Thursday, May 29, 2014

The "You Didn't Do That" Society







Jenni Rodger, his British aunt, blamed America and guns for her nephew's massacre. "What kind of a society allows this? How can this be allowed to happen? I want to appeal to Americans to do something about this horrific problem."


Rodger's father issued a statement through his lawyer in support of gun control and "staunchly against guns." It might have been a bit more useful if Peter Rodger, instead of opposing a category of manual instruments, had spent more time dealing with his son's problems.

Guns did not kill six people. His son did.

Maybe Elliot Rodger's family would not have been able to change anything, but it's likely that they could have at least prevented the massacre if they had become more involved instead of delegating the problem that their son had become to therapists and medications. It's the height of cynicism for his father and aunt to take refuge in abstractions about gun control.

When a teenager stabbed twenty people at a Pittsburgh-area high school there were no easy answers about gun control to take refuge in. If Rodger had stuck to his knife, hammer and machete, his relatives who coddled him all these years wouldn't be able to shift the blame to an abstract policy. They wouldn't be able to politicize the crime and snip their own involvement out of the picture.


Even mental illness reduces a specific crime to the abstraction of a social problem. Expanding an individual act into a social problem manufactures a collective responsibility. The scapegoats are people who had nothing to do with what happened. The killer's family has successfully shifted responsibility to people who live a thousand miles away and never even knew their son existed.

Guns have become a convenient cliche. The new villain is no longer the killer, but the 5 million members of the NRA who are unwilling to give up their constitutional rights because Elliot Rodger's family failed at their single most important job.



The left is expert at removing responsibility from individuals and assigning it to the culture at large. Every murder is a failure of society. And society fails every murderer, they insist. We are all murderers because we own guns or didn't vote for the right politicians who would have allocated more money to mental health treatment, school counseling or midnight basketball.

And outlawed guns.

The "You didn't build that" society is also the "You didn't do that" society. The flip side of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama's collectivist rhetoric is that just as no one invents the airplane, creates a company or writes the Great American Novel on their own, no one kills six people on their own. If you killed six people, it's because of the Second Amendment. If you wanted to kill sorority girls, it's because of Seth Rogen movies. If you're a half-Asian who beat and stabbed your Asian roommates to death, it's because of white (or half-white) supremacism.

No one does anything good or bad on their own. The good that men do gets taxed away for the purported benefit of society and the evil that they do is blamed on society.

In a collectivist system, everyone is responsible for everything collectively and not responsible for anything individually. Everyone but the killer is responsible for his shooting spree. And that means no one is responsible. The problem is tackled with public awareness hashtags and legislation that hurts millions of people who didn't do anything wrong.

America's gun owners, like its machete and hammer owners, did not kill anyone. Every day the vast majority of gun owners somehow manage to get through the day without a killing spree. Their tools don't have minds of their own. The gun culture that liberals talk about does not sneak in through their windows at night and urge them to shoot up the neighborhood.

Elliot Rodger did not kill because he had guns. He bought guns because he wanted to kill. And he wasn't very good at it, wounding more people than he killed. Like many on the left he believed that guns would make him invincible. They didn't. And it was the same good guys with guns the left sneers at who put a stop to his killing spree.

We aren't rethinking the First Amendment because of Rodger's YouTube videos and manifesto. Why are we supposed to rethink the Second Amendment every time some psycho includes guns in his killing spree? The problem was not with Rodger's computer, his smartphone, his hammer, his machete or his handguns. They were only the tools that he used. The problem was with him.

The solution to horrifying crimes is not collective guilt, but individual responsibility. Instead of transforming individual acts into a social problem, we should instead remind ourselves that the keystone of morality is individual responsibility. Collectives are not moral. Individuals are.

People don't kill because there is a gun shop around the corner. They kill because they make a choice.

Elliot Rodger's family doesn't want to deal with their own choices. Elliot Rodger certainly did not want to deal with his. However if we want a moral society, we won't get there by pretending that choice doesn't exist. We won't get there by banning guns. We won't get there through abstractions.

A moral society recognizes the power and responsibility of individual choice. A better country doesn't begin with banning guns, but with holding accountable those who kill. Even while liberals were puffing out their chests over gun control, the Supreme Court's liberal justices stepped in to save Freddie Hall who kidnapped, raped and murdered a pregnant woman and shot a deputy.

