Can you please find for me where he says, "They are just as responsible as the gunman?"

Thanks.

here:

This post will not be popular. This one will get me called bad things at NLS and Raising Kaine. This post will widen the "friendship gap" between me and Waldo. This post will not even endear me to many of my fellow ODBA members. But I have to ask the question. And you have to think about it.

I too wonder just how it was that some of the students at Virginia Tech sheepishly lined up to be shot. Let me be clear, I do not know exactly what happened in any of those classrooms. But reports are out that say just that.

[...]

But these reports of students willingly lining up against a wall disturb me. They should disturb you as well....

Lovely.

this:  "Actually a half empty box of Frosty Flakes is much more valuable to me. I can at least eat the Frosty Flakes, all I can do with the Koran is piss on it."

including Josh Chernila, myself, and Joe Stanley, totally ad hominem.

However, I'm looking for the exact phrase:

"[The victims] are just as responsible as the gunman."

So far, the only place I've found it is in your post, and not as part of a quotation.

Maybe you can help me out and show me where he said this.

C'mon now, this isn't THAT hard.  Admit it, you're just being disingenuously naive. Then, after we keep showing you and showing you the evidence, you'll make some excuse for it.  What a waste of time.

First of all, I sympathize with the point he's making. I have a story similar to his; someone tried to start a fight with me in high school, I pushed him away from me, and I was punished for it. Is the doctine of non-violence that we instill in our kids exacerbating the damages in a real-world situation?

The truth is you don't care what his point was, even if you may agree with it. You simply want to rake him over the coals for saying something that you can construe as "outrageous".

Second, I want to hear you or James Martin admit that he never said or implied, "They are just as responsible as the gunman". If anything, he places responsibility on the people that taught those kids, and not on the victims themselves. But even then, I can't imagine he feels they are on the same level of responsibility as the gunman. It is one thing to take someone's words completely out of context to try and paint a picture. Its another thing to completely invent what he was saying. Don't you dare accuse me of being disingenous here.

literally say the victims are just as responsible.  But c'mon, real world here, saying that they lined up like sheep to be shot puts significant blame on the victims.  It's strongly implying that they were responsible for the massacre, or at least the degree of the massacre, because they literally helped the gunman by doing what he said, by not running away, or by not charging him.

In the bigger picture I also disagree with your (and Alton's) assertion that teaching kids to be more violent and/or tougher would help lower the crime rate or the victim rate.  We are not only told by our teachers and parents, but also almost every law enforcement agency, that if confronted by a gunman (usually a robber) to do what he says (usually hand him your valuables).  Then we read the papers about when someone fights back and see that sometimes they heroically chase off the robber and other times they die for their effort.  Sometimes they die when they don't fight but this is the exception to the rule.

No situation is the same so there is no hard and fast rule.  You can't just advocate a tougher more violent society as a solution or say that the massacre happened because our society has been wussified.  In the fluid unknown situation that those victim's faced they had to try to understand what was happening, why, and what the best survival option was in a very short period of time, under great stress, and with very little information.  The best course of action would have been extremely difficult to determine at that time - we have the luxury of hindsight, tons of media reports, and endless discussion.

Perhaps this is where you feel violence is the solution.  Had the gut reaction of all these students been to fight they may well have saved a good number of lives IN THAT SITUATION.  But how many other situations would a violent reaction cost more victims their lives (i.e. the robbery situation)?  How many more fist fights, knife fights, gun fights would our society have if violent defense was the solution to every perceived threat or act of disrespect?

He doesn't blame the victims for lining up (which they weren't, we now know) and being shot. He blames whoever taught them not to fight back. He doesn't put any responsibility on the victims at all.

Second, I don't actually agree with Alton, but disagreeing with him (in my opinion anyways) doesn't mean I have to twist his position. As I said below, I believe the students didn't fight back because they were scared, and as you said, if you don't know the gunman is homicidal, then your best chances to survive are to cooperate.

Not your post, but James Martin's post.

I could not locate where the statement is posted except on Not Larry Sabato.

"I too wonder just how it was that some of the students at Virginia Tech sheepishly lined up to be shot. Let me be clear, I do not know exactly what happened in any of those classrooms. But reports are out that say just that. ... But these reports of students willingly lining up against a wall disturb me. They should disturb you as well. We need to know why. We need to know what kept any number of groups from rushing this evil and stopping it before it could go further. We need to know what taught them that reaction. We need to know so we can begin to teach the opposite."

What is your interpretation of the statement?

I have no idea who Alton Foley is.  However, the above quote translates to this:

Being taught that YOU are not responsible for YOUR safety.

In fact, there are many adults that believe that no matter what, its always someone elses fault and that they are just a victim to be pittied.  And the concept gets passed on to their children.

