Like most, I am deeply saddened by the senseless killings in Connecticut on December 14. Children are truly precious and should never be subjected to this evil. I was further saddened that by that very evening I was reading reports of some claiming that new gun laws need to be enacted and others saying that new mental health laws must be created to stop this sort of violence.
I sincerely believe that what we have witnessed is neither a gun control nor a mental health issue- these are manifestations of a much deeper problem within our society. Connecticut already has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country; in fact the current laws kept the young man from buying a rifle just one week prior to the killings. And we have seen time and again how mental health professionals have been worried about a potential threat but kept quiet in fear of over-stepping or offending someone. No, the real issue at hand is much deeper and I believe wholeheartedly that it is due to the fact that, as a society, we have allowed ourselves to lose our moral compass. No, that’s wrong… We haven’t lost our moral compass- we threw it away in the name of political correctness.
We raise our children at the altar of Dr. Spock, providing instant gratification, practically no rules and very little reprimand. The result of all this is that we now have the so-called ‘Participation Trophy Generation’ (and here) of kids who think they deserve and are entitled to the good life without having to earn anything. His Socialist views have provided us with a country full of children and parents who are ready and willing to sue a school system or a teacher that dares fail a child for being lazy. And we wonder what’s wrong.
We used to have at least a moral basis in our country. But we have decided that there is no place in our society for morality. At best we subscribe to moral relativism, a belief that there really is no such thing as right or wrong but that it is solely up to an individual to decide and no one else has any say in about it. Very often we see that as an example of us at our best. At worst we subscribe to the views of Aleister Crowley (aka, the wickedest man in the world) who famously claimed that the whole of the law was “Do what thou wilt.” Just yesterday I heard someone on the radio quote that from Crowely and then give their enthusiastic agreement. As a society, we have forgotten the simple truth found in the words of our second President and founding father, John Adams, as he once said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
As we descend deeper into our moral abyss, I find it strange and sad that we refuse to even consider the root cause of our problems. I believe there is a direct correlation between the decline of American greatness (both at home and abroad) with the decline of our morality. What’s the solution? There isn’t one as long as we refuse to see the problem.
