David McElroy

It takes a special kind of hypocrite to cry public tears over the death of 20 innocent children when you’re the one bombing civilians and causing far more death and injury than what we saw in Connecticut last Friday.

Barack Obama got a lot of political mileage from the emotion he showed when he made a statement Friday about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Some people have quietly suggested that it was political theater and the tears were faked, but I have no reason to think that. He might very well have been upset about the murdered children. But does he cry for 7-year-old Syed, who his drones killed in 2009? Does he cry for 6-year-old Sameeda, who was badly injured by one of his drones in 2009? Does he cry for any of the innocents caught up in his immoral and indecent violence?

A recent study by the law schools of Stanford University and New York University concluded that only 2 percent of the people killed in Obama’s drone strikes are “high-level” targets. Although the Obama administration claims that it’s “exceedingly rare” for innocent civilians to be killed in these attacks, nobody else accepts that fiction.

The Stanford/NYU report accepted figures from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, which concludes that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 to 3,300 people have been killed in the strikes, of which 500 to 900 have been innocent civilians.

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In the last couple of days, I’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing — from politicians and almost everyone else — concerning what to do about the crisis of gun-related violence in schools. I’m frustrated by the arguments, because they’re arguing the wrong points.

The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., has renewed calls from some people to ban guns or at least control them more tightly in undefined ways. Those on the other side of the debate have said the way to stop such shootings is to arm teachers and let potential intruders know they’ll be shot. Many reasonable and intelligent people are taking sides along these battle lines, but I think they’re making a very basic error in their thinking.

Both sides assume we have a crisis related to school safety or mass shootings, so each side is trying to solve that predefined “problem.” But what if schools are already safe enough? And what if “mass shootings” aren’t the problem that both sides seem to assume they are?

How safe does the world have to be before you consider it “safe enough”?

For the families and friends of those who died in the shootings Friday, the shootings were definitely a crisis. The lives of survivors will never be the same. They’ve been scarred and changed.

But can’t the same be said of people who go through any traumatic incident? If 26 people (including 20 children) had died in an airplane crash, we wouldn’t hear cries to ban airplanes. Even though we would look at the crash and see whether there were lessons to learn from the specific incident, we would simply mourn the dead and acknowledge that the world can’t be made completely safe.

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Is anyone else on American television as rude as Bill O’Reilly? I don’t watch TV, so I can’t be sure, but I can’t imagine why anybody watches this rude and pompous guy.

In was in a restaurant last night that was turned to Fox News and O’Reilly’s show was on. Both televisions in the place were on the same channel and it was loud, so I didn’t have much choice but to hear it. I heard O’Reilly start interviewing Dave Silverman, the president of American Atheists. The group is suing to stop some activity or other that it considers an illegal government involvement in a religious holiday. Actually, it wasn’t as much an interview as it was a patronizing attack.

The guest tried to be polite and civil from the beginning, but O’Reilly wasn’t interested. He quickly cut off any polite talk and went on the offensive. He asked the man why his group was suing and the man replied that the atheists believe the case is about government involvement in religion.

O’Reilly asked what religion is involved. The atheist looked a bit puzzled before answering that it’s Christianity. O’Reilly cut him off quickly.

“[Christianity] is not a religion,” he said. “That’s a philosophy.”

I couldn’t tell whether O’Reilly was stupid enough to believe what he was saying or if he knew he was being disingenuous. I have to assume he was being intentionally dishonest, because I can’t believe anyone is that stupid. O’Reilly was rude and intellectually dishonest for the rest of the interview parts that I saw. At one point, he referred to the atheist as “You and your merry band of fascists.”

I eventually had to put my earbuds in and turn Laura Veirs on as loud as I could stand the music.

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