertiary education is that it's been way oversold as a panacea for the ills of US society. Our highly vaunted technological superiority does not (or didn't, anyway) come from "soft" degrees, but from those that hold meaningful technical degrees. To my poker mind, a good bachelors in engineering degree beats 5 great PhDs in ancient Greek mythology or sociology. (Examples only, others abound.) The problem is obvious, isn't it? Before an engineer or scientist can be produced, the groundwork has to be mastered in K-12. There is no value in simply putting off the problem by automatically passing the kids to the next grade that I can see. I add, gratuitously, that a certificate from tractor trailer training or welding school has more value these days in making a productive member of society. Thus spake me, and maybe me only.
Unless you are Rolf Harris...paint people with fine brushes. Unless you are Rolf Harris (1)...it's better to paint people with fine brushe strokes. The trouble with broad brushes is that they seem to splatter people indiscriminately if waved about, well...um...indiscriminately. I have not worked as an academic...but I have worked in the environment of academia, and the political and ideological viewpoints of academics covers the full spectrum from anarchists through to "liberal" and "conservative" true believers. Academics also range from those who are passionate about their discipline, and extremely competent to those who are time servers of questionable competence. Some are educators who hate publishing (but do it of necessity) but love their discipline and enjoy teaching it...others love research and publishing, but hate teaching, and do their teaching perfunctorily as an unwelcome distraction from their actual passion...research work. Even within a faculty, that is purportedly filled with "conservatives", there are often the most horrendous academic factional bitch fights between different proponents of various schools of thought of the "liberal conservative" vs the "conservative conservative" kind. It is as easy to sterotype academics as it is to sterotype black dudes with hoodies, or white skinheads with tats, or preppy frat boys but, it's better just to take people as individuals, and deal with them on their own merits...good or bad. I'm not sure that I buy the eternal deferrment theory of loading Universities and Colleges with liberal academics. Becoming academics enbloc because they became co-dependant on academia, having lived for so long on the academic teat...just to dodge the draft?? It may reasonably apply to some individuals, but the whole of academia?? I would suggest that in the main, those that continued from undergrad studies to post grad doctorates and then ultimately to professorships were probably headed in that direction anyway, whether there was a draft or not. The draft just gave them an added incentive not to fail, nor to have breaks in the continuity of their enrolments. I would suggest that the range of academic ideological stances held by academics in the USA is probably not that much different to universities in comparable western democracies of similar affluence and quality where compulsory military service to a war zone was not an issue. Right wing conservatives are not averse to using "study" as a draft dodge either, and it is reasonable to assume that a significant number of right wing scions of the conservative establishment also took the eternal university deferment route, (after all it wasn't as if their families couldn't afford the tuition fees)...(or alternatively, they got a cushy berth in the Air National Guard). Did they abandon the academic teat when they were too old to do their military service?? Naw....they just became conservative academics in economics schools and business schools...or the political sciences....see the broad brush splatters both ways lol. If the theory holds up....Israeli educational institutions should be chock a block full of ultra orthodox conservative academics in the not too distant future!! ; ) Note 1. Rolf Harris (an Australian entertainer) is a dab hand at painting with house painting broad brushes. Ned Kelly - Rolf Harris - YouTube
Mea Culpa... I've spent 18 years in academia...and seen many different folks... admittedly i've worked more with deans, presidents, VP's and department chairs... the last 4 instiututions i've been associated with seemed to have a preponderance of those i've alluded to... especially in the political science/Punlic Administration departments, as well as social work and Psyc departments... and a smattering of others... my observations should probably be taken simply as that Observations whether or not they are statistacally significant or not... YMMV
For clarification I didn't particularly mean to imply that educators themselves were the source of the bias, but rather the books that I've encountered exhibit clear bias against those who are white, straight, and male. Witch see if this is available at your institution and be sure to keep a barf bag handy. Understanding and Managing Diversity, (0132069105), Carol Harvey, Textbooks - Barnes & Noble Or for more "pity da poo' minority's cuz dey a product of dey environment BS check out: Essentials of Sociology, 8th Edition, (0495812951), David B. Brinkerhoff, Textbooks - Barnes & Noble
This just mimmics the current administrations opinion of whom/what constitutes domestic terrorists... admittedely ther have been issues with domestic diversity in one form or another however diversity should reflect all races not just reflect on one or two... as seem to be addressed in most diversity texts... My personal opinion is that there are no african-americans, mexican-americans, irish-americans, etc. ... there are Americans and others... Those who have not made an arbitrary descision about whether or no they are americans are those who are in need of additional training... to me Americans are homogenious while any (insert ethinicity here)-americans are hetrogenious and don't really wish to be an american... just my opinion... YMMV
A cartoon my eldest granddaughter sent me through FB. I don't know which disturbs me most, the fact that it captures my thoughts from an earlier post or that her college friends all think it's humorous.
