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Popular culture has made murder, rape, mayhem, hatred, and violence "cool"

Barbarians at the Gates of Sandy Hook



The recent massacre at an elementary school in Connecticut (the ironically named Sandy Hook - it's been a bad year for anything named Sandy) has, predictably, brought a chorus of calls for gun control and to double down on Progressive social reform schemes.
It appears no tragedy, no matter how horrendous, is to be allowed to "go to waste" as Rahm Emmanuel would say. And, given the hundreds of dead Mexican citizens as a direct result of one such anti-gun scheme (known as Fast and Furious) one wonders if Misters Obama and Holder are really that broken up by the carnage; it will do more to advance the cause of disarming the American People than any number of drug cartel murders using American government supplied weaponry. On KMOX radio here in St. Louis Mo. they were running analysis by CBS people, and Bob Schiffer made the statement (I paraphrase) "I've seen a lot of these sorts of tragedies over the years, but I now have a sense that we are no longer going to put up with it." Now, whatever could that mean? In his liberal world you can't stop this sort of thing except through law, and that of course means gun control.

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The idea of restoring standards of right and wrong never occur to anyone on the Left. Last night on television a reporter referred to the shooter's "damaged mind and broken soul" as if he were somehow a VICTIM! In the old days we would not call this anything but a heinous crime, a horrible mass murder of innocent children. Now we act as if it is the equivalent of Hurricane Sandy, something that happened by accident. Oh, not quite by accident; we know that guns were the cause. No guns and no crime! I'm tired of the therapeutic culture that spawns this sort of thing; cultural relativism makes it impossible to condemn the worst villains. In the old days everyone would be mad as hell - now we are sad and weepy. The change in the American character is astonishing. And still nobody will stand up and lay blame where it belongs - in a culture that has kicked God out of our collective sight, that eternally blames cultural institutions and our most cherished principles for acts of criminality rather than moral character flaws, that refuses to recognize Evil. There is the key to our whole cultural disintegration; we refuse to recognize Evil as a transcendent thing. Good and Evil presuppose a God and a Devil, and those concepts are soooo last century (or even prior). We are now too hip for these "children's stories" about a Creator and a rebellious angel. We aren't even really willing to recognize good and evil as things outside of ourselves. We have become such a narcissistic culture, a culture devoted to the Church of Materialism, that we cannot accept some sort of transcendent moral order or Natural Law, but continue to place all things into basic animal drives and mechanistic clockwork universe random principles. This was no act of lust, or even of hatred, but a monstrous act of Evil. Until we call it thus we will see more and worse.

Moral relativism: Sin of judgementalism

Back in the 1980's the moral relativism movement gained momentum, and the worst sin was the sin of judgementalism. This murder is the most recent fruit born of that diseased tree. Yes, we have a right, nay a duty, to judge. Evil cannot be ignored or dismissed lightly. That is precisely what we have done. You see it in the schools where children may no longer be corrected. There was a time when teachers actually spanked children; now a teacher is in peril if he verbally chastises a bad kid. God, of course, has long been gone from the schools. We tell children they are animals, and that it's o.k. to do whatever feels right because it's "natural". So we have 14 year old girls getting pregnant, 15 year old boys with venereal diseases and multiple children, we have gang warfare, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence. Revenge is a no-brainer to these youths, who have never been instructed in "vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord" and taught that an accounting will be made by the Great Judge later. No; you have to get vengeance now or the injustice will be eternal. Think about television programs; vengeance is always presented in not just a neutral light but as a societal good. Consider this new movie that has come out "Django Unchained". An ex-slave murders a bunch of white people to free his slave wife. Yes, slavery was a terrible moral evil, but so too is murder. When Django star Jamie Fox was talking about the film to a studio audience he said that basically I kill all the white people" at which the crowd burst into spontaneous applause. Is it any wonder that we are witnessing things like this mass murder with an America holding such opinions?

