I felt a fair amount of sympathy for John Woods, a former Virginia Tech student who lost his girlfriend to Seung-Hui Cho's rampage in 2007, until I got to the final quote from his interview in yesterday's Houston Chronicle:

Everything happens too quickly...You either play dead or you are dead.

Granted, he's not much more than a kid. And lest we mistake him for a deep thinker, he made sure to show up for the interview wearing his "Virginia Tech Class of 2007" t-shirt and an "Obama '08" pin on his backpack.

But really - play dead? That's what he thinks people ought to do when facing a threat? Is that what free people should do when there's danger? Because when you beg for mercy, play dead or hide in response to a threat, it doesn't get rid of the threat. It just makes the threat permanent. Hiding from danger will never make the danger go away.

Bottom line: if someone in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech had been armed, Seung-Hui Cho would have been stopped or at least slowed down in his relentless killing spree. And God help us if we become the kind of society where hiding from evil is encouraged over fighting evil.