As I remarked to TMEW as we went out for a quick bite to eat “This is not a problem with guns. This is a problem with morality and culture if everything we are hearing is true”.
And we have to remember – we don’t know all the details. We do know that Adam Lanza was a troubled young adult. We know that the guns were owned by his mom whom he shot at their home in the face. What evil must have been present in his heart, or conditioned by our culture, that he felt he could take out his anger, his evilness, perhaps a sense of having been wronged in some fashion, to have executed every innocent 4 & 5 year olds in her class? Complete innocents at the mercy of a deranged person – for who can kill mere children except for a deranged defective person?
- I hear journalists nowadays long for the days that “our shared” news was presented by the same kind of newscasters / newspapers. I grew up in that time. Shared values.
- I hear from historians of a time when our outlook as a society was more homogenous – we shared similar values. I grew up in that time. . Shared values.
- I heard from older family members that our social order was that of Civil Society – that social mores kept people “in line” without the need for external governance. Shared values.
- I heard and saw that self-restraint and self-sacrifice were of high social values – a more polite society was a given. Shared values.
- I heard and saw that the rules were the rules – present, reliable, knowable and enforced. Shared values.
- I heard that people that were a danger to us and to themselves used to be kept out of normal society – to protect us against them.
Times have changed. I blame the 60s. I blame my generation for deciding it knew better than all other generations combined….without their experience, knowledge, or wisdom. Such hubris
“Do what feels right” has turned out to be a disaster of a philosophy for society. “Love the one you’re with” piled on the sense that feelings overruled thought. Successful traditions were to be sacrificed for “in the moment”. The wise of society were mocked as merely being old and out of step with “progress”. Authority was to be ridiculed and ignored. The Sacred was just something to be pulled down. Institutions were seen as the oppressors. WE became the highest ideal – service to others was for chumps.
- The time we have now is that of Diversity as a highest social value.
- The time we have now is a time where what used to be good is now bad, and what used to be bad is tolerated and sometimes, praised (depending on who you are).
- The time we have now is one where the individual is not at fault but the rest of us are.
- The time we have now is one where the rules change seemingly at a Political Correctness whim
- The time we have now is a callous, low-brow, low-information, “Me goes first” and de-sensitized one by those that have shaped our culture behind the scenes: the Arts, the Media, Music, the Culture (and yes, video games).
The time we have now is such a loss – and those responsible are only stepping on the pedal harder. Unmooring society from traditional, successful underpinnings has consequences – welcome to the long awaited future brought to us by those looking to “perfect” us by severing those ties. We all have been Alinsky’d at the social, moral, and spiritual level. And we wonder why events such as this happen?
- So I wish for that time, again, when we had a social moral code that stated right and wrong that didn’t change from day to day instead of the political correctness that passes for a moral code.
- So I wish for that time, again, when we made decisions to name what was actually the matter with folks, instead of being accused others of being judgmental.
- So I wish for that time, again, when God mattered and folks had the faith that there would be a judgment for what we have done. That while not everyone believed in that shared moral / religious value, almost everyone knew of it as part of the social fabric that could guide society.
Beyond the above, words fail me. I cannot speak to the event because we don’t know all the details. But I am sure of one detail – that others that certainly do not know all the details will sally forth and bray that “this” must be done and “that” has to fixed – not out of superior knowledge but out of a self-serving sense of superiority.
I shall wait.
