BLAMING THE VICTIM

HEY, OVER HERE, LOOK AT ME - I'M BLAMING THE VICTIM
By Don Feder
www.donfeder.com
March 17, 2006

Of all of brain-dead liberalism's mind-numbing catchphrases, possibly the most inane is "That's blaming the victim!" - variations on which include: "How dare you blame the victim" and "Oh, my God, he's blaming the victim!"

The cliché rests on one of the pillars of modern liberalism - that actions, in fact, do not have consequences, and individuals bear no responsibility for their behavior.

It's hard to say exactly when the phrase first came in vogue, or in what context, but liberals have gotten enough mileage out of it to circle the solar system several times.

The formula can be applied to any situation where it's politically convenient to deny personal responsibility, including:

Welfare - From time to time, conservatives have suggested that if young women from the inner city don't want to end up dependent on taxpayers, it is well for them not to get pregnant at 15 by love-em-and-leave-em lotharios. "You're blaming the victims," self-styled welfare advocates wail. "It's society's fault that there's a shortage of CEO positions for single mothers who are junior-high dropouts."

AIDS - During the epidemic of the 1980s, when horrible homophobes observed that the individual who was HIV positive after years of unprotected anal sex really didn't qualify as a victim, we were almost tarred-and-feathered. The gay lobby managed to raise AIDS patients to the status of holy relics. Suggesting that promiscuous, high-risk sodomy has consequences became sacrilege.

The Homeless - Formerly called bums, this is a sanctified victim group whose existence we were totally unaware of prior to the Reagan presidency. Suddenly, there they were - sleeping in doorways, defecating in public and annoying passersby with incessant demands for alms. To suggest that most of these unfortunates were alcoholics or addicts, and no one forced them to become chemically/Thunderbird dependent (others were mentally ill and on the streets thanks to liberalism's last compassion crusade - de-institutionalization), was condemned as blaming the victim.

But no one can play the don't-blame-the-victim card like feminists, who insist that women should be able to do whatever they please (wherever and whenever), regardless of how imprudent or dangerous.

If they end up raped, dead or in relationships where they're abused - society is to blame, because we didn't provide them with enough protection, because men are beasts, or because we haven't yet created a world in which the improvident are completely insulated from the foreseeable consequences of their dopey behavior.

Which brings us to the tragedy of Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student from Boston who disappeared from a Manhattan bar late last month.

Seventeen hours later, the 24-year's nude body (wrapped in a blanket) was discovered in Queens. She had been brutally raped and sadistically murdered. Darryl Littlejohn, a bouncer at the bar and a parolee with an extensive criminal record (once described by the New York State Parole Division as "a menace to society"), will likely be charged. Police just announced that DNA evidence ties Littlejohn to the crime.

On the evening of February 25, St. Guillen went out drinking with her friends. The latter decided to call it a night (or morning) around 3am.

St. Guillen went to another bar, alone. She was last seen being escorted from an establishment called The Falls, at around 4am. The bouncer, who escorted her out of the bar, is the prime suspect in the case.

Boston talk-show host John DePetro took his life in his hands by stating the obvious -- "As tragic as it is, your first reaction is she should not have been out alone at 3 or 4 in the morning, because look at what can happen."

"Are you saying she asked for it?," the harpies sputtered. "Are you condoning this horrible crime?" "This isn't about what St. Guillen did - or didn't do - but what was done to her."

Making the TV chatter circuit, Wendy Murphy - a former prosecutor - was in Hillary overdrive. Murphy: "One of the most grotesque things I've heard about this case is people suggesting that she shouldn't have been out that late....And no one should judge this woman because the fact that she was out is her constitutional right. She has the right to drink. She has the right to walk around...and that doesn't give anybody the right to take advantage of the fact."

I have a constitutional right to go skydiving without a parachute. (If I end up looking like a pressed flower, am I a victim of gravity?) You have a constitutional right to go away for a week and leave your house unlocked, with a sign on the door - "Valuables inside; doors open." Angelina Jolie has a constitutional right to walk into a bikers' bar in a sheer negligee.

In certain circumstances, the exercise of your constitutional rights can be lethal.

Although it shouldn't be necessary, we will willingly stipulate to the following: 1) St. Guillen did not deserve to be raped and murdered. 2) Her death was horrible and tragic. 3) Her killer is an animal who deserves to be tossed out of a plane over Gaza, naked, with an American flag tattooed on his chest.

Still, honesty compels us to admit that St. Guillen's actions contributed to her death. If you can't deal with that, then you can't deal with reality - which would make you a liberal.

Men and women both are more vulnerable after spending a night drinking. Petite, attractive women who drink by themselves at 3 am -- in the city where criminals never sleep -- are particularly vulnerable.

Except in action movies, the average woman can be subdued by the average man. The average large man can overpower the average petite woman in a New York minute.

Liberalism's leniency toward career scum has led to an explosion of urban predators. Feminism has taught young women that they have a right to be reckless. On top of all that, we're raised a generation that thinks personal responsibility is a four-letter word.

Liberals think cause-and-effect is a vast rightwing conspiracy. For them, reality is completely malleable. While worshipping what-should-be, they studiously ignore what-is.

To glimpse the world they've created, consider a news story in The Boston Globe of March 9th, in the aftermath of the St. Guillen slaying ("Fearless in the city: Some women still party as if invulnerable").

The reporter surveyed bars in Boston and New York. In a bar two blocks from The Falls, "A young woman named Jovana is in the corner, kissing a young man she met hours earlier." (Is he a crack-addict - a sex-offender? Does she care?) In response to St Guillen's murder, a young lady in serious need of a dope-slap comments, "It happens here. It happens everywhere. (In church, on Sunday morning?) What can I do about it?"

The story notes that TV shows like "Sex In The City," have given some young women a sense that sex is an amusement park ride (both thrilling and safe). Cell phones give them a false sense of security. And, to annihilate the few remaining inhibitions, female binge-drinking is the latest trend.

The Globe (Boston's liberal paper, by the way) reports: "Visits to nightclubs in New York and Boston this week found many young women slurring words, making out with men they hardly knew, and, in one case, sobbing alone in a back alley, shoeless, after a night of drinking. Seven of the 12 women at the clubs interviewed by the Globe said they didn't think they would ever be victims of violent crime and felt no need to change their behavior to avert becoming one."

If one of these net-less trapeze artists ends up dead, don't dare to suggest that her carefree attitude and bizarre behavior contributed to the tragedy.

By not talking about the mistakes victims make - by not demanding that twenty-somethings start acting like adults -- we are helping to create more victims. Why make liberalism's job easier?