Arm the children

In the worst such tragedy in America so far, two students reportedly massacred up to 25 of their high school classmates in Colorado yesterday with firearms and bombs.Amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the cry goes up to Heaven “Why?”

The real mystery here is not why those twisted kids did this, but how come the problem isn’t far more widespread. I can only attribute it to an extraordinary commitment to Good ingrained in human nature.

I guess most people just can’t see the obvious. Despite the incessant statements from all corners about how much Americans treasure their children, there is considerable evidence that, collectively, the American public hates their children. It’s a miracle that more kids don’t “snap” – in a violent personal decision to blindly lash out. Kick a dog often enough, and he’ll bite everything.

Look at what we do to kids.

We imprison them with mandatory school-attendance laws. Are they free to leave? No. It’s a prison. Have the guts to call a spade a spade.

From the earliest age, the public school system does everything it can, up to and including forced drugging with Ritalin and other mind-altering substances, to stamp out healthy egos. Individualism is not tolerated. Square pegs get hammered into round holes – or splintered in the process.

A child’s normal curiousity and love of learning is not nurtured in our public school system’s psychic meat grinder. Children enjoy learning initially, but years of bureaucratic mind control eventually make education something to be endured, rather than enjoyed. Learning is reduced from an awesome, endless quest for further understanding to mere memorization of only the approved propaganda. Putting facts in a coherent framework invites further thinking – and thinking is subversive.

Worst of all, children are not taught a rational system of ethics. Why? Because that would be a threat to established authority – which can not allow itself to be objectively judged by a free-thinking populace. Instead, we offer them a false choice between the culture of the left which says that murder and other crimes are wrong because the government says so, and the culture of the right which says that murder and other crimes are wrong because God says so.

Our kids are going nuts because the American public won’t get off it’s collective butt to stop the government school system’s rape of children’s minds.

What can be done?

Education reform in the way of “Seperation of School and State” is a good start. Are there additional ways to combat this problem?

The killers were able to take their time. For over a half hour they calmly and systematically slaughtered their classmates, who were hiding under desks and so forth. They died cowering in fear. Parents who love their children would not doom their kids to such a fate by sending them (defenseless!) into factories almost designed to manufacture violent psychos – our government schools.

What may be the most immediate concern is that they were, again, defenseless. Small kids aren’t able to understand death. But teenagers are a different story. After all, we try teenaged murderers as adults. If the evil ones are deemed capable of bearing responsibility, so should the good ones. So give the good, older kids the means to defend themselves – firearms and the legal right to carry them. You might see a few less ending up on milk cartons, too.

Copyright 1999 - Brad Spangler