Posted date: 2010-02-20

Posted By : Marc

The Spanish Inquisitor had an article on a review of Columbine up today. A couple of months ago, I listened to a Skepticality podcast in which Swoopy interviewed Dave Cullen, author of Columbine. Prior to that introduction, I had believed the legends of that event. As such, I didn't even care to delve any deeper. But Cullen's description and the discussion with Swoopy were fascinating, as much for the way the facts became buried beneath the legend. SI does a good job of reviewing enough pertinent facts for his reader to decide whether or not Cullen's book is for them.

I was interested in the claim* that Eric Harris was a psychopath. I had never really understood the term, and the description of clinical psychopathy sounded morbidly fascinating. Aside: I believe the book Snakes in Suits was mentioned as a collection of case studies in psychopathy in the business world. I am half done with that book now. The mention of books that pique my interest will prevent me from ever finishing my reading list.

What SI brought up last caught me a little off-guard. He mentioned the Bath School Disaster as that the worst school murder in American history. Looking that up, I saw something quite pertinent to the last couple of days: taxes. The perpetrator of the former event, Andrew Kehoe, "...blamed the additional tax [a property tax levied to fund construction of a new school] for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm." As a result, he conducted bombings resulting in the deaths of 38 children and 7 adults (and injuring another 58 people). Our more recent example set up the same was in the form of an airplane suicide attack on an IRS building in Austin, TX. Thankfully, the death toll is only 2 or 3, aside from the murderer and his murdered wife. In each of these cases, a person who could be accurately described as a professional failure theorizes that it is taxation that has caused his financial woes. Yes, though his competitors all pay taxes, it is only HE that suffers injustice. The style, grammar, and spelling in the diatribe of the Texas suicide bomber, Joseph Stack, could be compared to any number of like-minded people writing in right-wing blogs.

Another aside: I saw this incredible headline Terror or criminal act? Plane attack on Texas IRS office prompts debate on meaning of "terror". I imagine the question in this case is whether we can call "the use of violence in hopes of achieving a political end" terrorism. No, wait, that is nearly the dictionary definition of terrorism. The question must be whether terrorism can be perpetrated by non-brown people. To be fair, the author of the article does a reasonable job presenting the controversy.

We do have reason to fear these people. People like Kehoe and Stack are very different from a person like Harris. Harris was simply a psychopath who wanted to kill a lot of people. Kehoe and Stack were losers by society's standards, and they were running away. The only difference between them and other suicides were that they were evil little men who saw the ending of their own pathetic lives as an opportunity to inflict pain without any consequences. How does one punish a dead man? Strangely, this is the only personality type for whom religion is could be a good thing. I have never had the "If I didn't believe in God, I would go around killing and raping and stealing." conversation with a Christian, but I have certainly heard of them. To the kind of person that says this: I hope you never lose your religion. These people provide the only case I have been able to identify of religion fear of Hell being beneficial to society. In short, then, I suppose my claim is that the only cases where society benefits from religion is in preventing actions by individuals who are a danger to themselves and others. Magical threats may be good for something after all.

*I don't mean to contradict anyone by using the word "claim." Most likely, this premise will be supported in the written work, but I can't justify accepting this as fact at first glance.