Slap in the Face of the Week

Aside from recently serving as a substitute for Sean Hannity on FOX News's "Hannity & Colmes", Mark Steyn is a Canadian journalist who frequently contributes to the National Review Online (NRO), the web version of the conservative "National Review" magazine. Following the tragedy at Virginia Tech last month, Steyn commented on both the deceased and injured by saying "They’re not 'children'. The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men...We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a 'horrible' world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor [Liviu] Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act."

In other words, according to Steyn, the students and faculty members, the students' parents and we as a society should be ashamed for not stopping a mentally disturbed individual with two semiautomatic weapons. (I would love to see how Steyn would react in a similar situation.) With his insulting statements being directed at college students and educators, Steyn definitely has a lot of nerve making those statements, especially considering the fact that he dropped out of a high school in Great Britain at 16 and returned to Canada to work as a disc jockey. Not to be outdone by Steyn, John Derbyshire, a British born journalist and U.S. naturalized citizen, also provided one of his insightful contributions to the NRO:

"Where was the spirit of self defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy?...It's true — none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy."

At least I can say that, unlike Steyn, Derbyshire actually obtained a college degree. However, Derbyshire does admit to previously living as an illegal immigrant in the United States, which is one thing that Cho had over him.