That was in 1978. A decade earlier, he had gone to jail for raping another woman and gouging out her eyes so she wouldn't be able to identify him.


"Florida’s law contravenes our Nation’s commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world," Justice Kennedy wrote, speaking for the majority. But America was at its best in dignity and decency when it held men, including monsters like Freddie Hall, accountable for their actions. Decency and civilization come from individual choices. Liberals like Kennedy reject individual choices and seek every possible pretext for protecting killers from their moral choices.

A society that makes excuses for monsters becomes an amoral cesspool where no one is responsible for anything because everyone is responsible for everything. Instead of offering collectivist excuses and implementing collectivist overreactions, we can restore dignity and decency by rejecting social problems and embracing individual responsibility.

Our choice is not between a safe society without guns and a dangerous society with guns. It is between a society of individual responsibility where everyone can be trusted to own a gun and a society of collectivist irresponsibles where no one can be trusted to own a gun.


Anonymous said...

Accurate description of the incident and the leftist manipulation in action about the facts.

Collectivism is evil and destructive to individual well being.

Keep it up, thanks SK

meema said...

"...and a society of collectivist irresponsibles where no one can be trusted to own a gun."
...or a knife or an axe or a baseball bat or a big rock or a...

Anonymous said...

These days, there seems to be no shortage of people who will want to hammer the ideological square peg into the round hole of a tragedy. The fact that they want to do it with such gusto seems to me that there is a greater sickness in society today than just one mentally unbalanced individual. I've grown tired of stopping to read every signpost on the road to The End of Civilization.

mushroom said...

Collectives are not moral. Individuals are.


Bill in AZ said...

"Expanding an individual act into a social problem manufactures a collective responsibility."

Sometimes a sentence expresses 'more than the sum of it's parts'. This is one. The concept identified in that sentence is insidious and wonton.

Richard Jefferies said...

Daniel Greenfield, once again you have so eloquently put into words what many of us feel in our hearts. Richard Jeferies ,Taupo, NZ

The Ray Esquivel said...

Very good description of a sick society and the perversions that are allowed to go on so people can escape responsibility for their own deeds while at the same time taking advantage of the moment to increase control over others.

As you described the parents of this sick guy, I could only think of the saying that as they point to "guns" as the problem, there are three fingers pointing back at themselves. They are were the problem lie and with the means to pay for a lifetime of worthless therapy, hire a slick lawyer and slimy PR rep, they are obviously people of means. I hope they are sued in civil court by the people and families of those killed or harmed by this murderer. Thank goodness he off'd himself and spared the country the media circus and courtroom expense of prosecuting this "troubled" man.

Anonymous said...

Ok so we identify the problem...Now what do we do to FIX the problem. Protest , prayer and "voting" have all failed. Anybody in NYC taking bets on how long it will be until the people out in "flyover country" get sick of the B.S. and act on a permanent solution to centralized "governance"?---Ray

Anonymous said...

The media, and politicians look to absolve animals like this of any responsibility in a simple quest for more power and control over the masses. Never let a tragedy go to waste ought to be tatoo'd on their collective foreheads so the idiots who listen to them might get a glimpse into the true nature of mass media.

Anonymous said...

I am old enough to remember when a kid who was deemed in need of 'daily therapy' got it, as the resident of a mental hospital.


Jerry said...

The worst part about the current attack on the Second Amendment is that many of these shooting incidents, but not all, are manufactured by Second Amendment foes.

Anonymous said...

best article I have read in a while thank you!

VARancher said...

AMEN Daniel.


Anonymous said...

Someone already wrote about Rodger's white supremacism

Drow Ranger said...

Hmmm one has to wonder if the problem could have been corrected at age 8 not by therapists, but a deserving and swift swat or two (no need of more) to the behind.

but pygmies said...

Individual responsibility is just so much more difficult than blaming...

Anonymous said...

Daniel - Wow!! Great article. I'm a gun owner who found a link to an article on one of the gun forums I read. I will be quoting you on some different forums using the rules you placed in you copyright comments. Thanks again for your excellent summary!
Sincerely - Silver78

Post a Comment