Look, Newt's position on the cause of this tragedy is just silly (skip ahead to 3:38). The rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the US was 5.1/100,000 in 1960 (surely the idyll of the Country Club Republican). In 2004 it was 5.5. We're hardly Sodom, Newt.

I'm someone who thinks there are interesting intersections between anomic young men and modern philosophical thought that may lower the barriers to bad behavior, and provide a kind of ideological armature for the nihilistic acts of rage they choose to commit. But to blame the kind of acts the VT murders represent on any philosophical position - be it postmodernism, liberalism, or Rotary membership - is just stupid and foolish and skirts being disgusting. The killer was an insane young man who could and should have been identified and helped (or at least stopped) long before last week, and no philosophy, political position, or educational fad made him crazy and evil.

We have had evil people who have done horrible things since there have been people. Newt's a Christian, he ought to get that.

('The Devil In A White City' is the violence-porn bestseller about a charming mass murderer active in Chicago during the World Fair of 1893. I'd also suggest 'Everything Bad Is Good For You' as a followup.)

(h/t The Moderate Voice)