Editor:

I would love to challenge the individual statements embedded in Andrew Kirk’s inane column (“Fight the devil! Or not,” Oct. 9), but his glaring inability to actually structure an argument would make the exercise pointless. Instead, I am left with simply pointing out his painful-and unsuccessful-attempt to take his argument from A to B.

Kirk’s heartrending opener, “Should the Amish males have tried to fight the Pennsylvania shooter?” (would this be the man who shot the state of Pennsylvania, or rather a new moniker, like the Waco Kid?), is followed with what appears to be his argument: “I propose that we promote a society that shuns evil before fighting becomes necessary.”

I’d assume then that his answer to the first question would be no, although he never really makes this point (or any point, for that matter) clear. What he does manage to accomplish is a ridiculous string of non sequiturs: Orlando Bloom to Chairman Mao to the Book of Mormon, with a little Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. thrown in for good measure.

All of this blather culminates with his summation: “Our best means of preventing evils is through our government.” Sorry Kirk, you lost me. Somewhere along the path of bad cinema, biographies without citation and anecdotal religious references, you failed to demonstrate any connection between individual violence and the role of government. And given our current hawkish administration, to suggest that the “best means” of achieving this society that “shuns evil before fighting becomes necessary” is to rely on our government seems more than a bit na’ve.

Even your silly conclusion fails to give us any indication of what you might really mean-is our “duty” to vote? To support an issue? To bring troops home? To send troops to Amish communities? My suggestion to Kirk: Shun the non sequiturs. An argument whose points don’t logically follow one another ends up with a conclusion that doesn’t make sense. Just like the one you made.

Oh, and I’d also suggest you “shun” any impulse to ever quote Orlando Bloom. ??

Daniel Patterson?

Graduate student, English