"His name was R.P. McMurphy. They said he was crazy." I still remember the trailer for the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And the movie was even better, one of the dozen of so truly great movies that Hollywood has produced in the last few decades. But now I realize that the message of the film--that insanity is nothing more than social nonconformity, and that attempts to institutionalize the insane are a form of fascism--is foolish and destructive. In fact, precisely this sort of thinking prevented the Virginia Tech shooter from being institutionalized. If that had happened, all those victims would be alive today. Even Cho could have gotten the help he surely needed.

I'm not saying Jack Nicholson, or even his character, is personally to blame. But the movie was part of a larger cultural movement pioneered by such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz. Foucault is dead but Szasz remains a kind of libertarian hero. These gurus have gone much to establish the notion that "social deviancy" is mostly harmless and should not result in confinement against one's will. In the 1980s, you may recall, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups filed lawsuits that forced asylums to open their doors and let the lunatics out. They weren't crazy, you see, they were merely unconventional. And to hold them against their will! What about their constitutional rights? In Washington DC I would pass homeless people every day who had a dazed look in their eye and didn't seem to know which planet they were living on. Even as I handed them a dollar, I knew that what they needed was treatment, and this they were not getting, courtesy of our constitutional guardians at the ACLU.

There were a hundred different reasons why the Virginia Tech shooter did what he did. Primary among those was that he was seriously disturbed. But another was that he was looking to get famous. This is a bigger problem for our whole society than just lone killers. And it doesn't just apply to America, it applies to the whole world.

I have said many time before that the Columbine killers were looking to get famous, even if it was posthumously. This applies even more so in Virginia Tech. All of the shots of the killer posing at the camera were faux-hero shots (in his own twisted mind). This is how he was going to stand out.

He seemed to be thinking this way: Everyone is wrong, he wasn't going to just live the rest of his life in awkward obscurity like a loser. He was going to show them. Literally, show them.

You know who else does this? Suicide bombers. They make videos before they go to do their bombings. It is ostensibly to get their intentions on tape so people can know why did it. But that's bullshit. The real reason they're doing it is because they want to be someone bigger than themselves. They want to make their own rap video. They want to be famous!

...Meet Armed Resistance." That the title of this post at Classically Liberal, which compares the catastrophe at Virginia Tech with four other instances, most of them little-known, which ended quite differently because the would-be mass murderer was met with effective armed resistance by students, a teacher, a store owner, an off-duty policeman. The contrast is very persuasive; it raises some obvious questions.

How many more instances are there where armed civilians have prevented mass murder? Are there counter-examples where attempted intervention by armed civilians has made matters worse? And why, in these instances, do the media persistently fail to report the key role played by firearms in preventing further violence?

Classically Liberal makes what appears to be a powerful argument. If it's wrong, what is the evidence? Let's see whether our commenters can come up with some.

During a discussion of the Virginia Tech tragedy, gun control, and whether violence should be stopped with more violence, Nicholas Winset, a professor at Emmanuel College in Boston pointed his finger like a gun at some students and said "pow." He was promptly fired. One of his students said that most of the students didn't find the gesture offensive, and he has argued that his dismissal will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. He has also posted a four-part defense on YouTube. Should Winset have lost his job?

If you want to discover what kind of people atheists are, scroll down to my recent posts and read the responses. I am a troll. I am a cretin. I am a moron. I am a nut-job. And so on. For those who go beyond abuse, there is shrieking complaint. How dare you suggest atheists weren't around when this happened? How can you say atheists don't have feelings? How can you exploit this tragedy in this way? How come your God didn't prevent this, huh?

Actually my point was a simple one, and it seems to be unrefuted. Atheism seems to have nothing to say to people when there is serious bereavement or tragedy. Of course atheists have feelings and there were undoubtedly atheists among the mourners at Virginia Tech. But the Richard Dawkins philosophy--that we live in a meaningless world where there is no good and no evil--whatever its intellectual merit, seems arid and unconsoling when human beings are really hurting.