Popular culture has made murder, rape, mayhem, hatred, and violence "cool"

Popular culture has made murder, rape, mayhem, hatred, and violence "cool". Rebellion has become the noblest of acts. All this with the blessings of people like William Ayers, who has been very influential in modern education. We are creating monsters in our schools. If people are serious about stopping this sort of thing they will take a number of steps: 1. Homeschool. Take away the power of the radicals in the classrooms. Makes your kids safer, too. 2.Back Right to Work legislation for the public sector. Teacher's unions have helped cement much of this in place. As long as we have group think in the classrooms we will never see the end of this. 3.Engage in more frank discussion of race and culture. For far too long we have tiptoed around these issues, fearful of being branded a racist. If black thugs kidnap and rape a woman, ask if there is something in the black culture that fostered that. If an evil white kid murders a bunch of children at the school, ask the same question of the white community. What was it that spawned this behavior? What was this kid taught? We have to stop hiding from our respective national sins. 4.Stop reporting on these things so much. One of the biggest drivers in modern popular culture is the thirst for fame. It's the reason social networking media is so popular; it makes the individual feel as if they are somehow famous or important. It has become the Quest, the modern El Dorado, for our young people today. I suspect many of these killings are at least partly driven by the knowledge that for a time the perpetrator will have great notoriety, people will know their names. Much like Old West outlaws (and I suspect many of these punks see themselves that way) they will be remembered for the evil they have done. And why not? In a Godless, material world there is nothing more important than to be remembered. Who cares if the memory is bitter? At least you are going out with a blaze of glory. These people should generally remain nameless when they do their deeds, and the intimate details of their lives should be put aside for the most part. Oh, it's important that we know who they are and what they did and perhaps even why, but there should be an effort to keep them at arm's length. These sorts of things used to happen in the past, but were largely ignored or downplayed for this very reason. The 24/7 news cycle has made it so that the most heinous acts are now given wall-to-wall coverage, and the evil person who did them becomes notorious. That has to stop. 5.Call evil out. We have to stop being sorry and start being angry. This is not a time for national grief so much as a time for national anger. We should stop tolerating this sort of thing. Indeed, stop tolerating any bad behavior. If you see kids jumping ahead in line, say, call them out. If you see punks bothering their neighbors call them out. Say something to the idiot blaring his car stereo. Say something to the foul-mouthed teens. Tell the brats to pull up their pants; nobody wants to see their filthy underwear and pimply behind. We have to start saying something, stop ignoring it. The first way any society maintains order is through social pressure from individuals. We have insanely given that up. 6.Work to devolve power back to the parents, the local officials, and the communities. A society that is top-down will inevitably lead to alienation of the sort we have seen here. This young man was twenty years old, and his actions were neither spurious nor random. As an FBI profiler said on television last night, he undoubtedly felt powerless and sought to remedy that. Why does a twenty year old feel powerless? He could leave his mother's home at any time at his age. He feels powerless because he has lived in an over-bureaucratized society, one run ultimately from a far-away central location. He sees his life as at the mercy of others, and sees himself as having no real input or control. He has been coddled all his life, given free rein to indulge his senses but not to face the responsibilities that freedom necessitates. He was an eternal juvenile, a child who was not allowed to grow up. He lived in a world of the Progressives making, not in reality. The family is the fundamental building block of civilization, and from it all power originates. The Left has systematically destroyed the family for the purpose of empowering the State, and this has destroyed so many lives. Individuals - especially immature individuals - need to be taught how to live, how to think, how to believe. Man's animal passions must be placed in check and his rational faculties engaged. His moral compass must be set. Liberalism sought to destroy all the controls by destroying the family and community, centralizing power in meta institutions and granting the individual absolute moral autonomy without giving him the wisdom he needs to exercise it. . It is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen. 7.Restrict the sex in movies, television, on the internet. There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands. People have understood the close relationship between sex and violence through history; sex was an inducement to military service in ancient times (and modern, too) and it has traditionally been understood that a sexually robust individual will fight harder and more aggressively. We are engaging half this equation, overstimulating our youth while denying them a planned outlet. Even if they were to live promiscuously (a very bad thing for society) they still cannot find adequate outlets for their passions, which have grown to titanic volume. Fighting is the traditional outlet. Societies have always carefully planned ways to release this tension constructively - through physical labor, through hunting, through military service, sometimes even through intellectual pursuits. Now we have nothing, no place for this pent-up frustration to go. The only answer is to follow the other societal coping mechanism, which is to tone down the sexual stimulation, encourage chastity and modesty. Our society has conveniently thrown that away as well. We have to restore it. Parents, monitor what your children watch, what they look at on the internet. Make sure they dress modestly. 