Liberalism and the issue of the bonds between us.

Just taken at face value, this comment by John E. is absurd and reveals the sappiness that undergirds the malignancy known as "liberalism":

Taken at face value, Irv's statement adds hopelessness to an already horrid story. As atrocious as the killer is, he is not a mutant, or else we all are. He is made of the same stuff as we all. We do well to see ourselves in him, at least to some extent, lest we end up where he did by fancying ourselves much better in our pride. We do well also to consider one of Dostoevsky's driving themes in The Brothers Karamazov, that we are each responsible for all, that had I been all that I should have been in the past, perhaps none of this would have happened. Thus I consider myself at least partly to blame for what the killer did.^[1]

What you see here is a neurotic need to assume blame for something that isn't even remotely something that is John's responsibility.

Irv. P. responds with restrained incredulity.

Such are our strange times. When social bonds count, liberals swoon over every effort to sunder ties of kinship and cheer at this eradication of one of the most important ways in which society builds trust. When there should be a link between people, liberals deny them. Where there is no link at all, liberals invent them and waste our time and taxes.

Years ago I was thinking about a particularly ultra liberal woman I was friendly with at the time. It occurred to me that her emotional response to the sight of a homeless man sleeping on a steam grate in Washington, DC, in the winter had to be something like, "That's me on the grate." My impression of her on all political matters is that she felt there was simply no line at all between herself and someone else. If they felt discomfort, it was the same as if she directly felt the same discomfort and their claim on her was almost as irresistible as her own discomfort would be.

In the instance of this particular crime, the killer had an outward appearance of someone who was kin to the murdered little boy but it was not a real connection. On the surface he should have been a protection for the poor child. Underneath he was every bit the "mutant" that Irv. P. says he is.

Notes
^[1] John E. in a comment appearing at "Brooklyn boy murdered, dismembered." By Lawrence Auster, View from the Right, 7/14/11.