How can anyone be a bystander while someone is stabbed? Mark Steyn

Steyn Online ^ | 12 Sep 2003 | Mark Steyn

[Rummyfan]

How can anyone be a bystander while someone is stabbed? By Mark Steyn (Filed: 13/09/2003)

On September 11, 2001, the first individual to be named among the dead was the wife of the US Solicitor-General, Barbara Olson, whom I'd sat next to at dinner a couple of months earlier. On September 11, 2003, I woke to the news of the death of the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, whom I also sat next to a couple of months ago, at a conference. I can't claim anything other than the most casual acquaintance with either lady, but even an accidental proximity to the victims of terrible murder is sobering.

Miss Lindh was a charmer, even if you didn't agree with a word she said. It wasn't until afterwards that I found out she liked to refer to Bush as "the Lone Ranger" and that she'd complained about America dropping bombs on six al-Qa'eda terrorists in Yemen. She believed in the "Swedish model", a phrase that to Don Rumsfeld probably means Anita Ekberg, but that Swedes understand as the most advanced form of European cradle-to-grave welfare democracy.

But, for the second time in as many weeks, I find myself wondering where European statism is heading. In France, where the death toll in the brutal Gallic summer is now up to 15,000, the attitude of Junior to the funny smell coming from grandma's apartment was the proverbial Gallic shrug and a demand that the government do something about it. On Thursday, Swedes, though more upset, took much the same line:

"This can happen to anyone, anywhere," said Annika, described as "a 24-year-old bystander", at the scene of the attack. "She should have had bodyguards."

There seem to have been an awful lot of bystanders to Miss Lindh's stabbing - in broad daylight, in a crowded department store, after being pursued by her assailant up an escalator. Granted that many of the people bystanding around were women, it still seems odd - at least from my side of the Atlantic - that no one attempted to intervene or halt the blood-drenched killer as he calmly left the store. I'm inclined to agree with Jimmy Hoffa that I'd rather jump a gun than a knife - and even Jimmy's luck ran out eventually - but, if just a handful of the dozens present had acted rather than bystanding, Miss Lindh might still be dead, but her killer would be in jail and not en route, like Olof Palme's, to becoming yet another man that got away.

"It's terrible wherever it happens," said Fredrik Sanabria. "But you think you would be safe from this kind of violence in a country like Sweden."

Really? Why would you think that? Sweden's violent crime and murder rates have been going up, up, up over the past quarter-century. But just about every Swede quoted in every news story seems mired in what National Review's Dave Kopel described, after 9/11, as "the culture of passivity". The lone exception was Lanja Rashid, a Kurdish immigrant. "If I had been there at the stabbing, I would have ripped his face off," she said. "How could people just stand back and watch?"

You can blame it on a lack of police, as everyone's doing. But Miss Lindh's killer didn't get away with it because of the people who weren't there, but because of the people who were: the bystanders. When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I heard a strange rustling one night and, being new to rural life, asked my police chief the following morning, if it had turned out to be an intruder, whether I should have called him at home. "Well, you could," said Al. "But it would be better if you dealt with him. You're there and I'm not." That's the best advice I've ever been given.

This isn't an argument for guns, it's more basic than that: it's the difference between a citizen and a nanny-state baby. In Lee Harris's forthcoming book Civilization And Its Enemies, he talks about the threat of societal forgetfulness: "Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe."

But Anna Lindh would have thought that was just American cowboy talk, too raw, too primal to be of relevance in Europe. After 9/11, my wife bought me a cellphone, so that, in the event I found myself in a similar situation, I could at least call my family one last time. It's not much use up here in the mountains, so I never bothered getting it out of the box. If I ever am on a hijacked plane, while everyone else is dialling home, I'll be calling AT&T or Verizon trying to set up an account.

But, of course, no one will ever hijack an American plane ever again - not because of idiotic confiscations of tweezers, but because of the brave passengers on the fourth flight. That's why the great British shoebomber had barely got the match to his sock before half the cabin pounded the crap out of him. Even the French. To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.

[Gritty]

To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.

BTTT

[headsonpikes]

"To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate."

So true, on so many levels.

[litany_of_lies]

"The libs in the dem controlled cities are the ones who seem to be more reluctant to pass CCW laws."

Except in Ohio, where the big impediment is RINO Gov. Bob Taft, who ran 5 years ago in support of CCW and has done everything he can to thwart it since.

[AnnaZ]

Maybe we shouldn't have dinner with him, after all. ;^)

Eek... you're right. But after contemplation I've decided it's almost worth it.

 

(((sigh!)))

[ValerieUSA]

The Swedes are Olive Oyl, they will cry, "Popeye! Help! Popeye! Save Me!" when their good pal Bluto turns on them...
America is Popeye.
Eat yer spinach, kids.

[IncPen]

I wasn't referring to any gun laws or ideologies in my comment.

