Once again, the nation has witnessed a horrible, pointless act of violence, with innocent children the victims.
And, once again, we hear from liberals that the answer is gun control.
If we look at what generally characterizes the mindset of those — generally young men — who commit these acts, we see what generally characterizes the mindset that has taken hold of our whole culture.
Victimhood, blame and denial of personal responsibility.
Can this be an accident?
Kudos to The Wall Street Journal for having the courage to point to these incidents as signs of a “social and spiritual” problem in the country. “The rise of family dysfunction and the decline of mediating institutions such as churches and social clubs have consequences.”
The signs of a society that is sick are all around us: the collapse of family, the collapse of interest in marriage and having children.
In 2021, 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, an all-time high and a 15% increase over the previous year.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the suicide rate in the U.S. increased 35.2% from 1999 to 2018.
Suicide was the second leading cause of death among young people, ages 10-34, and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals ages 34-44.
A characteristic common to suicides and mass killings is that the perpetrators are disproportionately men.
Men — generally young men — commit indiscriminate mass murder, and men take their own lives at a rate almost four times higher than women.
So, men demonstrate in a most unpleasant way another truth that our liberal friends want to deny. Men are different from women — not just in physical makeup but also in spiritual, psychological makeup.
For whatever reason, our increasingly Godless, materialistic, morally empty culture seems to take a particularly heavy toll on men.
American Enterprise Institute scholar Nick Eberstadt has looked into the recent phenomenon of prime-age men — ages 25-54 — who have bailed out of the labor market. These are men who have stopped working and seeking work. The official label is NILF — not in the labor force.
According to Eberstadt, the total number of NILF men held steady in the 1940s and 1950s at around 1 million. Then in the late 1960s it exploded. There are now 7 million prime-age men who have withdrawn from the workforce.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the labor force participation rate of men — the percent of working age men in the work force — was 86.2% in January 1950. In April 2022, it was 68%.
The labor force participation rate for women has almost doubled over the same period — 33.4% in January of 1950 to 56.7% in April 2022.
We’ve gone from a culture centered on church to a culture centered on government.
According to Gallup, in 1950 over 70% of Americans belonged to a church. In 2020, it was 47%. Among those born between 1981 and 1996, it’s 36%.
Over the same period, take of all levels of government from our GDP went from 22.6% to 43.4%.
Sanctity of life was devalued with Roe v. Wade. Military conscription was abolished around the same time, erasing any personal responsibility, beyond paying taxes, that men have to serve.
In this vacuous culture of entitlement and meaninglessness, lost young men periodically make their presence known through violent expressions, sometimes directed at others, sometimes toward themselves.
I do not pretend that this is simple. I certainly agree that security measures should be taken, particularly in schools.
George Washington warned the nation in his farewell address that there is no freedom without faith, tradition and personal responsibility.
The same liberals that have helped wipe this out now want more government in the way of new gun laws to solve what is a cultural and spiritual crisis.
Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.” To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
I used to be in a church. But most churches have gone the way of corporations. Now most religions are as woke as necessary to bring in the big money. Even the pope and the catholics have become secular. Why not? When everything is relative there are no morals. What does that mean? Now that we are trampling on the corpse of religion we can look to the democrats to tell us how to live. We already know their answer, though… They want us to “Do as you are told” without question.
Look who’s talking about trampling on the corpse of religion
EX_CB_HD: This is true most churches and religions have become corporations, it is all about the worship of money.
Luke 16:13 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Luke 16:13
The treasonous, unethical, immoral, socialist Democrat Party considers itself god and teaches victimhood, blame, denial of personal responsibility and always blame someone or something else for your own dishonorable actions. None of these mass shooters were Christians and follow Jesus Christ. In schools one can kneel to the BLM, but one will get fired or expelled if they kneel to thank God.
To fully advance the Lying, Treasonous, Demonic, Socialist Democrat Party’s destructive beliefs and agendas: is to divide our citizens with hate and promote – racism, open borders, radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, the LGBTQ lifestyle, unfettered sexual identity, transgender, same sex marriage, child indoctrination into sexual confusion and perversions, the pagan Liberal left Democrats must do away with GOD, our Constitution, common sense, morality, Christian values and free religious exercise altogether.
Under the Disguise of “anti-discrimination.”
George Washington warned the nation in his farewell address that there is no freedom without faith, tradition and personal responsibility.
I’m old enough I can remember from Grades One through Six, saying the pledge at the beginning of each school day and the Lord’s Prayer. Our teachers read from the Bible, a chapter to us every day. There was no social engineering, no indoctrination, and no woke crud. We had no school shooting. And this was a time you could go through the High School parking lot and every truck you passed had a gun rack and some type of log gun in every rear window. The epidemic of mass shootings seem to have begun with the Socialist Indoctrination, Anti-Constitutional/Anti-American Agenda ramp up of the left and general attack on all the traditions and all things patriotic of this nation. A third party is political suicide in elections, so we need to pull the Republican Party back to the right, divest the party of RINOs and Democrat Moles and get back to the basic patriotism and philosophies that made this nation great.
Must be all that Male privilege, we’ve had bashed into our brains for years..
Remember when the life of a party was that one sweet. comical, easy going “male/female” who made everyone feel at ease and happy. Now the lie (sic) of a party is one whose rules/way of thinking must be followed without question great democracy at work.
More gun laws just means more laws for criminals to break and not care about plus more criminals to be let loose on the streets by dummycrat politicians.