We don't need either / or - we need both. Why in the hell are assault weapons legal? Whether or not one was used in Newtown, we can start there. The issue of mental illness is a huge one and this woman doesn't know the solution, but she sure paints a powerful picture of the problem. I'll focus here mostly on the culture because, well, I'm a Republican. And because we've had mentally ill people since time began, but they didn't shoot classrooms filled with children. We can gather all the weapons in America, throw them into the ocean and we're still going to have an increasingly decadent, degrading culture impacting our children every minute of every day.
Years ago, before there were blogs, when the only way to communicate ideas to the world was via articles, I wrote one about our nation's dwindling focus on sustaining a culture that is mentally and spiritually healthy for our children. "It seems," I wrote, "That we care more about the environment of the spotted owl than we do that of our children." Several years before the former first lady's book, the title of the article was "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child." And I wasn't talking about a lack of accountability for parents (which was the critique conservatives had of Hilary's book), but an increased accountability for all.
There was a time, for instance, when all the TV networks agreed to have family hours before 9:00 each night where only family-friendly content could be aired. Now at any hour of the day the air waves are filled with content that is violent, provocative, debasing. The violence is nothing like the violence of my childhood. It involves not just blood and killing, but degradation - dehuminization of the victims. Each day through television, video games and the internet, kids are exposed to more sex and violence than I was exposed to in my first (good Lord I keep writing decades here and they're too low) 40 (!) years.
I don't believe that the best parents today can protect their children from experiences that will at best cause them to lose their innocence and at worst invade their soul with a view of other humans as expendable, worthless objects of pleasure with targets on their foreheads. THEY NEED HELP! The raising of good citizens is the most important activity occurring in our nation and we're making their job more difficult with every passing year.
For instance, how about instead of making hard working families pay to protect their children from crap on the internet, we charge those who want to see it? And then find increasingly ironclad ways to secure internet browsing for children. Sure, the kids can find a way around it, but since when is that a reason not to take precautions? Do we leave our doors wide open to our homes because thieves are going to get in no matter how many precautions we take? No, we put up barriers because they deter, slow down, increase the possibility that someone will show up to stop it.
What are all the ways that parents use to raise virtuous, loving citizens? Is it, for instance, sending them to private or home-based schools? Determine those and protect the hell out of them.
Instead of giving in to the increasingly hateful and aggressive secularists and marginalizing people of faith we need to remember that despite all its flaws, a Christian-infused Western Civilization managed to support the raising of some pretty decent societies and individuals over the centuries while Godless, secular civilizations have already been tried and found devastatingly wanting.
Don't we all have some accountability for the environment we've allowed to devolve over the years that Adam Lanza was raised in? Don't we all have a responsibility to demand that it be de-toxified so that instead of chipping away at childen's souls it nurtures and cares for them like the precious future citizens they are? What else can we do? Think. You'll know it's right if we're taking care of the children.