One atheist wrote to say that rather than rely on idle promises of fantasies of life after death, what atheists would say is that we need gun control laws and a better health care system. Fair enough, but is this what you tell a crying mother? "Madam, you should feel much better because new gun control laws and mental health reforms are on their way."

I wonder if the abuse that atheists heap on people when their ideas are questioned is indicative of a deeper malady. Atheists like to portray themselves as devotees of reason, but read the responses and see how much reason you discover there. Rather, it looks like these fellows hate God, and this hate spills over to anyone who brings up God's name. Call it the atheism of revenge. They blame God for screwing them over in some way, and unbelief is their form of payback.

We have had many terrible things happen during the age of the Internet, but the Virginia Tech massacre is the first full-on YouTube tragedy. What does that mean? For starters, it means that every trivial bit of video has been preserved. Without their context, they look stupid and even comic. But it also means that every bad idea can now spring to fascinating life. On Wednesday, when Cho's plays were first released (Newsbloggers was one of the first sites), I joked with my editor that we should stage one of those plays, "Richard McBeef," here in New York as a benefit for the victims. He laughed and then we agreed that it wasn't a funny idea, not at all. This proves it.

As the victims in the Virginia Tech massacre are buried and the victims' families start to piece their lives back together, much of the scrutiny has shifted from the way that campus officials (not to mention local law enforcement and mental health professionals) handled Cho Seung-Hui to the way that media, particularly NBC, seems to be glorifying Cho by giving up hours of airtime to his ravings, his rhetoric, and his image. The NBC case seems clear-cut to me. Cho mailed them materials because he wanted to be famous in death. They are helping to make him famous and at the same time boosting their own ratings. It's mildly unsavory, like most coverage of tragedies by news organizations who don't (and can't) really understand the emotional complexities involved, and it's also highly insensitive to the families of the victims. But it is news, just as the backlash against NBC is news. How a tragedy like this shakes out, particularly in a society where the media is a character -- Cho's final words were to a national network -- is part of the story.

There are a few compelling notes that are audible over the chaos of coverage. One involves the postmortem diagnosis of the killer's mental illness. Cho's great-aunt, who lives in South Korea, was quoted on Thursday as saying that Cho did not speak much as a child, and that some thought he might be autistic. He had almost no ability to connect with others, and his strange way of speaking and acting made him the target of mockery. This should also have been a warning sign, according to some reports: A 2002 federal study on common characteristics of school shooters found that 71 percent of them "felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack."

But this seems contradictory. Cho, from most of what we're reading, was not frequently persecuted. He had developed good strategies for keeping himself apart. He never spoke to his roommates, never spoke in class. He was always downloading music and working on his own writing. Louis Kraus, the chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, is one of the experts who does not believe that Cho's rampage was triggered by persecution. "This is very different," he said. "This type of mental illness that this poor man had was not something that was likely precipitated by teasing or bullying." Again, we'll probably never exactly know. But Kraus's description of Cho as a "poor man" is uncomfortable, though obviously true. How should we feel about the suggestion that something else -- a genetic illness, the thoughtless behavior of others -- might have pulled the trigger? On the one hand, everyone wants Cho to take responsibility, even in death. It's unfair to suggest that high school classmates who laughed at him when he read aloud somehow share responsibility for the massacre. On the other hand, isn't a sense of victimization and an unrealistic sense of the world present in more crimes? Isn't there always either the perception on the part of the criminal that he or she has been wronged? And as for the mental illness, how can you separate the inability to see the world clearly from the man who was incapable of seeing it clearly? Ultimately, does it matter whether you think Cho's behavior was an occurrence of pure evil or whether it was a predictable conclusion to a sad, disconnected life?

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

--Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden

And boy the atheists are up in arms! They're mad as hell about my post "Where is Atheism When Bad Things Happen." Many responders informed me that tragedies are normally considered a problem for religion, not atheism. Where is God when bad things happen? Yes, people, I know this. My point was that if evil and suffering are a problem for religion--and they are--they are an even bigger problem for atheism.

My fellow blogger Cenk Uygur wants to know where was God when Cho went on that rampage. Yes, that's right. It was Cho's rampage. So I don't thnk God gets the blame. Uygur wants to implicate God indirectly. Surely God could have stopped it, right? Then why didn't he?

