I’d have said the opinions of the National Review are straight out of the Stone Age, but I have too much respect for our prehistoric ancestors to ever think they were that stupid.
The National Review, whose most recent website editorial posits that the massacre of children is the price we must pay for America’s freedoms, has published this week a piece by archconservative and self-loathing columnist Charlotte Allen that suggests if there had been fewer women and more “male aggression” in Sandy Hook Elementary School, the massacre there would never have taken place.
“There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.”
Aside from Allen’s misstatement of some basic facts - a male teacher, Ted Varga, sprinted through a hallway filled with smoke to escape through an emergency exit, then returned to a conference room help three of his fellow fourth-grade teachers escape through a window; a school janitor, also male, is credited with spreading a warning as well as making sure classroom doors were locked; Sandy Hook Elementary School is a K-4 school with no fifth or sixth grade students – the grave disrespect she shows for the heroism of the brave women who gave their lives protecting their students, as well as those who shielded or hid so many children, is positively stomach-turning.
I’m a man. I’m no football player, but I can handle myself in most situations. I’d like to think I’d do the right thing in desperate circumstances, and I know I’d do whatever it takes to protect those – children or adults - in my care. But I’m not bullet-proof. And I’m not stupid.
Charlotte Allen, on the other hand, is stupid. Stupid and disgusting and wrong.