The Memory of Beslan, the Shame of Boston
Michael Walsh
April 23rd, 2013 - 8:23 pm
http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2013/04/23/the-shame-of-boston/?singlepage=true
Enough with all the chest-thumping, mingled with manly tears, about
the dramatic end of the Marathon bombers’ reign of terror in Boston
last week. From the press coverage, you’d think the entire city (which
is actually rather small) rose up as one and smote two evil Chechens a
stunning blow for truth, justice, liberty and the American Way.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What we saw instead was a city cowering in fear, led by two
particularly pusillanimous toads in Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor
Mumbles Menino, who had the services of some 10,000 armed personnel —
literally, a small army — to take down… wait for it… a wounded
teenager with a gun, and maybe some self-detonating explosives.
Way to go, Boston. You’ve made all of us proud to be Americans.
Now, of course, the liberal East Coast media is getting all mushy
about the Brothers Tsarnaev. I’m not even going to bother to cite some
of the more egregious examples from the New York Times and elsewhere,
part of the MSM’s ongoing bout of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to
dealing with Islam and its discontents. John Hinderaker of Power Line
has a nice roundup of the usual-suspect idiocy.
But don’t you wish, just once, an American public official would react
like a man? A man, say, like this guy, who said this about the
Chechens after they attacked a school back in 2004. WARNING:
offensive, ethnically biased stereotyping ahead:
“You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with
these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child
killers?
“No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to child killers,” he
added.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but Margaret Thatcher, whom I’ve met more
than once said: ‘A man who comes out into the street to kill other
people must himself be killed’.”
Now, that’s some real straight talk about murdering, child-killing
bastards. In case you’ve forgotten Beslan, here’s a brief taste of the
hell the Muslim Chechens visited upon little kids on the first day of
school:
Note that, when the Russian military finally stormed the school, they
were accompanied by armed residents of the village, desperate to save
their children. In typical ham-handed Russian fashion, the former
Soviets managed to kill almost as many people as they saved — but the
point is they fought back. They didn’t “shelter in place” (what an
odious, bloodless phrase for enforced institutional cowardice), hiding
behind locked doors; they got up, got their guns, and finally did
something to rid themselves of the aliens in their midst. For they
knew — with the example of the Moscow theater crisis fresh in
everybody’s minds — that there was no way this atrocity could end any
way but bloodily. They wanted to get their licks in, and die like men
instead of dumb beasts waiting for the slaughter.
Wendy Kaminer, writing in The Atlantic, finally twigged to the shame
of Boston:
Some of the stories we tell about ourselves in the aftermath of terror
are true. Many people react reflexively with bravery and compassion,
rushing toward an attack to aid its victims. Many open their homes to
strangers.
Some of the stories we tell are naive: “This is a progressive town,
the People’s Republic,” a Cambridge high school teacher remarked. “How
could this be in our midst?” he wondered, as if diversity were a cure
for all evil.
Some of the stories we tell are bravado. When people praise Boston’s
proverbial toughness, I shrug. Boston is home to over 600,000
individuals; some are resilient and others are not. Bravado has its
virtues though, in times of grief and terror. It’s self-medicating.
Maybe acting tough can help you feel tough. Maybe you can approximate
the person you wish yourself to be.
But not all our bravado is helpful or harmless. Some of the stories we
tell about the nation are delusions that cloak weaknesses and wrongs,
which fester unacknowledged…
Those on the left won’t like this. But those on the reflexive right
won’t want to acknowledge this bit, either:
We’ve been surrendering liberty in the hope of keeping ourselves safe
for the past decade. The marathon bombings will hasten our surrender
of freedom from the watchful eye of law enforcement. The Boston Globe
is already clamoring for additional surveillance cameras, which are
sure to be installed to the applause of a great many Bostonians. You
can rationalize increased surveillance as a necessary or reasonable
intrusion on liberty, but you can’t deny its intrusiveness, or
inevitable abuses.
But that’s what happens when, in the wake of Sept. 11, the country
hands its fate over to a massive, bureaucratic surveillance state (and
one that’s not terribly good at it, either) — a land of CCTV cameras
and stop-and-frisk and the NSA’s Black Widow and God alone knows what
else. That’s what happens when a majority of the sitting U.S. senators
vote to infringe on our Second Amendment rights, notwithstanding the
constitutional proscription against it. That’s what happens when weepy
public officials stand on the bodies of the murdered children of
Newtown and call for punishing the very people who not only didn’t do
it, but might have helped stop it.
A gun-free zone — except for Adam Lanza
Had enough yet? Enough of whingeing and whining and cowering and
appeasing? Enough of Blaming America First? Enough of wondering Why
They Hate Us?
It used be said that it was better to die on your feet than live on
your knees. The atheist Left has turned that formula upside down,
preferring to submit than fight. How they must loathe themselves. Too
bad they’re trying to take the rest of us with them.
So congratulations, Boston. In a state with some of the “toughest” gun
laws in the country – and by “toughest” I mean unconstitutionally
restrictive — a legislature completely controlled by Democrats and a
congressional delegation that includes a grand total of zero
Republicans, it was somehow not surprising that the Chechens chose one
of the few places in the United States where a) the people could not
and would not fight back and b) the media would find them sympathetic.
Heck, even the UN agrees with me… sort of.
I’ve long said that the relationship between the American Left and
Islam is that of masochist and sadist; the perfect Suicide Cult meets
the Death Cult of its dreams. No wonder they got along so well
together, right up to the moment when they didn’t.