This is a deep question about God's hiddenness in the world. Why doesn't God make himself manifest, especially when there is tragedy to be averted? Here's one possible reason. Imagine if there was divine intervention to prevent Cho from doing what he did. Leave aside the issue of what happens to human free will. Just focus on the consequences. Cho would have been--let us say by miraculous intrusion--disarmed, the shootings would have been prevented, and life would go on.

In short, life would proceed as if God had not intervened in the first place. So God in this view becomes a kind of cosmic errand boy, who is supposed to do our chores and clean up our messes and we then wish him a very good day and return to our everyday lives. But perhaps God's purpose in the world (I am only thinking aloud here) is to draw his creatures to him. And you have to admit that tragedies like this one at Virginia Tech help to do that!

Once again, it's absurd to blame God for what happened. Blame guns, blame Virginia Tech's security system, most of all blame Cho. But not Allah or Brahma or Jesus. Even so, it's not unreasonable to suppose that there's a providential purpose behind history, and if human horrors show us our dependence on God's love and restorative powers, that's not such a bad thing, is it?

As Ben pointed out, Neal Boortz also said the same thing about the victims being at fault for not charging the shooter. That's real classy. Blame the victims. That'll go over real well. How about the professor who survived the Holocaust and died protecting his students? Is he not man enough for these loathsome conservative pundits?

The Young Turks

This came in over the transom from a News Blogger reader. He or she only provided the screen name: AvellarLyvs! It's an interesting contribution to the current debate on the blog:

Unsurprisingly, it only took two days for someone to turn the Virginia Tech tragedy into a politically-charged religious war of words. Dinesh D'Souza kicked it off by saying athiests were somehow excluded from being affected by it, while Cenk Uygur asks why a God of some sort didn't step in.

The only problem is, both arguments are ridiculous. Here's a point-counterpoint for choice quotes from both arguments:

Dinesh:
"To no one's surprise, [Richard] Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community." – Neither has Pat Robertson. Does that mean they don't want evangelists there? Way to pick a name out of a hat.

"What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil." -- This was no case of good versus evil in the biblical sense, or even the war on terror" sense – it was a case of a psychotic kid taking out his depression on others.

"For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules." – I'd think Cho's actions would be best analyzed by a psychologist than a molecular engineer, but hey, what do I know? Maybe a few skin cells under a microscope instead of real counseling would have explained why he was so deeply troubled.

Cenk:
"Where is Jesus? Or Mohammed? Or Moses? Or Ganesh? Or Apollo? Or Thor? Why didn't any of them ride to the rescue?" – When in the last 2000 years (or more) have any of them done such a thing? And, if you believe they could, would they really come forth to save 33 lives at a college rather than 200 the following day in Iraq, or 3,000 on 9/11 and so forth? Just because certain people believe in messiahs, gods and other holy beings doesn't mean they expect them to swoop in like Superman when something bad happens.

"Atheists have nothing to answer for. Whereas, all of the religions claim to have all the answers. So, here's a simple one: Where the hell were you when we needed you?" – Instead of dead-end questions, why aren't you asking "Where were school/local psychologists to give Cho help when he needed it, before taking out his anger and depression on the innocent." Or, perhaps more importantly, "Why did I decide to take Dinesh's politically-fueled bait?"

Hundreds of thousands of businesses and individuals pay public relations firms and publicists weighty retainers to get their messages out - to break through to an audience. Ford Motor Company wants you to know they're "bold." Obama wants you to know he's experienced enough to be President. I want you to know that I'm the witty go-to guy on American Idol commentary.

The demented Cho has managed to become not only a household name but also a legend in record time - and he didn't have to pay anyone to do it for him. Sending his press kit to NBC may be the only rational thing he did - since NBC News took the bait (in record time).

Here's a challenge: Give me a single upside to NBC showing the video, even the stills, from Cho's press kit. (Sorry, no prize this time.) Just one good thing that will come from this.

