The death of humanity
By Tom Quiner
A man walks into an elementary school today. He carries a gun. He begins shooting until at least 26 people are dead, including 20 children, and himself.
The latest round of mass carnage took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.
At least 26 children and adults were massacred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT
This type of story is not necessarily front page news anymore, except that this time, so many children were victims.
I am sick.
Are mass public killings on the rise?
I pose the question in light of the latest murder spree today, and the the one that took place in Aurora, Colorado in July.
Frankly, I can’t keep up with them all. We’ve reached a point in the evolution of our culture that mass public killings seem commonplace.
The Aurora massacre gained particular notoriety because of the breathtaking breadth of the assault, coupled with its connection to the premier of an iconic film: “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.” This one will, too, because of the death of so many innocents.
So are mass public killings on the rise?
Yes.
Twenty-one took place from 1900 to 1965.
But from 1966 to 2009, we’ve experienced around 120.
[This data was compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota State Department of Corrections, and analyzed in his book, “Mass Murder in the United States: A History.”]
Why?
Why the explosion of mass public killings in modern times?
There could be some practical explanations, like we’ve got more people today than a century ago and a corresponding increase in the number of nutcases. But that doesn’t seem to square with the sudden explosion of these types of killings in recent decades.
Some blame it on the availability of guns. There may be something there, but guns have always been available. And there were fewer gun control laws on the books a hundred years than today.
There’s got to be more.
I suggest the culture has changed. We are observing the systematic corrosion of humanity in America. We live in an era characterized by the diminishment of man’s appreciation of the Other.
And when you devalue Others, you devalue yourself.
What has changed? For starters, the Ten Commandments were removed from schools and public spaces.
Our Judeo-Christian legal system can be traced by to the Commandments. They invoked a higher authority, God. They commanded us not to kill.
Why?
Because God said so. Kids looked at that commandment everyday at school until the courts demanded their removal in the fifties and early sixties.
What has changed? Human abortion became legal. We have aborted 53 million of our brothers and sisters. Human life became expendable if it is inconvenient.
What has changed? Marriage laws were changed based on feelings rather than function. No-fault divorce made it easy to extricate oneself from marriage vows if the going got tough, all at the expense of our children. (Yes, some marriages are irretrievably broken, and divorce is the answer, such as in abusive relationships. But no-fault increased divorce amongst salvageable marriages.)
What has changed? Ultra violence abounds in our entertainment. Young men are fed a steady diet of mass destruction in our movies and games. Mass killings in movies desensitize us to the pain other people feel through violence. I grew up as James Bond movies were coming of age where scores of villains were killed in every single movie. I turned out okay, didn’t I? Let’s face it, though, some folks aren’t wired quite right. Some are more likely to snap when fed a diet of carnage.
What has changed? Porn is everywhere. It’s a push of a button away from susceptible young men … and even middle aged men … and even older men … and even girls … and even their moms. Porn corrodes our soul. People are turned into objects to be used by others through the consumption of porn.
What has changed in my lifetime? God has been removed from the public square, and if we say something, the Left screams “separation of Church and State.”
What has changed in my lifetime? Abortion is the law of the land. If you protest, the Left screams about “women’s reproductive health.”
What has changed in my lifetime? The Hollywood Left churns out ultra violence for our kids. And if someone says something, the Left screams “freedom of speech.”
So what has changed? The American culture has been seduced by the Left and their corrosive devaluation of humanity.
We’ve seen the fruits of this “experiment.”
Time to turn the clock back and return to the American values that have served us so well before.
“Moral decay” was the first thing that jumped into my mind as well when I read the headlines.
I was with you up to the last 10%. I refuse to blame merely “The Left.” Our entire culture is saturated by death on both sides of the aisle, and heck, the aisle itself is a cesspool of filth.
We are long overdue from God’s wrath.
I stand by my contention that the political Left has successfully imposed a new value system in the public square. In a sense, it is the imposition of a new religion, secular humanism or moral relativism, whatever you want to call it. We are paying the price with each passing day.
Senseless violence has been around since the beginning of time. I read recently where the two guys who brutally killed those families in the 50’s (the basis for the book “In Cold Blood”) have been linked via DNA to an unsolved murder of a different family. It was noted at the time that one of the two men, Hickock, was raised in a very strict, religious home. I guess this somehow made it an even more heinous crime.
Most of Manson’s Family were very religious – which Manson used against them. He used the Bible and the Beatles’ White Album to convince them he was the Second Coming of Christ and to do horrendous crimes (Sharon Tate was 9 months pregnant when she was stabbed to death).
Except for the doctor gunned down in his church and maybe the other deaths linked to abortion clinics a few years back, I know of no recent events that have been about abortion.
We live in a world where it is easy to get world-wide notoriety via YouTube videos or unfortunately in this case gunning down innocents. This is not a case of The Left being the problem. I think we all share that and blaming the other side does nothing to fix the problem. We should be thankful for the mother who figured out what her son was up to before he could take innocent lives a few weeks back.
There is no easy answer and I understand that in times like these, we just want to make sense of it all. Sadly, these types of people don’t deal in logical thinking and what they do will never make sense to normal rational people.
I agree with you, Tom. Well written post and reply.
Just to show that both sides blame the other, many on the left are blaming those on the right with their close alignment to the NRA and its pro-gun stance.