Newtown, CT: Slaughter of Innocents, and the Culture of Death

By Douglas V. Gibbs

A gunman in Newtown, Connecticut shot his mother, then went to a school where it is believed she was once a teacher, and killed twenty young children, and six adults.  My God, the evil that exists in this world is staggering.  My prayers go out to those parents who will be closing the doors of their children's bedrooms forever, putting away the car seats that the child will never sit in again, and grieve for the loss of their child - a horrible process most of us will never understand, or have to go through.

Innocent children slaughtered by a madman.  Reports of his mental health does not get him off the hook.

Now, the killer will be remembered as a mass murderer who committed a massacre in a school where the bodies of innocent children lay lifeless by his hand.

While everyone looks for reasons, the reason is clear: Evil exists in this world.

I mourn the death of those children.

This website, however, is a political website, and we must look at the political implications of this criminal act of insane evil.  Immediately after this horrific event, reports of "gun control" began to rise from the liberal publications, and their calls for banning inanimate objects that can't kill without a killer behind the trigger, must be addressed.

Guns don't kill people. They are inanimate objects. The fault does not lie in the presence of guns in our society, but the presence of individuals that are willing to use these otherwise valuable tools as an instrument of evil.

Adam Lanza, the shooter, is being called many things, but the evidence shows he was intelligent, perhaps a little nerdy, and maybe even autistic.  The word "evil" is not being used.  And perhaps he himself was not an evil character before he became so dead inside that he could stand in classrooms of first-graders and gun the innocent children down, but evil is definitely a word that comes to mind when you think about the act of a young man shooting innocent children without remorse like they are nothing more than video game villains.

There is no way to keep people one hundred percent safe all of the time.  People like Adam Lanza will always find a way to act out their violent aims.  And perhaps the young man has events in his past that may have pushed him in the direction of becoming a heartless killer.  I believe the "cause," if you wish to acknowledge one, was not guns, whether or not the new procedure to protect the school was adequate, or even some mental illness.  The blame sits squarely on the shooter.

Our culture must also be examined.  Are we truly surprised that this kind of thing is happening when we, as a society, has desensitized ourselves so much regarding death with things like abortion, euthanasia, or even the realness of shooting games?

As I discuss culture, do not misunderstand me.  I am not giving Adam Lanza an excuse. He pulled the trigger, he committed the murders, and he is at fault.  He was the one that made the decision to massacre more than a couple dozen people, most of which were children.  However, our culture has acted as an enabler, in a sort of way.

Also understand that when I mention the desensitization of our society, and I mention things like the violence of our video games, I am not suggesting banning such games, nor am I placing blame squarely on them.  I, myself, on occasion, play "shooting" games. They are entertaining. But, there is no denying the impact the continuous playing of these games may have on the mind of an unstable individual.  There is no denying the influence the games have on culture, and our attitudes towards violence, and death.

Pope John Paul II said, “We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life.’”

The culture of death exists in our culture.  Sometimes its appearance may not seem to be so obvious, but in a progressive culture, the culture of death does indeed exist.  We see the desensitization of our culture through pornography (degradation of sexuality and decency), substance abuse, broken families, child abuse, child abduction, abortion, euthanasia, the depiction of violence in the entertainment industry, and the violence in the video game industry.

The drop of society into the abyss of violence can also be traced to the removal of prayer from society, our denial of God, and ultimately our move from being a moral society to a relativistic and pluralistic culture.

In some cases, contributing factors can also be linked to economics, a judicial system that acts against individual rights, and a political system entrenched in its perceived utilitarian role in civilization.  Thanks to the rapidly more statist nature of government, and the hard left values taught in our educational system including a dictatorship of political correctness where no word can be uttered in protest, we have come to the point of rationalizing activities which stomp all over the dignity of life.

Interestingly, as we watch the response to the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, we are also seeing people naturally turn to prayer.  As emotional, and spiritual, beings, we naturally turn to God.

Though we recognize the evil of Lanza's terrible actions, we want to find meaning, a reason why this happened.  We want to say that he needs help, that somehow a mental illness is to blame, because we can't fathom that such evil could truly exist.

The culture of death is not totally to blame. The person pulled the trigger. But our culture, and the evil behind Lanza's murderous rampage, ultimately comes down to a single factor: Rebellion against God.

What did we expect to happen as a society when we turned our back on The Creator, and instead embraced the rule of man, and the flawed trappings of our flesh?  Where did we expect culture to go when we began murdering our babies in the womb, and began calling for the assisted suicide of the elderly or terminally ill?  What did we expect the attitude to be towards death when we celebrate death, and call killing innocent unborn children a right?

Morality has been betrayed.  Now, society claims that morals are the matter of the individual, celebrating relativism and pluralism, rather than the standards that have served humanity for thousands of years.  This assault on morality becomes a justification for the killing of the weaker members of society, an excuse to extinguish the flames of those that society deems necessary to discard.  Human life has been cheapened, and in the name of tolerance, we have created a culture of death.

The Declaration of Independence calls "life" to be among the unalienable rights granted by The Creator, and it was their own precious gift of life that the founders were willing to pledge to achieve freedom not only for themselves, but for their posterity.  The protection of life, and the protection of the freedoms that go with those lives, was a moral truth.  In today's culture, however, some lives have been excluded from protection, and are now targeted for death.  The unborn, the sick, and the elderly, are now excluded from the protection of our perception of a fair and just culture.

In our relativistic, and pluralistic, society, the demands of the "self" has become more important than the lives of others.  Self-interest, and the drive to "live for today," has become the rallying cry.

The Founding Fathers fought for the lives of their friends, family, countrymen, and those yet to be born.  To them, even the lives of those not yet walking the Earth were important enough to fight tyranny for.

The passage of time has led us to a society where the collective whole has become more important than the individual.  The progress of the society now outranks the sanctity of life, somehow.  We seem to have this Machiavellian view that the journey to humanity's evolutionary greatness must have a path cleared at any expense, even if it requires the suspension of moral norms.  The advance of the collective community even supersedes life itself.  Life, love, and happiness have become as throwaway as disposable diapers.

As the culture of death seeks to impose its will on our society, it is moral standards, and our willingness to cling to God, that is our defense.  It is the Sword of Truth that is our only offensive weapon against the onslaught of evil.  "Right" has ceased to be right, and "wrong" no longer seems to be clearly distinguished.  Until our principles return to Godly principles, our culture will continue to effectively move towards violence, hate, death, and ultimately the totalitarianism of evil.

That, in the end, is what tyranny does; it discards those that it deems not beneficial to The State, and disposes of the lives of the weakest and most defenseless members - from the unborn, to the elderly.  The U.S. Constitution was created to protect us from the murderous attributes of collectivism, statism, and tyranny - to prevent us from becoming a Culture of Death.

Godly principles, and individual freedom, protects the dignity of every member of society.  Collectivism betrays it, and seeks to destroy it.  Death is a bi-product.  The culture of death, and turning our back on the sanctity of life, is the natural conclusion of our rebellion against The Creator.

With Freedom comes responsibility, and when we refuse to live up to our responsibilities, there will be cultural consequences.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary