John Hinderaker doesn't think that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai could happen here:
I wondered earlier today how a mere ten terrorists could bring a city of 19 million to a standstill. Here in the U.S., I don't think it would happen. I think we have armed security guards who know how to use their weapons, supplemented by an unknown number of private citizens who are armed and capable of returning fire. The Indian experience shows it is vitally important that this continue to be the case. This is a matter of culture as much as, or more than, a matter of laws.
If only those weak willed Indians weren't further hampered by a culture of self-destructive liberalism, these attacks would never have occurred. In the end, can we really blame the terrorists who carried out the attacks? They were simply responding to the inherent weakness present in Indian society.
This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I'd say it's simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvanism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does at foreigners. It is the "short skirt" theory of violence. If it happened, you must have been asking for it.
For example, right after the Virginia Tech shootings, conservatives fell all over themselves insisting that the killings were not the result of a very disturbed person but a "culture of passivity," as Mark Steyn put it. Neil Boortz added of the victims, "It seems that standing in terror waiting for your turn to be executed was the right thing to do ... Surrender -- comply -- adjust. The doctrine of the left." But of course, a college campus, like the country of more than a billion Hinderaker reduces to a band of sniveling cowards, is an environment crippled by bed-wetting liberalism, and therefore not reflective of the Stallone-like nature of Real Americans. If only VT had gotten rid of those black literature courses. As for the Indian victims of the attacks in Mumbai, Brad at Sadly, No! surmises that it must be the chicken tikka masala. Get those Indians some steaks and they'll toughen right up. Either that or they could hire some right-wing pundits to protect them. From what I read on the Internet, those guys seem really tough.
On a vaguely related note, the folks at The Corner insist on referring to Mumbai as "Bombay," possibly because they are still struggling to cope with the end of colonialism. Imagine how odd it would seem if the Dutch sent their condolences regarding the attack on New Amsterdam on 9/11.
--A. Serwer
