Only a few people are capable of committing a murder (unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought), but, at least in the past, many people were capable of killing in self defense or warfare. If they weren’t, we could never have found enough soldiers to man the armies that fought in the massive battles of WWII.

Bill Whittle did a better job than I did of describing our attitudes towards violence and the people who are capable of dealing with it in his ‘Tribes’ essay, where he distinguishes between the people who can deal with violence in a protective way (calling them sheepdogs) and the people who can deal with violence, but who use it in a destructive way (calling them wolves).

According to Whittle’s quote from a soldier, most people are “kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation.”

Societal conditioning is part of our attitude towards violence or killing. I think most western societies have changed a lot since WWII. I don’t know if it’s the influence of the political left, our fears of our own God-like power of destruction in the nuclear age or what, but it’s not clear that some western socieites are capable of producing a large number of people who are capable of dealing with violence in a protective way, even under extreme provocation. America is in better shape than most, but the greatest generation may have been the last of its kind.

It just tends to never be 100%. Yet the exception does not prove the rule. I am of course limiting killing to killing humans only. Hunting animals is not the same, just as eating animal flesh is not the same as eating human flesh.

As for the photo issue. Photographs never really capture the true soul of a person, for that you must see them in person.

Most killing is done for food or self defense, It’s part of what makes us human. Classifying this as a qualilty that belongs to ‘others’, a tendency that belongs only to a subset of people doesn’t really help us understand it in murderers or in ordinary people.

In the name of self-defense, we’re all capable of inflicting mortal violence – something we should remember when we come in contact with the dead-eyed Attas of the world.

Hey, have you heard the latest about how Bushco was responsible for blowing up the WTC and hurricane Katrina?

Wait, there’s more….

Striking. Everyone reacted to Atta’s shark eyes.

I saw Michael Moore at the RNC in NYC in 2004. He was leaving the arena after sitting in the press box for just 20 minutes (he’d file a story that night claiming he’d mingled on the convention floor with hoi polloi and quoting several fabricated conversations he never, in fact, had).

Moore was surrounded by an entourage of some twenty security men with those little white earpieces. He was bloated, unkempt, wearing worn, sagging jeans. But what struck me most was his eyes: they were dead-dark, sick: he looked like a man who’d sold his soul. Not sad, just … empty.

I was shocked. Can’t stand him, but that glimpse of him (he passed within four feet of me) made my hair rise up on the back of my neck.

Please point to where it was suggested that the “dead eyed, predator look” was a feature found solely in Muslims. Tell us where you got that.