Read Courtland Milloy in the WaPo Metro section and you'll get the concept.

***********************

Have Americans become so indoctrinated into the culture of non-violence that defending oneself is unthinkable? It could be argued that our schools have taught that very lesson. It began even as far back as when I was in High School at Fieldale-Collinsville. (No, we did not ride dinosaurs to school back then.) After a fight anywhere on campus, both students were treated equally, in the just then emerging politically correct fashion. One was just as much at fault for defending himself as the idiot who had started the fight. It made no sense to me then, it makes even less now. Especially now, when fists are the least weapon to be feared.

I do know that not all of the victims behaved so. I believe Ryan "Stack" Clark was shot while coming to the aid of the first victim, Emily Hilscher. I know that professor Librescu willingly gave his life working to keep the gunman outside his classroom. I'm sure there are many others whose story's will eventually be told.

But these reports of students willingly lining up against a wall disturb me. They should disturb you as well. We need to know why. We need to know what kept any number of groups from rushing this evil and stopping it before it could go further. We need to know what taught them that reaction. We need to know so we can begin to teach the opposite.

******************************
(forgive me, I don't know how to blockquote)

His point is pretty simple. Is it possible that the reason why reports say kids simply lined up to get shot is because they were indoctrinated with a belief to not fight back, to not oppose evil when they see it with violence? If so, then how can we change this to protect future generations, and possibly prevent or lessen the damages done by these type of incidents in the future?

Funny, when you include all of the context (and don't completely invent other parts of it), the statement he's making doesn't sound as bad. I wonder why it wasn't posted.

Not Lowell, James Martin.

What a joke.

Even if you don't agree with him, please explain to me why you are pretending to be outraged about it.

of "pretending" to be outraged.  His entire attitude disgusts me to no end.  Implying that people who were shot to death while attending school are somehow responsible for their own murders?  That's demented.

First, thank you for admitting that's not what he actually said, and that's only what you read into it, but how can you even read that into it?

"Have Americans become so indoctrinated into the culture of non-violence that defending oneself is unthinkable?"

"We need to know why. We need to know what kept any number of groups from rushing this evil and stopping it before it could go further. We need to know what taught them that reaction. We need to know so we can begin to teach the opposite."

He *CLEARLY* doesn't blame the victims, he blames the people that taught them not to fight back. What you are saying he implies runs 100% contrary to his actual words.

This is a sick, twisted, demented line of reasoning that only a "conservative" (translation: right-wing radical) could possibly employ.

but if you keep resorting to the behavior described in the definition of "troll," you will continue to be banned. 

I don't actually agree with Foley. I believe they didn't fight back because they were scared, and because if you don't know that a gunman is homicidal, then your best chances for survival are to cooperate.

But I at least had the audacity to approach Foley where he was at, instead of pull his quotes out of context, make up other quotes, and imply the opposite of what he said. Why, instead of going the route that you and James Martin did, would you not simply say, "I understand what Foley is trying to say, and this is why he is wrong"?

Alton's post is not only insensitive, it is false.

Many of the victims fought back and there is absolutely no evidence that anyone lined up like sheep to be shot.

That Alton could write that six days after the shooting, after the truth began to emerge, shows a malicious desire to smear the victims and make political hay, pushing the Republican agenda using the tragedy.

Sickening.

...this line about the Virginia Tech students lining up to be slaughtered, and all because they were "taught" to do so by liberals, is probably the sickest thing I've ever seen these people do.  Why does ANYONE vote Republican at this point?  The party of Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford has gone completely off the deep end.

He doesn't know if the reports are true, and since it was written six days after the events, then its likely that they were proven false later on.

But please understand that he was in no way smearing the victims, was not making any sort of political hay, and wasn't pushing any sort of Republican agenda.

Foley's (and Boortz's) underlying message was this:  "Liberal elites have weakened our country by teaching our student to not fight back, therefore we should support the Republican/conservative movement as a way of toughening up America."  That is the implicit line of reasoning in this rhetorical attack on the victims.

The problem for Boortz and Foley is that it is completely false: the students and faculty of Virginia Tech did fight back, saving dozens of lives.

As a result, we can turn Boortz and Foley's own reasoning back on them.  The truth is that Liberal ideals of self-sacrifice gave the students and faculty the courage to fight back against hopeless odds and save the lives of others, therefore we should support the Liberal ideals of courage and self-sacrifice as a way of making America stronger.

This insult originated with the winger talking head Neal Boortz who has no connection to Tech or Virginia. He did it for ratings (money).

For Alton Foley, a Virginian, living in Tech's backyard it is an affront. Is he mean, cruel, or just bone stupid?  Roscoe Reynolds should ask Jeff Evans if he thinks the shooting victims were sheep.