Unethical leaders find violence useful

By J. Dyer

Our attraction to violence may be out of balance. A multiple killing happens somewhere, and it is news for days all over the country.

Active shootings aren’t something new, but the incessant publicity that follows them today is relatively new. This unhelpful publicity does not make us safer, it gives the murderers nationwide recognition, and it gives other unstable individuals ideas that never may have occurred to them.

Unethical leaders manipulate this publicity in an effort to advance their gun control agenda. If they can deceive us into blaming a gun for a criminal’s behavior, they can demonize the tool and divert attention from their failed beliefs about human nature, crime, and punishment.

When a gun is the problem, personal responsibility is minimized. If it is a gun’s fault, then it’s not our fault.

But it is our fault to some degree. Societies do not crumble on accident; people’s beliefs and actions make them crumble. We have been tolerating the training, the excuses, and the values that make violent situations more probable. We also provide the market for the media circus that plays and replays all the sordid details resulting from violent incidents.

As for the training we tolerate, consider life often depicted in our entertainment media. Courteous, considerate, faithful, modest men with a regular job are, at best, uninteresting. Courteous, considerate, faithful, modest stay-at-home-moms are practically nonexistent. The “heroes” are usually arrogant smart-mouths whose attitudes and work ethic would prevent them from being successful at a real job or in a real home, and their “ends justify the means” humanist philosophy excuses all their irresponsible behaviors.

Our culture has been saturated with this type of life drama for as long as most of us can remember. These depicted lifestyles result in misery, depression, and instability in real life. For the most vulnerable people among us, these destructive lifestyles portrayed as acceptable — even desirable — can have distressing consequences.

Organizations would not spend millions of dollars on a 30-second advertisement if media did not have a huge influence on our lives. Consider the impact of “selling” dysfunctional lifestyles — over and over again — in the 30-minute to two-hour “advertisements” put out by our entertainment media. (For information exploring the connection between violence and media, read “On Killing,” by Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, or go to www.killology.com.)

As for poor values and excuses, consider how for decades we have allowed our kids to be exposed to ideas that encourage them to believe that their self-esteem is more important than achievement, that they are nothing more than highly evolved animals, and that there are no absolute standards for determining what is right or wrong.

Armed with these “values,” many individuals do not do well in difficult circumstances. When the least stable of this bunch gets angry or depressed because of a perceived lack of worth in their lives, they sometimes commit terrible crimes to “get even” or to make things “right” for themselves. Some people call these crimes acts of “senseless violence.” There is no such thing as senseless violence. The question is, “What ideas facilitated the perpetrator to use violence inappropriately?”

Our ideas have consequences. When the Judeo-Christian ideology dominated our culture, we tended to develop a self-governing, self-reliant, introspective people. To our detriment, we’ve allowed these ideological traditions to be kicked out of our public schools and other public institutions.

Hostility to our traditional values is so great that Christmas is not officially called Christmas anymore; it is called “winter holiday.” Easter is not Easter or resurrection day anymore; it is called “spring break.” We now admire non-Christian cultures that committed all sorts of atrocities to appease their pagan gods, but we dare not give honor to the God who inspired the founders of this generous country because we might offend somebody.

We are boldly admonished by so-called progressives that we can’t force our morality on others, yet they have no problem forcing their immorality on us. It is more than a little coincidental that the magnitude of violence and the sensationalizing of violence have been on the rise as we have adopted the progressives’ confusion about the definition of right and wrong behavior.

Government cannot solve our violence problem — it can only react to it. The solution comes out of the family. Stable mom and dad families have proven to be the best training environment for making stable kids. Stable mom and dad families are on the decline because they require a lot of time and commitment to others. To tout the virtues of mom and dad families is not politically correct, so we’re told to tolerate ideas and policies that facilitate the decline of mom and dad families. This selfish, self-destructive assault on the family must end.

If we want to address violence effectively, we need to start focusing on the sources of the problem, not on tools or symptoms. Our unethical leaders know this, but they have found violence useful. They prefer to divert attention to controlling guns and to making more laws that limit the freedoms of law abiding citizens. Our unethical leaders don’t trust us, and they are determined to disarm us by ruse.

When the causes of violent behavior are blurred by deception and emotion, our chances of reducing violent behavior are hampered. We do not have a gun problem. We have an immature, selfish, confused, pampered, ignorant, spoiled people problem. We need a change of heart and mind. We must re-embrace and defend the Judeo-Christian values upon which this country was founded. If we do not do this, we will continue our “evolution” into a morally and economically bankrupt nation.

J.Dyer is a Ramona resident.