I was simply stating that people in rural areas see the value in intervening and will do so, and then correlating that to Bush's support in those areas -- as opposed to urban folks who are used to having things taken care of, by the government ("for free"), as in a nanny-state.

For what it's worth, I support gun rights.

[Prodigal Son]

It doesn't appear that wog is a particularly nice word nor is it an acronym for "worthy oriental gentleman".

Merriam Webster

Main Entry: wog
Pronunciation: 'wäg, 'wog
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps short for golliwog
Date: circa 1929
chiefly British, usually disparaging : a dark-skinned foreigner; especially : one from the Middle East or Far East

Word Reference.com

wog1 [wɒg]
noun (British) (slang) (derogatory)
a foreigner, esp. one who is not White [ETYMOLOGY: probably from golliwog]

Your Dictionary.com

wog
n. Chiefly British Offensive Slang
Used as a disparaging term for a person of color, especially a person from northern Africa or western or southern Asia.

Dictionary.com- lists a similar definition.

Online Etymology

wog - World War II British armed forces slang for "native of India" (especially as a servant or laborer), possibly shortened from golliwog.

http://rec-puzzles.org/sol.pl/language/english/etymology/acronym

Supposed (but not real) acronyms:

wog Worthy (Wealthy) Oriental Gentleman

American Heritage Dictionary

NOUN: Chiefly British Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person of color, especially a person from northern Africa or western or southern Asia.
ETYMOLOGY: Probably short for golliwog.

-------

Which would bring us to golliwog: (again the American Heritage Dictionary)

NOUN: A doll fashioned in grotesque caricature of a Black male.
ETYMOLOGY: After Golliwog, a character in books by Florence Upton (died 1922), American illustrator.

Some more info on the etymology of the word wog and offered by Oxford's

http://acadprojwww.wlu.edu/vol4/BlackmerH/public_html/xliberty/oed/wogcite.html

[IncPen]

My favorite 'learned on FR' word is 'gobsmacked'.

I use it whenever I can.

[Shooter 2.5]

Well, that's one RINO Governor we know of that's against a CCW Bill. He said he was against it because the police associations were against it as usual. I understand the organization[OFCC?} that's working to pass the law is meeting with the Highway Patrol in a little while to straighten things out.

[Shooter 2.5]

I agree completely with you. I just gave you another map that explains just that. The CCW support comes from the rural areas because those people are self reliant. The opposition is in the big cities because of a nanny state syndrome.

A nanny state disciple would never believe it was necessary to defend themselves.

[Teacher317]

Why pass up a perfectly good opportunity to use my 1911 for its intended, legal, moral, and ethical use?

Defense of others (whose lives are in immediate peril) justifies deadly force, at least in Indiana.

The only thing that would trouble me is that my beloved Kimber would rot in a police evidence locker for at least a decade, if not forever.

Is it wrong of me to think these things, rather than to fret over the life of the murderer-wannabe?

[IncPen]

Thank you.

[Shooter 2.5]

Like Cooper said, there shouldn't be any handwringing or doubtful pauses. After a dirtbag is eliminated from the gene pool, the beer should taste better and the sky, bluer.

I still remember the morning I heard Ted Bundy was executed. The sun was just appearing over the trees and it was beautiful.

[MARTIAL MONK]

I found this, unsourced, on the net:

All Personel, South East Asia Theater of War: Upon receipt and thereafter, you will cease refering to our allies as slopes, gooks, slants and yellow bastards and afford them the respect due to the worthy oriental gentlemen that they are.

Viscount Robert Mountbatten Commanding General South East Asia

While no etymologist I, it would seem from your research that Mountbatten was engaging in some particularly Churchillian word play.

Surprising, though, was your unfamiliarity with the term. Robert Ruark built two African novels on it; Uhuru and Something of Value. If you have not read either or both of these you, in particular, should not eat nor sleep until you have copies. It will be worth your while.

[Prodigal Son]

Surprising, though, was your unfamiliarity with the term.

Why was that surprising?

[Penner]

But just about every Swede quoted in every news story seems mired in what National Review's Dave Kopel described, after 9/11, as "the culture of passivity".

Yeah, those passive Swedes. Why can't they be more like Americans?

[MARTIAL MONK]

While it's not a vocabulary staple in the U.S. I've heard it used in backwaters of Texas and Oklahoma. Places where a furriner is someone from the next county. Places where the last British influence left with Cornwallis. It may not have the same dark connotations that you seem to attach but it's more in line with the French bashing we've seen lately. Wogs and Frogs.

[Pokey78]

Thanks!

Steyn ping.

[RobFromGa]

thanks for the ping, another Steyn gem...

[mrustow]

Like all brilliant sayings, it has that feel of the perennial, as if it must surely be hundreds of years old. But it isn't. It's as new as today's headline ... and Socrates.