cowardice

I don't know what I would have done. I would like to think courage, but having been more conditioned by the post-60s world than the brave professor who died, I might have been more like this:

"The technical name for not fighting back is “cowardice.” One professor died bravely, giving his life in order to door protect his students. That’s courage, and he should be awarded some kind of medal. But compare it to the behavior in this email Michelle Malkin received":

We heard pretty much continuous shooting for the next minute or so, and I said, “Shouldn’t we barricade the door,” because we were sitting ducks with no way out inside that room if he opened the door. A couple more people floated the idea that “We need to barricade the door, NOW.” But I was too scared to even move, much less move the teacher’s desk.

Finally one of the guys in the front of the classroom was brave enough to get up and move the desk in front of the door to prevent outside entry. About twenty seconds later, the shooter rattled the doorknob trying to get in. When he couldn’t get in he fired two shots through the door (single solid piece of wood) and left. We heard him go in to 206 (the room across the hall) and shoot the people in that room. If we hadn’t put the barricade up when we did, I and all my classmates would be dead.[Michelle Malkin: Carnage at Virginia Tech;]

This is cowardice, and the student in question, (I won’t name him) should receive some kind of non-medal.

It starts with him being too terrified to move, even to barricade the door, the a different, slightly braver student barricades the door, which later in the email becomes “if we hadn’t put the barricade up when we did” and they are all happy to hear the gunman go away and kill some other students.

And here’s another point: the professor I mentioned, Liviu Librescu, 76, died protecting a bunch of young men and women of military age who were bravely, bravely, bravely, running away.

Somehow, that doesn’t compute. Perhaps it was because he was born before the modern age of cowardice.

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In our post 60s touchy feely world I guess we can't use the word cowardice...perhaps that's why there's so many of them