Barone on virtuous victims

Michael Barone, Of victims and virtues, illustrates a linkage between small stories and big in the current news.

Our enemies are virtuous victims. We are the evil oppressors. Just like those Duke lacrosse players.

Whether it is a statue in Colorado, a story in the BBC, terrorists, or the response to crime, there is a common factor.

This need to believe the victim class is always virtuous and the oppressor class is guilty is widespread, and perhaps growing, in this country and abroad. It is particularly strong among those lucky enough to get paid to observe how most people work and live — academics, journalists, apparatchiks of advocacy organizations.

It is a luxury to be so vacuous in one’s blame. At Virginia Tech it touched a bit close to home. There is the holocaust survivor, an engineering lecturer, who charged the gunman and saved his students – but that doesn’t fit the mold. It is encouraging to see notice of the happiness of the legislators who squashed a concealed carry permit for campus recently and how just one student or professor might have prevented the tragedy if armed.

The contrast is the Colorado story where an effort to remember a hero is protested because he was a military hero – with weapons. And we can’t have weapons because that was the oppressor at Columbine.

Make sense? If it does to you, then perhaps you need some help?