LaRouche Supporter Stifled at Virginia Tech Hearing
By Shawn on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 2:17 PM PST In Gamer Life
It seems the Virginia Tech Panel Members have finally heard enough from Lyndon LaRouche. GamePolitics has the details on the third public meeting of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, at George Mason University in Fairfax. For a third time a LaRouche supporter took the podium to spout retoric blaming the April 16th massacre on violent video games.
Apparently the commitee has had it’s fill as committee chair Col. Gerald Massengill politely dismissed the 24 year old LaRouche follower after less than three minutes.
CSPAN has the session up on video. The LaRouche segment starts at 2:28:22. GamePolitics has MP3 file of the segment.
The next public hearing is scheduled for July 18th in Charlottesville.
Hopefully this will start a trend. Many of us feel that LaRouche is exploiting this tragedy as a platform for his own personal agenda.
Jack Thompson has a son.
If LaRouche is exploiting the Va. Tech tragedy for his personal agenda, what’s his personal agenda? Stopping kids from turning into Zombie killers is a personal agenda? Why defend games which train people to kill and desensitize them? Don’t you have anything better to do with your mind?
Margaret,
I believe LaRouche’s agenda is censorship – not supporting personal choice – regarding this content that he feels is objectionable. Do I have something better to do with my mind? What exactly does that question mean? Do I enjoy healthy escapism (as in playing a game or reading a book)? Yes. Do I place the blame for societies ills on our entertainment and media? No.
Games do not train people into Zombie Killers.. I have been trained to kill and I assure you the video games I’ve played all my life had no impact on my ability to learn those things while serving my country in the military. They didn’t desensitize me to the feeling of fear from having to fire a gun for the first time, they didn’t make it easier to imagine my paper targets were people, they didn’t make me “pray for war”. People who feel that way are not desensitized because of game training.. they are exhibiting sociopathic responses. They don’t feel emotions about the actions – that is a hard wired response not a learned one.
I also don’t see and have not seen anyone demonstrate a causal link to gaming with this aberrant random act of violence – violence committed by an unstable man and an “adult”.. LaRouche and his supporters have the right to speak out. I’m all for that, but it seems to me that they are going further toward the book burning stage than the vocal protest and call for parents to consider their choices stage.
Remember, there are still people who would burn Mark Twain’s Huck Finn as pornography in this world despite the historical and educational value of the story.. do you support that movement as well? Do you feel the need to make my choices for me as an adult? I don’t think you have the right to do that. I don’t want you to have that right either.