More on the witch hunt

[Jacob Sommer]

drais wrote:
> 
> Kathy,
> 
> I guess that's where I'm confused. How are kids not being able to express
> themselves? There's always limits on "how" you can do it. When i lived in
> new York (The State  not the city) the local TV stations refused to air any
> ads put out by the political group I was with then. They constantly ran the
> ads put out by our "opponents".Still, we did not feel this was censorship,
> merely a bias. We used other means to get our message out. Our "Freedom of
> Expression" was not taken away, merely one channel of it. I think that's
> what appears to be going on here. people are taking biases and predjudices,
> and describing them as "oppressions.'  As for teaching your kid some common
> sense...what's that old saying about leading horses to water?

<sigh>
Drais, you seem to be saying that simply because some limits have
been put in place already that it is perfectly reasonable to let
more limits be put into place.  Let's say I find the logic to be
a little shaky.  I have no idea where those limits may stop.

<soapbox>
Over the past several weeks since the Columbine HS shootings there
have been fears about more actions like it happening.  The overall
response has been galling to say the least.  Anybody who expresses
even a basic empathy for why those two admittedly disturbed boys
did what they did is being suspected as a bomber-in-training.  The
people who are getting treated poorly now are the same ones who
have been treated poorly all through k-12 - and now it has media
and governmental sanction.

There has been such media frenzy about what happened and who to
blame in a nice, simple to swallow sound bite.  I have seen few
attempts by the media to show any shades of gray in what happened.
The fallout seems to be that law-abiding people are now being
punished for the acts of lawbreakers ie harassment of people due
to how they dress, harassment of people due to how they talk and
think, and harassment of people due to possession of firearms.

I find it very interesting that there has been no real discussion
of any of the hazing/abuse these guys got from jocks, no real
attempts to crack down on *that* kind of behavior - even though
it's ostensibly a big contributing factor.

No, those boys did what they did.  *They* did it.  Why is it that
so many other innocent people now have to pay the price?

Jacob