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21 January 2008
Throwing rocks at cars from freeway overpasses is not "stupid"
The madhouse that seems often to be the society in which we live has today been painfully demonstrated by the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, and 3AW's top rating talkback host, Neil Mitchell. Both described the action of throwing a rock at a car from a freeway overpass as "stupid". Such stupid action has killed a number of people in Australia's capital cities and seriously injured others - Rock throw victim speaks. Last night's rock throwing narrowly missed serious injury to two very young children.
One can only regard with dismay and incomprehension the labelling of such a vicious criminal act as "stupid", as if we are talking about the naughty behaviour of silly boys who need a good ticking-off. Neil Mitchell says a lot of worthy things and supports some admirable causes, but tragically he has a couple of blind spots. The problem of the feral male is one of them. He simply cannot get his head around its seriousness.
The brawls involving young males, often resulting in death, are for the most part not premeditated. They arise out of drunken conflict at parties, clubs, pubs and other such occasions. Of course, there are the spontaneous gratuitous bashings in city and suburban streets that also result in death. But these are spur of the moment. The problem is that once the physical assault starts there is no moral mechanism within the brawlers to limit their violence. The violence simply goes on until someone is bashed to a pulp. Serious permanent injury or death are the result.
Throwing rocks from a overpass at cars travelling at 100 kph must be premeditated action. The rock thrower must search for a rock and then with purpose enter the overpass and take aim at the car that has the misfortune to be travelling by at that moment. One of the shocking aspects of this action is that the rock thrower has nobody in particular in mind - just the injury or death of the innocent people below. Anyone travelling on freeways is at risk of this action.
A person who premeditates and carries out this action is rationally capable of discerning the quality of the action. There can be no excuse through age. This reasoned premeditated action makes overpass rock throwing the most serious of crimes against which serious measures should be taken - and I don't mean putting up barriers on all overpasses at the community's cost. Indeed, the measure of putting up physical barriers is the only way the political class who dominates our society can think of in these sorts of cases. Focusing on the level of the rational and moral skills of the rock thrower and how he came to be at that level seems beyond the ruling PC class's imagination.
A recent Herald Sun survey revealed that seventy percent of Victorians said their main concern was violence in our society.
VICTORIANS are fed up with the violence, drugs and alcohol abuse plaguing their state, an exclusive Herald Sun survey shows.
Asked to select three of eight issues of greatest concern to them, 70 per cent of more than 15,000 Herald Sun readers highlighted violence, and 64 per cent nominated drug and alcohol abuse.
Almost one in six readers said they had been a victim of crime in the past year.
And almost 70 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had witnessed drunken violence over the same year.
People should know that nothing substantial will be done about it as long as such crimes as rock throwing from a freeway overpass is classified merely as "stupid".
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