No sooner had the word of the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter in Newtown, Connecticut, broken than the search for “root causes” was well under way. Not unexpectedly, topping the list was the “root cause” par excellence, the alleged lack of “gun control.”
Unsurprisingly, none of the following “root causes” made the cut.
For nearly 40 years, abortion has been the law of our land. Forget for the moment whether the aborted is a “person,” “child,” or “fetus,” or whether or not it has a “right to life.” What no one can deny is that it is its mother’s posterity, her begotten. It is her child.
But in allowing mothers, of all people, to destroy their own children, can anyone doubt that we make mincemeat of the idea that children, being the most vulnerable among us, are to be protected at all costs?
Maybe it is exactly because the abortion culture had taken its toll upon mass murderer Adam Lanza’s psyche that he had no regard for innocent children.
The infrequency with which capital punishment is implemented may also explain Lanza’s murderous actions.
Far from undermining the sanctity of human life, there is no other institution that affirms it more resoundingly than that of the death penalty. Inasmuch as the latter expunges from the midst of the living those who would commit such unthinkable crimes as that of which Adam Lanza is guilty, capital punishment is the clearest expression of a people’s regard for the life and wellbeing of its members.
However, the death penalty is rarely exercised with any measure of regularity where it remains on the books, and in places such as Connecticut particularly, it is scarcely exercised at all. Since 1976, only one person had been executed in the state, and earlier this year, Connecticut repealed the ultimate punishment.
The sanctity of human life is thus eroded further. Lanza may have gotten the memo.
Lanza’s race and gender could have played a huge role in accounting for his rampage. Consider that Lanza was a young white man, that is, a member of just that group, and only that group, that is derided and mistreated as a matter of policy.
From “affirmative action” to massive Third World immigration, from media depictions of white men as either ignoramuses or crazed “racists” to the incessant barrage of giddy proclamations of an ever-diminishing white America, the assault on white men is comprehensive.
Is it impossible to believe that a young white man such as Lanza, who has been exposed to this systematic abuse his entire life, may not have been consumed with both self-hatred and rage? For that matter, may not this cultural animus toward whites have figured in Lanza’s choice to leave a trail (judging from news photos) of mostly white bodies?
Then there is the matter of Lanza’s ethnicity. “Lanza” is an Italian surname, and Italians and Italian-Americans are routinely portrayed as Mafioso and other violent thugs in the popular media.
Maybe Lanza incorporated this image into his own self-understanding. Maybe this is why he chose to go on a shooting spree.
Almost as unrelenting as their campaign against white men is that which the Politically Correct storm troopers have prosecuted against religion.
Traditional Christian theism has been mocked and ridiculed while atheism has been promoted as “cool” and “hip.” But, as hardened atheists from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre have noted, if there is no God then there is no objective morality: Man is free — condemned to be free, Sartre insisted — to create his own values. In fact, he has no option but to create his values, for there are no values otherwise.
Is it inconceivable to think that this message just may have crept into Lanza’s consciousness over the span of his life?
Now for the punch line: I don’t for a moment believe that any of the foregoing “root causes” are in the least relevant to Adam Lanza’s decision to gun down 20 little kids and six adults. Yet they have at least as much to do with it as does the lack of “gun control” on which scores of leftists rushed to hang this abomination.
Lanza was an evil man responsible for perpetrating an evil deed. As long as there are evil people in the world, evil will be with us.
Maybe it is to the “root causes” of why our generation fails to come to terms with this timeless fact to which we need to turn our attention.
