In the Aftermath of School Shootings Why Are We Not Talking About "Culture Control"?

In the wake of Parkland, the question of guns is interesting.  But even more pressing is another: “why do we continue to tolerate a culture in which humans feel they can kill other humans?”  And: “why do we continue to tolerate a news media that reaps increased profits from sensationalized tragedy?"

American have always owned firearms, even semi-automatic or fully automatic firearms.   And school massacres have also always been with us, even before we became a nation.  

What is different today is the increase of American school shootings.  And our culture:  It’s different, too.

Our American culture today treats life and death indifferently, starting even before birth. If allowed to live, children are often unwanted, or poorly nurtured.  Sons and daughters far too often have no fathers or almost useless fathers.  We give lip service to eliminating sex slavery but continue to patronize the pornography that feeds it. A violent entertainment culture of video games and movies glorifies shooting and gore. And we murder with our tongues:  using words like racist, homophobe, white supremacist, bitch, queer, kike, and worse.  

Even if all firearms were magically removed, children would still be killed in their schools.  Islamic terrorists in Europe have recently killed more citizens with heavy trucks than have been killed in recent American school massacres.

And, the first recorded school deaths in America involved children being killed with melee weapons like knives and tomahawks. School children in some other countries are more commonly massacred today with melee weapons than firearms.  Explosives killed 38 children in the worst American school massacre ever.

The issue is a raw one for me today.  The beautiful, loving granddaughter of a friend was killed in this most recent massacre.  My heart is trebly broken, for my friend, for the families of the slain and for my country. 

Like all reasonable Americans, I want this to stop.   Making firearms more difficult to legally obtain for those who should never have them may help.  I could support this.  But, as I believe I have demonstrated, "doing something about firearms" might feel good, but won’t fix the problem.

Let’s become intolerant of the horrible parts of our culture that glorify hatred, indifference, slavery and death….and the parts of the culture that profit from these things.  That will feel good AND do good.

Only Love Will Drive Out Hate

Ulysses S. Grant -- Civil War General and U.S. President

In these days of intensifying tribalism in America, it's helpful to look back to earlier hard times in our nation.   I was struck recently by something moving in the recollections of President Ulysses S. Grant as he wrote of his experience as a Civil War general, the general who, along with Abraham Lincoln, saved the Union.

Grant was traveling on horseback in late June, 1862, on his way to Memphis.   Except for various outposts, this was Confederate territory, only lightly held by Union troops.

Watch what happens when men of honor meet; men who hold quite different perspectives (emphasis added):

I halted at La Grange. General Hurlbut was in command there at the time and had his headquarters tents pitched on the lawn of a very commodious country house. The proprietor was at home and, learning of my arrival, he invited General Hurlbut and me to dine with him. 

I accepted the invitation and spent a very pleasant afternoon with my host, who was a thorough Southern gentleman fully convinced of the justice of secession. 

After dinner, seated in the capacious porch, he entertained me with a recital of the services he was rendering the cause. He was too old to be in the ranks himself--he must have been quite seventy then--but his means enabled him to be useful in other ways. 

In ordinary times the homestead where he was now living produced the bread and meat to supply the slaves on his main plantation, in the low-lands of Mississippi. Now he raised food and forage on both places, and thought he would have that year a surplus sufficient to feed three hundred families of poor men who had gone into the war and left their families dependent upon the "patriotism" of those better off. 

The crops around me looked fine, and I had at the moment an idea that about the time they were ready to be gathered the "Yankee" troops would be in the neighborhood and harvest them for the benefit of those engaged in the suppression of the rebellion instead of its support. 

I felt, however, the greatest respect for the candor of my host and for his zeal in a cause he thoroughly believed in, though our views were as wide apart as it is possible to conceive.

Grant could have had the gentleman imprisoned.  Instead, they listened to one another with honor, and, no doubt, took their leave with courteous words.

Today, it feels as if we a nation degenerating into rival tribes based on perceived identities.  One pictures tribesmen with shields and spears shouting and brandishing their weapons in defiance at one another, each tribe nursing grievances toward the other.

Martin Luther King wrote this: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

If Dr King is right, and I believe he is, then it also seems right that "We will never with hate drive out the hate of those who hate from the left or from the right.  Only love will drive out hate."