Congratulations America. You have the culture you deserve: a culture that glorifies violence daily in movie theaters and television shows across the nation, a culture in which every want is seen as a right and those thus deprived feel victimized by all of humanity, a culture in which core values of responsibility, duty and honor are belittled at the expense of fame, money and instant gratification.
They are now becoming a weekly occurrence, these violent attacks by demented people.
Universities, grade schools, high schools, malls, city council chambers – all sites of horrific crimes in which cowards take out their frustrations on defenseless people who have done them no harm.
Congratulations America. You have the culture you deserve: a culture that glorifies violence daily in movie theaters and television/news shows across the nation, a culture in which every want is seen as a right and those thus deprived feel victimized by all of humanity, a culture in which any attempt to regulate firearms in a reasonable way is portrayed as a betrayal of the 2nd Amendment, a culture in which core values of responsibility, duty and honor are belittled at the expense of fame, money and instant gratification.
To put it another way, we are becoming what we buy. Every week, millions of Americans rush to the movies or to their television sets to watch shows or news broadcasts that are obsessed with conflict, violence, murder and mayhem. From horror movies to RAW wrestling we are a nation sick with violence. We purchase guns like they are candy and we celebrate violence by consuming it in all its shapes and forms.
But worst of all, we have lost any sense of honor. One might admire a gunslinger who has the courage to face down another man in a fair fight, but what can we make of these pathetic monsters who will inflict violence on innocent and defenseless men, women and children? How to explain a man who will fling his own, precious children over a bridge or kill in cold blood school children for no reason?
It simply will not do any longer to argue that these incidents are isolated, the acts of mentally deranged people who do not reflect the larger society. A great prophet once said that the fruit does not fall far from the tree. The violence we see daily is the fruit of the cultural tree of our nation.
I don’t know what to do about all the craziness, but I do know this. The first thing, to quote Howard Beale, is that we have to get mad. We have to stop treating these incidents as if they are part of the cost of modern life, and start treating them as the acts of cowardice and shame they are. We need less Freud and more Ten Commandments.
And a few other simple things might help – I emphasize might.
There should be an agreement by the networks that no photo of a killer or the scene of a crime will be shown more than once or twice on any given day. There is simply no excuse for giving these monsters the kind of fame they crave. Newspapers should agree that such photos will not appear on the front page or be reused. People have a right to know, but they don’t have a right to gawk.
We should seriously consider a swift justice process that puts mass or serial killers of any kind on a short road to certain execution. By all means, they must have a fair trial – but once convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, laws should be in place to accelerate swift and irrevocable punishment.
We should quit trying to explain such violence and start condemning it.
And we should start making the elimination of violent crime a national priority.
It is time to get serious about the epidemic of violence that is raging through our nation.
Read more articles by Phillip Lareau
And we should do away with the the moronic "no gun zones".. They obviously don't work or worse yet, work to the detriment of the innocent!!
Comment by J3 | February 18, 2008
He got but one thing right, a swift and sure EXECUTION for those that murder. Nevertheless he is an idiot about the "regulation" of firearms which is code for confiscation.
Comment by weeedley | February 18, 2008
weeedley,
Good eye.. I missed his reference to "reasonable regulation of firearms"..
Comment by J3 | February 18, 2008
Mr. Lareau,
The perp of the Illinois massacre allegedly had state authorization to purchase firearms and Illinois is a relatively restrictive state when it comes to concealed carry. I stand by my call for abolition of "gun free zones".
Comment by J3 | February 18, 2008
The article is correct in some ways and not so in others. This country has been under assault from within for many decades. For an idea of what I mean, read this article: The day socialism comes to America by Joseph Farah. That just barely scratches the surface of the phenomenon. Mostly by infiltrating the way our children are educated, socialists have all but taken over the USA. Each generation knows less history and has poorer analytical skills than the one that preceded it.
The current state of our culture is actually by design. Each successive generation is pulled a little (or, if possible, more than a little) farther from the ideals that once made this country great. This incremental approach has produced a society that has been reduced to its baser instincts (sex, violence, etc.) and that cannot even recognize that there is a problem, much less address it.
So I reject the idea that we chose this. We have been led astray. What I will agree to is that we were foolish to have let it happen, with nods to the old saying, "fool me once, shame one you, fool me twice, shame on me" . Although, the cleverness of the long view that socialists have taken means that really, no one gets fooled twice. The next trickery to take place is always on the next generation.
We are what we buy, perhaps, but the flip side of that coin is that there need to be better things to buy. Try buying modest clothing for your pre-teen daughter, or a non-violent video game for your son. They're out there, yes, but they are hard to find. How many G-rated movies are there? Not many. And so on. It's by design.
By the way, I submit that had there been just one armed student in the audience of that lecture room at NIU, fewer people would have died. The guns are not the problem.