Last night, I watched MSNBC for about 45 minutes. Three different guests (one profiler and one psychotherapist included) made it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cho's "content" was worthless; that there was nothing to learn from his rantings; that he was probably, among other things, a paranoid schizophrenic. In short, his words had no meaning.

A couple of guests applauded NBC for handling the material responsibly. The endorsements seemed suspiciously planted. One guest went so far as to say that this material would have gotten out there in some other way had NBC embargoed it. Really? Then I guess I can still catch the footage of Steve Irwin getting zapped by the stingray.

You don't need to give me the downside to airing Cho's multimedia presentation: further desensitization, inspiring of copycats ... I got those covered. (Media neophytes Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris left their fans wanting more image-wise. Cho's iconography might be kind of hackneyed but it's plentiful, perfect for screensavers. A few may even make the leap to t-shirts, a la Patty Hearst. Or how about "Cho" instead of "Che"?)

Of course everyone else showed the meaningless footage, no doubt accelerating the mythologizing of Cho. (Jeez, it took Mother Teresa seven years to just get beatified.) This morning a Fox News correspondent stood in the hallway outside Cho's door room in Ambler. Room 2120. This was The room of The man who perpetrated The worst mass shooting in American history, we were told. How long before the plaque that reads "Cho Slept Here" goes up?

***

UPDATE: Some commenters say I'm supporting censorship. I don't think I am. After all, news organizations get pitched stories constantly - by Proctor & Gamble, by the DNC and RNC, and in this case by a lunatic. The editorial staff need to decide what's newsworthy. In this case, I think the sending of the tape is itself a story. The content of the tape? Not so much.

But speaking of censorship, does anyone else find it almost funny to watch and hear the rantings of a homicidal maniac - but with the naughty curse words bleeped? Wouldn't want to freak the kiddies out!

Here's today's question. What's healthier – listening to conservative talk radio or gently placing your hand in a high speed blender? It's close, but ultimately, that's why we have orthopedic surgeons.

I'm in Atlanta this week and dialed in two delightful programs, eager to bring insight and thoughtful analysis to the national debate – Neal Boortz, an Atlanta-based right winger, and Michael Savage, out of San Francisco with ideas out of the 17th century.

First, Boortz. It was Tuesday morning, the day after the horrible events at Virginia Tech. "I have a question here," says Boortz. "No answer .. just a question. Why didn't some of these students fight back? How in the hell do you line students up against a wall (if that's the way it played out) and start picking them off one by one without the students turning on you? You have a choice. Try to rush the killer and get his gun, or stand there and wait to be shot."

So less than 24 hours after 32 innocent people died 500 miles away, Neal Boortz has it all figured out. The students were lined up against the wall, too weak to fight back. Really? That's what happened?

Who cares what the police say? Why wait for actual information when there's an opportunity to say something profoundly ignorant, something that uncomfortably insults the victims of a numbing tragedy?

My fellow blogger, Dinesh D'Souza, asks where atheists are when tragedies like Virginia Tech shooting happens? I'm not an atheist (I'm agnostic), but the answer is simple -- they don't have to be anywhere. They're not the ones with the grand theory of the wonderful, benevolent God who is going to save us all. A thousand times better question is -- where is Jesus?

Or Mohammed? Or Moses? Or Ganesh? Or Apollo? Or Thor? Why didn't any of them ride to the rescue? Here's the real answer, although it makes a lot of you very uncomfortable -- because they don't exist!

Dinesh D'Souza says that people concerned about the constitution should also be concerned about protecting the second amendment. Then he makes a vague reference to being kind of in favor of the other amendments, too, but I guess since he's a conservative, he's not so sure these days.

I'll make you a deal. You give me the rest of the amendments back that Bush has gutted and I'll gladly give you the second amendment. What happened to the right to an attorney? What happened to not being forced to incriminate yourself? What happened to not being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment? What happened to warrants?! What happened to habeas corpus?!!!

You give me all of those back and then some, and you can have your lousy second amendment. America is a little sick in the head with guns. The NRA believes we should have unfettered access to all firearms and doesn't believe there is any downside. That is so wildly disingenuous.