April 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
12:02
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. | |
| I have read and followed a little bit of the shootings that went on at Virginia Tech today. | |
| It's the 16th of April 2007, and I thought I would share a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind. | |
| I think they may be of interest to you. | |
| Because, of course, a central goal and requirement of a philosopher is to work towards trying to spread ideas of peace so that we can try our absolute best to live in a world where these kinds of appalling murders do not continue to happen, and where we can live in some kind of peace and security. | |
| So I thought I would share some thoughts about these shootings, and you can let me know what you think. | |
| It is very clear to any moral and sensible human being that violence, except in an extremity of self-defense, that violence is a terrible and brutal and ugly and vicious and evil way to solve problems, whether they're personal problems of psychological abuse or history, rage, alienation, whatever it is that's going on. | |
| There are no details that are known at this point. | |
| We just know he's an Asian guy dressed like a boy scout. | |
| But we all know that violence is an absolutely appalling way to solve social problems. | |
| There is an enormous amount of violence that is embedded within our society. | |
| And the only good that I can conceive of trying to achieve or grow out of a horror such as what went on in Virginia today Is that it can be a wake-up call for us to see the violence that is embedded within our society. | |
| And there are sort of two levels, I mean, I'm not going to go into a big thing here, but there are sort of two levels of violence that the horror that we feel at seeing this kind of naked brutality, a student's body sprawled on the floor, blood spattered everywhere, a cold-blooded killer stalking up and down the halls, | |
| the The abysmal incompetence of the administrators to protect the student body, all of these sorts of things, the horror that we feel The coldness, the clamminess, the sense of being in another kind of world, in a kind of horror movie. | |
| The horror that we feel at these kinds of acts can help shock us into a kind of wakefulness and awareness of some of the violence that is embedded within our society that we don't see, but to whom somebody in the world it affects. | |
| And to many, many thousands and millions of people in the world it affects us directly. | |
| as this incident has affected us. | |
| The first and most obvious one of course is that the The act of stalking up and down around a disarmed population and shooting them is not something that is unknown to America, of course. | |
| I mean, in the foreign policy that goes on in Iraq and so on, there have been tens upon tens of thousands of people murdered, most of them civilians, most of them, of course, unarmed. | |
| I have two sort of references here. | |
| Because I made a point. | |
| It's absolutely horrifying when it happens anywhere in the world. | |
| But until we, as spiritual and sensitive human beings, understand that the life of the person down the block is not worth more than the person across the ocean, his life, | |
| then we will forever be stuck in this cycle of mired violence and terror and bloodshed until we reach our empathy out To people who speak a different language, to people who look different, to people who are raised in a brutal Muslim culture, and have sensitivity for our brothers and sisters across the sea, there is not going to be any end of this cycle of violence, and I'm not the first person to say it, and I doubt that I shall be the last. | |
| A year after the US-led Operation Phantom Fury damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools, and 65 mosques in Fallujah, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction, and high rates of illness. | |
| The Study Center for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah estimates the number of people killed in the city during the US-led occupation in October and November 2004. | |
| At 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians, mass graves, were dug in the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies. | |
| Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flame upon contact with air, inside Fallujah as an incendiary weapon against insurgents. | |
| Of course, only insurgents were murdered. | |
| Washington denies that it is a chemical weapon as charged by some critics and that it was used against insurgents. | |
| Civilians. And you can read endless amounts of this stuff that's out there. | |
| One wrong does not justify another wrong. | |
| But the horror that you feel with regards to murders inside your own country of people who you can identify with Should be proportionately greater, I would say, relative to the number of the dead. | |
| I think Iraq has a population of about 30 million, America a couple hundred million, so it's about ten times. | |
| So, there are 33, I think, American students dead, including the, we assume he's a student, I don't know, who performed the killings. | |
| Here we have, let's just say, Double that times a thousand. | |
| And so in a population that is one tenth the size. | |
| So if you can think of 40,000 to 60,000 murders occurring during an assault upon an American city, then If you don't feel the kind of horror for what is going on over in Iraq, and of course lots of other places in the world, and it's not like America's the only country with an aggressive foreign policy, if you don't feel the kind of horror that's going on there, then I don't think you have the right to feel any moral horror about what is going on. | |
