Calling it a “tremendously important observation about what kind of America we live in,” KNUS 710 AM Backbone Radio host John Andrews on April 22 read from a National Review Online column by Mark Steyn suggesting that a culture of “corrosive passivity” was to blame for the April 16 shooting rampage that resulted in the deaths of 33 people at Virginia Tech.

According to Steyn's April 18 column, the students at Virginia Tech were not “children,” they were “grown women and -- if you'll forgive the expression -- men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet.” Steyn added, “Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are 'children' if they're serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton's Oval Office.” The column continued:

Nonetheless, it's deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself -- and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.

Steyn concluded by stating, “Murderous misfit loners are mercifully rare. But this awful corrosive passivity is far more pervasive, and, unlike the psycho killer, is an existential threat to a functioning society.” Steyn did not indicate in the piece whether he ever had been attacked at gunpoint and, if so, how he reacted at the time.

As Media Matters for America documented, Steyn is one of several media figures who have faulted Virginia Tech victims for not fighting back.

From the April 22 broadcast of KNUS 710 AM's Backbone Radio:

ANDREWS: The, the point that, that is made in this particular Mark Steyn article that I'd like to read as much of, of it as time permits us here. It isn't so much about the terrible judgment of the news organizations to give the evil Cho his -- his wish of a national audience, but it's, it's a, another I think tremendously important observation about what kind of America we live in -- and we'll be pursuing this as the show goes along this evening -- but here are the words of Mark Steyn; this was put up on National Review Online on Wednesday.