Public Nuisances: Islands ofAnarchy/No-Kill Compassion,
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Islands of Anarchy The origins of the Colorado high school massacre go back many decades. They go back to the 1960's when youth culture emerged...
...So where would be a fitting place for Kevorkian to do his time...
...Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that a good part of modern history takes place under the sign of this second kind of madness, which we familiarly call "utopianism...
...Curiously, what Gurdon would callbreaches of decency are also absorbed with death and suffering...
...Why not adolescents...
...In San Francisco his shelter costs S7 million...
...They go back even further to the 1920's and 1930's when loony theorists—usually from continental Europe — theorized about zoo sex, violent individuality, psychic flumdiddle, all the nonsense that found its way into Nazi thought, left-wing thought, and other aberrant notions...
...Since 1990, when Kevorkian began his grisly campaign for euthanasia, he has blithely skirted over many of the complexities that separate killing humans from killing God's lesser creatures...
...Thanks to the members of the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, this shelter has a "no-kill" policy...
...In the same hilarious show Stern joked it up about the Holocaust...
...ically fashionable aggrieved groups...
...As I say, there is no one cause for this brutality...
...Before he was fired, that "shock jock" saw humor in the gruesome murder of a black man dragged behind a truck in Jasper, Texas...
...Not Hollywood violence, guns, lax parents, or foolish high school administrators can explain this massacre...
...In fact, anyone who sees life as a moral drama lived by every one of us has reason to be glad that this idiotic grandstander is about to be removed from view...
...Perhaps now, in light of the grisly expression of adolescent individuality at Columbine High School, some adults will agree that high school might be a more congenial place were the major battles between teachers and students still fought over hair length and suitable dress...
...Anyone who finds rape, genocide, physical disability, and murder amusing deserves scorn and derision...
...Now we all feel sad...
...To recognize cowardice one has to have a code of honor...
...He can choose between life and death...
...It is an act of cowardice to shoot an unarmed person...
...And to liberate the rest of America from the culture of death is an even vaster undertaking...
...They go back to the 1960's when youth culture emerged as distinct from American culture, which is to say a culture shared by all age groups...
...A few days before, I heard some comic genius on the "Imus in the Morning" show making jokes about MSNBC interviewer John Hockenberry's reliance on a wheelchair...
...Yet Gurdon's notion of speaking out for decency is not so difficult...
...No-Kill Compassion 44 N ow that the euthanasia militant Jack Kevorkian has been sentenced to ten to twenty-five years one wonders where he will do his time...
...And then there is the idiotic Greaseman...
...The Clintons speak of a "culture of violence...
...Today many a local high school is an island of anarchy in youth culture's sea of chaos...
...Cats have jungle gyms to play in and fish videos to watch for intellectual stimulation...
...Incidentally, that $200 million donation is larger than any political donation in history...
...The challenges and complexities of life in the moral setting of our Judeo-Christian experience are sufficient to overwhelm both cultures of violence and of death...
...The Serbs are just having a good time," his fatuous sidekick quips...
...There is no one reform that will pacify either...
...Whether any of his funereal ministrations were committed in San Francisco I do not know, but would it not be ironic if Doctor Death were incarcerated in a city where—at least for household pets —a no-kill" policy had been adopted...
...Even then you will find some idiot writer with an "interesting" explanation for the carnage...
...Not long ago Kevorkian threatened a hunger strike if he were sentenced to prison...
...One indication that there are complexities that Kevorkian overlooks is the opposition to his work displayed by disabled people...
...The Pope's "culture of death" brings to mind his opposition to abortion and to capital punishment...
...For I am not suggesting inhumane conditions for Kevorkian...
...It has been replaced by feelings...
...Is it only when they kill someone that enlightened opinion expresses alarm...
...They have already offered rooms to homeless humans so the place is probably a lot more comfortable than a Michigan jail cell, and the solicitude shown in San Francisco for stray dogs and cats might cause Kevorkian to rethink his case for death...
...That struggle was lost long ago, and so now the battle is over boom boxes, cellular telephones, weapons, and God knows what else students want to bring to school...
...The anger demonstrated by the murderers is an anger that is socially approved by enlightened opinion when it is displayed by politAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...It has to be laid to a whole culture that goes back many years...
...Kevorkian is a human being and doubtless so humanitarian a fellow as Avanzino will find suitable comforts and divertissements for him...
