Entitlement, Violence, and the PC Crowd

The killing of six young people near the UC-Santa Barbara campus has inspired an outpouring of anger and concern about violence.

Sadly, the desire to understand what motivated the alleged killer, Elliot Rodgers, seems to begin and end in the self-involved world of political correctness.

According to this story in the New York Times, the attack has "touched off an anguished conversation...about the ways women are perceived sexually and the violence against them.

"'If we don't talk misogyny now, when are we going to talk about it?' asked Nancy Yang, a second year global studies major."

The story here is misogyny? 

Yes, Rodgers was angry that women rejected him. But of the six people he killed, four were men. 

In fact, men are far more likely to be murdered in this country than are women. How on earth was this tragedy hijacked by the feministas?

And just last month a student went nuts at the University of Calgary and stabbed five fellow students to death. Yet the father of UC-Santa Barbara victim Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez said his son died "because of...the NRA." Did those Canadian kids die because of Calphalon?  

Marching in protest against hate crimes, one female student at UC-Santa Barbara held a sign that read, "Nobody is entitled to a woman's body" — a reference to Rodger's belief that women owed him attention and affection.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking about how sad and unfair my life has been," Rodgers said on a video diary before the killings. "I feel so invisible as I walk through my college because none of the girls there pay attention to me."

The young girl carrying that sign is correct: no one has a right to a woman's body.

That's because in a truly free society people have ownership in their own bodies; so long as their actions are peaceful, they should be free to do what they wish with their bodies, including granting or withholding access to that body — and to be free from violent assault by any thug who disagrees.

That's a right shared by men and women alike — though you wouldn't know it from the way this sad event has been co-opted by the PC crowd. This right even extends beyond our bodies, to the fruits of our labor — that which people create through their own exertions.

Elliot Rodgers was a sad little man with an enormous sense of entitlement. In that sense, he has a lot in common with millions of Americans who think that they are owed something — and that they have a right to take it by force if need be. This includes healthcare, birth control, cheap housing, a better rate of pay, even abortion on demand. If anyone is genuinely interested in addressing the entitlement mentality that motivated Elliot Rodgers, they need look no further than the ultra-leftist University of California-Santa Barbara.