The actions of Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood cannot be explained rationally or defended, in whole or part, by any decent person. He is a coward, and those who look for some mechanism by which to rationalize, compensate for, or create some shade of nuance in his actions disgrace themselves, although not as much as they disgrace the victims of the shooting.
Nidal Hasan the day of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood.
At some level, asking why a thing likes this happens is something no satisfactory answer exists for. Even so, it is our job as members of this society to try to find an answer for the question “why”? The stakes for answering that question are very high – and a free society that wishes to remain free cannot give into suggestions that there are limits on what can and cannot be questioned in such an inquiry. A society that lacks the courage to undertake a meaningful self-examination at such moments is one that hastens its demise with each question unasked out of fear, or each answer hedged to preserve a self-delusion.
American society, more than any I think, carries in its national DNA a basic set of values well-suited to answering the big and important questions, both good and bad. Paramount among such values is that our society elevates the individual as the most important political unit. We are in every sense a collection of individuals, and we are right to value the individual first and foremost. The bedrock of our nationhood is the notion that only by a preponderance of individual wills can we create the rules under which all individuals will live – and even then, no such preponderance can will to undermine the primacy of the individual. The offense taken here at the act of murder is as much a rejection of the notion that any individual has any possible right to make such decisions on the lives of others as it is a revulsion at the destruction of life itself.
Each of us makes choices as to what we will do with our own lives, and while we may not have the same choices to choose from, the freedom to choose among them for ourselves is inviolable. A free society rejects the notion that any other person’s life is of any greater or lesser value than our own, and none has the right to make the life choices of another. When one kills as Nidal Malik Hasan is reported to have done, they break this most basic contract among free people.
No good idea can be behind such actions. If we find that Nidal Malik Hasan’s actions were a representative extension of an idea, or of a value system that would sanction such things (or even attempt to rationalize them), then we are right to reject such ideas and purge them from a decent, free society. If this case calls for such actions, let’s waste no time in getting to them. As is our normal inclination, let’s start this process the place we customarily start such inquiries – with the individual.
All agree there was only one shooter present, and barring some later proof of severely diminished capacity, no honest person would seek to hedge in attributing guilt to the shooter. Until some form of collective guilt is established otherwise, then none should be attributed. The only way we can be 100% sure that collective guilt can fairly be established around answering these questions is if we, as a society, betray our own values concerning the primacy and responsibility of the individual above all in answering them.
Rudy Grahn Jr. is a former talk show host turned writer turned analyst who currently writes primarily on the personal on his weblog Rudayday.com. Rudy is also a digital photographer whose work has been featured on PBS, NBC, and web outlets like BoingBoing.com and The Morning News. His nickname “Rudayday” was conferred upon him by John Romano in the 20th Century. Rudy Grahn article archive.