...He would not limit the First Amendment but urges that Americans "should not accept any longer that freedom of speech disqualifies demands for decency...
...In solitude he can contemplate his hunger strike...
...radio show...
...Yet the crank thoughts and the utopian thoughts of the aforementioned loony theorists are given dominance in America...
...For a 70-year-old, his life as a free man is over...
...John Paul II speaks of a "culture of death...
...Some Americans are supposed to be "enraged...
...Doubtless many of the nation's aged also view him with alarm...
...There is not any one thing we can do to liberate aberrant youth culture from the culture of death...
...The origins of Columbine high school's unspeakable massacre go back to the nihilism and evil of earlier centuries...
...There is a growing number of thoughtful Americans who recognize the cheap humbug of such frauds as the "shock 25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator On the other hand, and far more common, there are also madmen who find it impossible to disentangle dreams from reality—and of this kind of madness we have had, alas, far too much experience...
...It is enough to run either of the national political parties for years...
...I suggest that this famed champion of happy dispatch be incarcerated at the extremely plush animal shelter established by the visionaries of the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals...
...In the Wall Street C --.:.- Journal the other day columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz tells us that Howard Stern, the "shock jock" philosopher, has been laughing it up about rape in Kosovo...
...For the dogs there are glass-walled apartments with televisions, throw rugs, and portraits of distinguished dogs hanging on the walls...
...Allow me to make an unusual suggestion...
...But if anyone has mentioned this in public in the aftermath of the Colorado massacre I have not noticed it...
...He suggests that we review the excess committed under the First Amendment...
...In fact, thanks mainly to the efforts of the Society's leader, Richard Avanzino, the entire city of San Francisco is —at least for pets—a "no-kill" city, thefirst such city in America...
...Actually, even as Kevorkian has become famous for euthanizing humans, Avanzino has been quietly pushing his case for ending the "euthanizing" of homeless pets...
...Right," says Stern...
...Kevorkian has assisted in the deaths of 130 people...
...We shall see...
...And it might be reassuring for the surviving members of the Trenchcoat Mafia to know that there is a place for them on radio, once Howard Stem decides to report from Kosovo...
...Some were there in Pontiac, Michigan, cheering his sentence...
...The San Francisco shelter'squarters are spacious...
...This is not to say that Kevorkian should be treated like a homeless dog or thrust into the cats' section to languish among the jungle gyms and fish videos...
...These are grave breaches of life...
...DEREKCRANE.COM "BEST NEWS SUPPLEMENT ON THE WEB" 16 June r 9 9 9 • The American Spectator...
...My guess is that Kevorkian is about to discover how dearly most people hang on to life even when life has lost much of its joy...
...Well, if you are going to lift a line from the Pope, do not shirk from his complete thought...
...Now he has found a kindly couple of Silicon Valley billionaires who have donated $200 million to make every animal shelter in the country a "no-kill" shelter...
...Let us expose them for the fools that they are...
...Those Albanian women are hot...
...Yet it is in the twentieth century that nihilism and evil found their proper marketers...
...Irving Kristol "Utopianism, Ancient and Modem" JUNE 1974 9 6 - 14 Jun e 1999 • The American Spectator jocks...
...It is a threat he did not repeat during his trial, but on which he now plans to make good...
...He actually sees himself as existing on some sort of progressive continuum with the civil rights movement and, who knows, maybe even the consumerist movement...
...If no one adopts San Francisco's homeless animals, each will live very well in Avanzino's shelter, right there with Kevorkian...
...A British observer, Hugo Gurdon, writing in London's Daily Telegraph, notes with arresting optimism that violence in American schools is declining...
...One of the sensible things that we might expect to be said about such violence is that it is cowardly...
...We believe that killing is not an acceptable management tool for us to use as stewards of our nation's animals," Avanzino says...
...Given that, we're going to do everything we can to provide a creative resource to help shelters develop their goals of finding homes for every adoptable animal...
...All San Francisco boasts of being a "no-kill" city thanks to its peerless Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals...
...Moreover, will he take a dose of his own medicine, namely a sniff of carbon monoxide or an injection of lethal chemicals...
...Honor, unfortunately, is hopelessly pass...
...The boys with the guns and the bombs felt angry...
...Consider the laughter over there on the "shock jock...
Vol. 32 • June 1999 • No. 6
