printCNN’s Jack Cafferty was not happy with the label Israelis aptly applied to the man who barreled down a busy avenue in Jerusalem in a bulldozer, crushing and killing innocent bystanders: “Palestinian terrorist.” I guess that excessively demonizes this demon.
Cafferty, who features on Blitzer’s “Situation Room” with one of those Magic Daily Questions that must wow viewers, registered his displeasure. He wanted to hear more about what would possibly drive an otherwise good man to be so mean. Hey, ever hear of unadulterated evil? Cafferty then reached for that instant exculpatory construct: the so-called “mental disease.”
The of diseasing of behavior is now so thoroughly ingrained it has usurped right and wrong.
Accordingly, when people perpetrate evil, those who’ve habituated to these false categories toss free will to the wind. Since the Palestinian terrorist did a monstrous thing, liberals attribute his actions to causes. To perpetrate evil, one surely must be “mentally ill.” When a person does good things, those of this lax, irrational mindset attribute his actions to choice. They acknowledge free will and human agency if — and only if — adaptive actions are involved.
Read “Evil, Not Ill”.
Update: The contagion is spreading. MSNBC has placed the word “terrorist” in scare quotes, either “to distance the writer from the material being reported,” or “to indicate that it is someone else’s terminology.” Among MSM twits, “terrorist” is clearly a controversial term for a terrorist. It works for me.
Very aptly put, Ilana. I’ve noticed the alarming tendency some have to label all evil-doers as mentally ill. In a debate I just recently had with my college classmates, we argued the death penalty; I was on the pro-side and one of my defenses for it was that some people are so evil, it’s amazing they even fit the definition of human. My feelings on capital punishment aside, though, my main observation during the debate was how, alarmingly, some of the opposers responded by telling me that the most brutal killers were insane. Their bleeding heart solution was to get these people “the mental help they need” instead of coldly killing them. I told them that these people’s mental clarity was perfectly obvious in their calculating, ingenuis plotting and conniving. Their response was, “Doesn’t matter. If they kill people, there’s something wrong with their minds.” Um, yes: evil!
I am very selective about what I think is even watchable on CNN, but Cafferty goes above and beyond in his level of unlikability. Day in and day out, he comes up on the Situation Room with his irritant, drowsy-looking, depressed facial expression, “registering his displeasure”. When, rarely, he gives his own political opinion, it tends to consist of the most horrific and tormented Centrist monstrosity one could imagine. For example: Ron Paul’s campaign raises a lot of money, and his thoughts are that Paul is loopy for trying to spread his message, but at least he’s putting on a rip-roaring show in the process. Unbelievably, the people that respond to his daily question manage to always surpass him in this regard, to a point that even Cafferty can become disgusted by it. If this fellow isn’t a nihilist, he must be somewhere in the ballpark.
Let’s just say that this fiend had raped his wife-mother-daughter-boyfriend, whoever. And let’s say that the person who was raped (wouldn’t dare call them a victim) had mockingly refused this fiend’s sincere advances, which led to said fiend’s rage. If Cafferty were consistent, he would likely chastise the raped for her/his behavior prior to the event. People like this are every bit as brutish as the fiends who would do the actual crime because they think it’s a legitimate way to react. We know all we need to about Cafferty’s moral compass.
While I dislike the mainstream media, I will at least concede that the word “terrorist” has become as overused as “fascist”. I would certainly call thugs who pre-plan an attack that deliberately kills, kidnaps, and threatens non-combatants (children, pregnant women, etc.) to be terrorists. I would not call an unconventional attack on an American warship (e.g. the USS Cole) to be a “terrorist” act but rather an act of unconventional warfare. If the Bulldozer Berserker WAS part of a pre-planned attack by Islamic Jihad or similar scum, then he is a terrorist. The news articles do not appear certain as whether this was a deliberate terror murder or some “bulldozer rage” impulse, analogous to some of the drivers on the LA freeways.
Of course, while we may never resolve what gibberish went on in this murderer’s demented mind, the fact that the Hamas/Jihad/Brigade “Palestinian-liberators” applaud and glorify terror, self-destruction, suicide/homicide, hatred, etc. and exploit people with weak consciences and mental illnesses for their causes is entirely evil and despicable.
[There ya go; engaging in precisely the illogic I’ve written against in this post, and so many times: “if murderer, then demented”; if B then A. As I say, Illogic, and also immoral.–IM]
On some medicine’s and solvents and chemicals, on the back of the bottle, the instructions are clearly written what to do if they are accidently ingested. Sometimes it will say, “do not induce vomiting”. Sometimes it says to “induce vomiting”. When the situation room on CNN comes on with Jack Cafferty, there should be a BOLD message at the beginning of the program to INDUCE VOMITING if you happen to click on this program. Perhaps if Cafferty’s mother and grandchildren were on a bus that was being tipped over by a bulldozer and then crushed like a aluminum coke can, maybey, just maybey, the light may come on to him that this terrorist in Jerusalem, was exactly just that… a TERRORIST.
Martin Berrow