8.Control drugs. Do not think that puffing a joint is harmless. Several American states decriminalized Marijuana, and it is actually legal in Washington and Colorado. Is it a coincidence that this shooting just occurred? Probably, but not in the long haul. Drugs and crime and violence go together. Trayvon Martin, the youth shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain after he was assaulted , was likely high when he was shot - and George Zimmerman has claimed Martin assaulted him, something backed by medical testimony. Martin had trace amounts of marijuana in his system, it should be pointed out. Would Martin have done that had he been sober? And medical marijuana is a joke; there are far better substances that can be used. It is nothing but a way to backdoor legalization. 9.Support the creation of local organizations to act as "neighborhood watch" for schools. Had George Zimmerman been at the front door instead of some mechanical card reader those children would still be alive. Perhaps it's time we start asking for volunteers to protect our children. It will require security checks, but isn't that worth it? This dovetails with the union problem; the unions will fight this measure tooth-and-nail. 10.Go back to church. We need God more than ever, need prayer. It's time the Ten Commandments were taught again. It's time the Bible was taught. It's time people learned the examples of the heroes of our Judeo-Christian heritage - heroes like Moses, who gave up his life as an Egyptian noble to become a shepherd and eventually lead his birth mother's kin out of slavery, or David who spent years hiding from King Saul, and who, at one point, had Saul completely under his power (in the cave of Adullum) but would not smite the Lord's anointed, or of John the Baptizer, a man who spoke the truth until his head was cut off, or of any of the Apostles who died for their faith. Most of all they should learn of Jesus, who refused to turn from the Truth and allowed himself to be sacrificed in the most painful manner possible for other people's sins. This evil can be fought, but not by any methods likely to be proposed by Progressives or imposed by our government. At best it will entail a top-down approach that will impose greater restrictions on the individual, on the family, and on the community. The solutions will be more of what caused this in the first place. And doubtless the first proposed solution will be gun control. Now, with gun control this shooter would have had to modify his approach, but it would not have stopped him. Any fool can make thermite, for instance; it's quite easy and requires materials that can be obtained virtually anywhere. He could have made thermite grenades and blown whole classrooms to bits. He could have made poison gas; there are several types that can be made fairly easily. Not the most efficient but his purpose would have been served (in an enclosed classroom it would have killed all the children). He could jelly alcohol and build a make-shift flame thrower. He could make his own guns, including gunpowder. He could make any sort of explosive - including the simple Malatov cocktail. . There are innumerable ways any determined person could carry out such a massacre without a firearm. It may take an extra bit of work, but it can be done. And it could well be worse than just using a gun, which is limited to hitting people with little hunks of lead. Certainly the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan did not have superior knowledge, or raw materials; the IED has killed a great many experienced soldiers in both wars. Therein lies the problem; we are not even willing to fight when attacked. The war in Afghanistan was absolutely necessary, as America was attacked and three thousand of her citizens murdered, and yet the Democrats and Progressives speak of our involvement as some sort of act of imperialism. There appears to be nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth defending to the post-modern ennui-consumed generation. The best an individual can hope to achieve is to indulge one's desires and seek a bit of fame or notoriety. And Mr. Obama and his Administration refused to condemn threats and assaults by union people up in Michigan this last week, thus creating the impression that any sort of behavior, no matter how violent, is acceptable. For that matter, he has refused to condemn pretty much any violence where it helps the Left and Islam. And this includes a rising hate-crime levelagainst Christians both in the United States and abroad (like the Copts in Egypt). Recently some Muslims stoned Christians in Dearborn Michigan and the police did nothing. Obama remained silent. This sort of thing is not lost on these "troubled" youths and evildoers. They see a world that refuses to condemn violence, that approves of vengence and hatred, that shrugs off any and every sort of vile action. If the President won't condemn evil why worry? There will always be criminals and evil people, but their numbers can be reduced and their actions restricted. Societies have always been able to do it, but only when they are reasonably healthy. Our society is not. Rome was brought down by barbarians from outside the Empire - and by the corruption and weakness of the Roman people and system. We are busily creating our own barbarians out of our own corruption and weakness. We have met the enemy and he is us.


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Timothy Birdnow -- Bio and Archives

Timothy Birdnow is a conservative writer and blogger and lives in St. Louis Missouri. His work has appeared in many popular conservative publications including but not limited to The American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Intellectual Conservative and Orthodoxy Today. Tim is a featured contributor to American Daily Reviewand has appeared as a Guest Host on the Heading Right Radio Network. Tim’s website is tbirdnow.mee.nu.


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