| And what went on at Virginia Tech today? | |
| Because one human life is not magically better or more valuable or more honorable or more noble or more moral than another human life. | |
| So I fail to see there is an enormous amount of horror and hushed voices in the media today when the Battle of Fallujah passed under the radar with barely any mention of, obviously, chemical and destructive weapons being used against civilians. | |
| And schools being destroyed. | |
| So, this is the moral paradox that we just can't keep ignoring. | |
| We just cannot keep ignoring this moral paradox. | |
| That if you put on a costume, and you go to Iraq, and you do what the shooter at Virginia Tech did, you get a medal and a pension. | |
| And you are a hero. | |
| But murder is murder is murder is murder is murder is murder is murder is murder. | |
| And until we get that drumbeat solely into our hearts and souls, it will all continue until the end of time. | |
| And you are a hero. | |
| U.S. soldiers killed at least 13 Iraqi civilians who marched on a school west of Baghdad to demand the troops leave the building and get out of Iraq. | |
| Doctors and witnesses said on Tuesday, this is a bit more recent, sorry, this is out of... | |
| This is out of 2003. | |
| Medic said 75 were also wounded in the march by more than 200 protesters on the school after Muslim prayers on Monday evening in Fallujah. | |
| This has put the death toll as high as 17. | |
| Residents said the marchers were unarmed. | |
| U.S. forces said the troops opened fire only after they were shot at by a group of gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles. | |
| But, I mean, who knows? | |
| This is the fog of war and the nonsense and the crack that always is associated with these kinds of things. | |
| But these are people in a school who are protesting, who are gunned down, and some say unarmed, some say armed. | |
| Who knows, right? But this is a 20-year-old or 22-year-old American kid who's been stuffed full of all of the vile propaganda of militarism and whose pay and training and weaponry is paid for by money extracted from the U.S. citizenry at gunpoint through tax laws. | |
| And the threat of prison. | |
| And this guy is a hero. | |
| He goes and shoots on armed people half a world away. | |
| And he's a hero, gets a medal and he comes back and everyone says, what a great guy you are. | |
| How many people are going to put yellow ribbons on their cars to support this shooter, this monster, out of Virginia Tech? | |
| Well, nobody, of course. It would be her. | |
| You would get your car trashed. | |
| But the poor, deluded and... | |
| Morally questionable to say the least, souls who are over there pulling triggers because their leaders tell them that they're bad people point, shoot, kill. | |
| Well, this is a hitman. And this is something that if we only have compassion for our tribe, our country, our race, our kind, then this tidal wave of violence back and forth throughout the world is going to continue, and it's going to continue to escalate. | |
| And it's a hard thing to ask for, because, of course, we're trained from day one to only... | |
| And only really have empathy for those who are like ourselves. | |
| So, if someone a town over gets shot, then there's absolute horror. | |
| If somebody who is your brother gets shot, or somebody who is your child gets shot, Then there is horror, and there is agony, and there is searing pain, and there is the crying out of why. | |
| And the problem with that, of course, as we all know, is that everybody is somebody's son, everybody is somebody's brother, everybody is somebody's sister, assuming we're not single children, all of us. | |
| Let's have a look at the man who ordered the war, President Bush, in his response to the shootings today. | |
| In Washington, the House and Senate observed moments of silence for the victims, and President Bush said the nation was, quote, shocked and saddened by news of the tragedy. | |
| He said, Today our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones. | |
| We hold the victims in our hearts. | |
| We lift them up in our prayers and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today. | |
| I don't recall a single time that he's ever said that about any of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died or the Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who've been displaced by the invasion of Iraq, the destruction of the infrastructure and the destruction of the homes and the wholesale slaughter of the civilians. | |
| I don't believe that there's been a single prayer that has ever been said by the president to the victims of his war. | |
| I don't believe that I've ever heard a single American include the prayers of Iraqis in their nightly Benevictions to a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today. | |
| And you don't have to. | |
| You don't have to do a thing. You can continue to feel that those who are closer to you in nationality, geography, race, gender, doesn't matter. | |
| You can continue to feel for the rest of your life that those who are closer to you are the ones who have more value. | |
| But you will only be adding gasoline to the fire that is consuming mankind. | |
| That we must, we must, we must not only grieve for the murders that are committed against those who are close to us. | |
| We must also grieve for every life. | |
| Because it is only when we have that compassion that these kinds of tragedies will cease. |
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