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Wednesday, October 4, 2006
It’s not my fault
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Everybody’s a victim. The murderer of Amish school children, Charles Carl Roberts IV, left notes that described his anguish at the death of premature daughter nine years ago. He cited, too, a childhood as a molester of two female relatives who would have been of preschool age.
Then there is in the news, too, the former Florida congressman, Mark Foley, who first suggested that his inappropriate relationships with male congressionall pages was the fault of alcohol. And then Tuesday, his lawyer said in a West Palm Beach press conference that Foley had been sexually abused when he was 13 and 15 by a clergyman. But, the lawyer said, Foley had not had any sexual contact with underage boys.
Whatever the real answers are for the horror at the Amish schoolhouse or for a congressman’s predatory behavior, the explanations that invite the rest of us to think of perpetrators as victims is doubly angering — once for the actual offense and again for it’s-not-my-fault excuse-making. With Foley, one envisions memoirs and a promotional tour through empathy-TV explaining how he was driven to misconduct.
A friend recently described a cartoon with two characters standing over a mangled body, one commenting to the other: “The person who did this really needs our help.” Except for periodic bouts of public outrage, that’s where this nation has been rooted for the past 40 years or more. It’s where much of the country is on terrorism: What have we done to cause people around the world to hate us and how we can change so that they’ll not be driven to terrorism? Enough.
Those guilty are either victims or when they take responsibility, it’s as Janet Reno did after Waco: it’s empty words without accountability or consequence. A conservative dreams: One day Americans will take personal responsibility for themselves, their families, their financial affairs, their retirement years — and most of all, for their own conduct.
