Lacking a motive, some commentators have turned to other, more rarefied culprits. Laura Kiesel, writing in Politico, argues we shouldn’t blame mental illness for mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas. Instead, we should blame men: “If we want to stop the problem of mass shootings, we need to fix the problem of toxic masculinity.”
Kiesal goes on to cite crime statistics and sociological studies about everything from anxiety disorders to media messaging to bolster her claim that men and their toxic masculinity are somehow to blame for mass shootings.
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But this search for external causes is a modern and progressive impulse. So far we have no explanation or motive except that Paddock was a wicked man intent on doing evil. Those words—wicked, evil—are not taken very seriously by the sort of people who would prefer to blame Paddock’s crimes on toxic masculinity or mental illness. Progressives in particular scoff at the very idea of human nature, much less that it is fallen and corrupt and capable of doing great evil.
To suggest that something so arcane and old-fashioned as the wickedness of human nature is to blame for Las Vegas is, for progressives, tantamount to blaming a demonic spirit. It is absurd and unscientific. After all, human nature is itself a delusion, a phantom of the imagination no more real than a demon or a wood sprite. Such talk is beneath serious people in the twenty-first century.
Much like the Left is unwilling to have a conversation about the real causes of gun violence in New York City, so too is it unwilling to have a conversation about human nature and the reality of evil. Progressives can no more admit that government welfare policies are the root cause of gun violence in New York than they can admit that fallen human nature is the root cause of mass shootings like Las Vegas.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/23/blaming-toxic-masculinity-mass-shootings-form-bigotry/
Kiesal goes on to cite crime statistics and sociological studies about everything from anxiety disorders to media messaging to bolster her claim that men and their toxic masculinity are somehow to blame for mass shootings.
[clip]
But this search for external causes is a modern and progressive impulse. So far we have no explanation or motive except that Paddock was a wicked man intent on doing evil. Those words—wicked, evil—are not taken very seriously by the sort of people who would prefer to blame Paddock’s crimes on toxic masculinity or mental illness. Progressives in particular scoff at the very idea of human nature, much less that it is fallen and corrupt and capable of doing great evil.
To suggest that something so arcane and old-fashioned as the wickedness of human nature is to blame for Las Vegas is, for progressives, tantamount to blaming a demonic spirit. It is absurd and unscientific. After all, human nature is itself a delusion, a phantom of the imagination no more real than a demon or a wood sprite. Such talk is beneath serious people in the twenty-first century.
Much like the Left is unwilling to have a conversation about the real causes of gun violence in New York City, so too is it unwilling to have a conversation about human nature and the reality of evil. Progressives can no more admit that government welfare policies are the root cause of gun violence in New York than they can admit that fallen human nature is the root cause of mass shootings like Las Vegas.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/23/blaming-toxic-masculinity-mass-shootings-form-bigotry/
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