This week, I wrote that our national character these days seems to demand that everyone assume that all tragedies belong to the entire country, and that we all have to participate in a mourning/healing cycle that imposes itself of the......

Also, when you said "It’s not all negative though", did you mean everyone's post, including mine, Lorelle's and Vivien's to be negative, or just the private blogger from Europe that you mentioned? I just wanted to make sure, since none of our posts were intended to be negative, but were instead aimed to promote certain ideas that talked either about the benefits of silence days or benefits of doing something other than being silent.

I personally will not participate, as you may already know, since I simply do not find any logic in being silent. I am not sure how being silent pays a tribute to the people who died. Are we willing to apply the same principle to 9/11 victims, by holding just a single day of "Silence" and then moving on? Why not apply the same principle that we apply to historical national heroes or 9/11 victims, to every innocent person that dies?

Sure, many people die and it is going to be hard to keep up, but if we want to remember a certain death, let us make sure we remember it in a useful way. Let us know focus on death only when we get hyper because of the news. Otherwise, people who start trends on a whim because of the news are least likely to be dependable or people who do something useful, as they might see something else on the news later on and them simply move on to other things that make them hyper or emotional for various reasons.

Thanks again for linking to different views Aaron. We need more posts like these where a person can read different views and make up their own mind.

Hunh? As Outside the Beltway reports, there's a group who thinks that we should all stop blogging for one day on April 30th in memoriam of those who died at Virginia Tech. Yes, 32 (33, depending upon how you wish...

The European commenter makes an interesting judgment but one based in stereotype and euro-hype. Most of these kids aren't rich, and not all of them were/are white.

That being said however, this focus on a large activist approach to memorializing one group over another is systemic of larger problems.

When 9/11 happened and 3000 families got the slice of a Red Cross pie no one in OKC received dime one. That's not to say national tragedy should be a defacto money grab, but you can't say one group suffered more than another and then compensate them only for their losses.

Exercising an ethical thought one would say they all suffered equally and logic tells me that we need to focus on and solve the causes of these horrid acts of bloodshed.

JMHO.

The students, while predominantly white Americans, also included blacks, Asians, Muslims, and Buddhists, so the Euro-commenter is wrong on the facts.

But I think it wrong on principle to demand that the world share one's pain on all occasions. Let those who are truly grieving grieve. Don't try to 'guilt' the rest of humanity into false manifestations.

Tammy Swofford

A moment of silence in a large group of people is very powerful. A day of no blogging is a day when I wonder why my browser isn't refreshing.

No, I won't be playing.

If it was Virginia bloggers, or maybe (at a stretch) North American bloggers, then maybe.