The recent cold-blooded murder of a homeless person, burned to death by three sons of bitches, has added Victoria Prego to this chorus of apologists: “in this video game culture, there is not a single sanction, criticism or warning.” According to the famed journalist, “today’s young people are not taught the consequences of their violent actions.” This means, they “can burn a woman and laugh all the while” until later, “they cry because they realize, only too late, that the woman was not a character in a savage Playstation game.”  

 

Victoria Prego is taking part in the left-wing’s insistence on shifting responsibility for people’s actions from the individual to society, this evil entity that allows children to watch animated Japanese cartoons, violent movies and play sadistic videogames. And, of course, then these kids do what they do. The thousands of children growing up under these same conditions, but who do not beat up and then burn homeless people are forgotten or ignored. What such distinguished thinkers believe is that the people who commit these crimes are not responsible for them; rather society pushed them into it.     

 

An Indian doctor explained to English psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, also known by the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, the misery he saw in England was essentially different from what he saw in his native city, and to his way of thinking, much more serious. The misery in England was a moral, emotional, mental and cultural misery, where people no longer felt individual responsibility. Thieves demand their doctors explain why they had a “need” to steal a VCR from someone’s home; or blame churches for having such bad security systems that, naturally, encouraged this compulsion to rob.  

 

Legions of mindless teachers, therapists, social workers and ideologues have formed a criminal industry, lead by despicable characters like Javier Urra, whose goal is to destroy the concepts of individual responsibility and free will, and, along the way, destroy the society based on them. Urra’s greatest successes can be found in the law for minors, which allows under-age killers to avoid real jail time. But he is not alone. Spain will not be a healthy society as long as doing yoga counts toward reducing jail time, and as long as we refuse to acknowledge it is perfectly legitimate for a democracy to have lifetime prison sentences, with no option for parole.

 

The blame, the responsibility rests solely and exclusively with the three sons of bitches who burned a poor homeless person to death. But if we had to look elsewhere it would not be at videogames but at Victoria Prego and everyone like her who allows people to avoid responsibility for their actions. We should look at those who have created our current climate of impunity and irresponsibility.

 

And speaking of freedom and responsibility, allow me, a non-smoker, to start the year smoking a cigarette to the health of the anti-tobacco law.