On the O’Reilly Factor on Fox News last night, host Bill O’Reilly laid out the particulars on the murderer who killed 9 people at Umpqua Community College this week.
“There is an intense battle between good and evil on this earth right now,” says Bill, after listing some of the defining characteristics of this and so many other killers. A “mama’s boy.” He was a loner. He admired previous killers. He liked Nazi memorabilia. And of course, he despised organized religion.
Bill is right about the contributing factors and the similarities, and there are more. As the world, or at least the western world, becomes more secular, as we begin to “believe in nothing” as Bill says, it is not just that “anything goes.” It is that evil goes. Evil acts are on the rise around the world, and here at home in particular.
We are churning out science and math educated kids (sort of) who barely touch on the depths of history, philosophy, and literature that would inform a more complete world view. Our leaders are obsessed with competing in the world market but are forgetting that it is not just our children’s financial futures that are in jeopardy, but their very souls. Who they are as people.
There is a reason people who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. It’s because without the benefit of faith, without the lessons of those who came before, without the enrichment of the arts and a picture of the scope of humanity, human nature diminishes to it’s more base state. Children are taught that all their dreams can come true if they want it enough. Well some of them want it plenty bad, and when they don’t get it, as we all know many won’t, they can become so bitter and so vengeful that they turn into … monsters.
We don’t know what was in the Oregon shooter’s head. But as we all cast about wondering what we can do to stem the tide of school violence, maybe we should look somewhere besides violating constitutional rights and our basic freedoms with knee-jerk gun grabbing fascism. Maybe we should focus instead on what is actually creating these animals out of men.
When a toddler hits a kid in the head with a toy, you don’t come in and take away every single toy from every single child in the room. No, you try to teach the toddler not to hit.
We should be teaching kids not to hit. Not to hate. Stop taking away the toys and address the root problem.
Bill says there are commonalities between all these shooters and he is right. And one of the most glaring is where they live, work, and go to school. It’s right here in the U.S.A. We should do better.