Comment by GriffithLea | February 18, 2008
This is nothing but a rant of a fool. He has provided NO citations related to crime in America over history, but simply anecdotal examples of violence he found in the MSM, or CNN. There is no mention of VAWA or DARE which go after minor violence and promote the mistaken ideas presented in this article. How about some data?
Comment by Ivan Ivanovich | February 19, 2008
Ivan,
I tend to agree. This kind of violence has been going on a whole lot longer than Mr. Lareau realizes or the MSM portrays. Media violence does excite actual violence in some degree, but mainly it just adds a layer fantasy to these acts. Mostly these are people already inclined to violence. Some of the most sensational crimes committed by individuals or small groups happened before guns existed. In ancient times, such individuals became the stuff of glorified legend as often as dread. If it is true less sensational crimes have increased in modern times, it is because greater urbanization allows greater scope to predatory behaviors. Even so, the violent crime rate (per 100,000) in urban settings has not risen all that much over what it was before any modern entertainments could be blamed, and has been in decline since the mid-1990s (same period in which violent content has seen the most growth).
What has changed most is public perception of violence; broadcast by a thriving media, fanned by hysterics, and ‘validated’ by efficient recordkeeping. It is not so much the killers who are stimulated to violence as it is the public and victims are stimulated into crippling fear. In the past, both the name and memory of killers faded quickly and were little known outside the local communities they terrorized. For every Blackbeard there were dozens of nobodies quickly hanged without a trace. Today, we give these lesser miscreants every bit as much publicity as we would a Charles Manson, and keep permanent catalogs of their deeds so their crimes can never be fully expunged. Thus, the rising perception of violence is as much an effect of improved recordkeeping and preservation as it is density, proximity and mobility.
Do any of us really imagine we are more vulnerable today than we were in ancient times, when bandits casually slaughtered all they found? Guns in the hands of almost everyone helped equalize that disparity, cutting down the level of violence to the point commerce expanded greatly over what had been possible prior to effective, portable weapons. Where, before, the merchant had to stick to a few routes guarded by fortresses (paying tithes to each), never more than a day’s journey separating one from the next, he was free to take other routes with fewer sanctuaries because he had the equivalent of a portable fortress. More routes meant he could service more people in less time and open markets in places he’d never ventured into. Bandit behavior changed to compensate, but overall it is no mere coincidence the 16th century commercial explosion corresponds closely to portable gunnery.
A quick perusal of the most heinous killers reveals no special concentration today over pre-Hollywood. Jack-the-Ripper, Joseph Vacher, Peter Stumpp, Karl Denke, Andrew Kehoe, Lizzie Borden, Barbary and Caribbean pirates, John Brown, Matsuo Toi, a host of western outlaws, massacres from ancient Ur to Khmer Rouge, Attila, Al Capone, Leopold & Loeb, berserker Vikings, Zulu frenzies, and rioting Asians cannot be blamed on Hollywood, video games, or TV violence. Besides, the greatest violence has always been by states or despots in the absence of an armed citizenry. Compared to a Stalin or a Hitler, what is a Seung-Hui Cho?
Comment by Bob Stapler | February 25, 2008
Mr. Lareau laments the "violent culture we have created." Personally, I worry we have become so non-violent, so unassertive we are victims-in-waiting. No one should advocate violence for it's own sake, but a society that cannot or will not defend itself is just marking time.
Okay guys, who put the 'kick me' sign on my back?
Comment by Bob Stapler | February 25, 2008
Crazed killers prefer gun-free zones for their source of victims-in-waiting, 10 to 1.
Comment by GriffithLea | February 25, 2008
The "elimination of violent crime" will occur as soon as the elimination of violent people. Human nature not having changed all the much in the last 10,000 or so years that we have record for, it doesn't strike me as particularly likely that any amount of government coercion or spent money will undo original sin. This is nothing more than a typical leftist rant eschewing individual responsibility in favor of collective societal responsibility. Individuals are not responsible for their own violent actions - God forbid! - they are merely the victims of a perverted collective society. All we need is a little social engineering and the revocation of the right to own guns and everything will be just groovy!
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | February 26, 2008
"We need less Freud and more Ten Commandments."
I disagree. What we really need is to simplify the law - make it clear-cut, get rid of the tax system (which is the institutionalized use of force by the government on its own citizens) and discover true Individual Rights, where no one has the right to initiate the use of force. Currently, the Few DO have the right to use force on the Many for the achievement of whatever end is currently deemed correct. Violence is such a part of the fabric of daily life in our so-called civilized society and many people accept it as a necessary evil. I reject that view. We do not need to command people to be good, but create a society in which everyone's rights are respected from the outset rather than abridged from the outset.
Comment by AMAI | March 15, 2008