I understand that the process of burying the victims begins today. It's a necessary ritual, but it is sure to fan the flames awhile longer.
It is important for everyone to understand that, in the aftermath of such an event, we all want to feel safer, but individual definitions of safer tend to vary widely. Emotions dominate the discussion. That is precisely the time when cooler heads need to prevail.
I'm going to say something now that is sure to be ridiculed and misunderstood, but I'm going to say it, anyway.
We need to have a rational and logical discussion about this.
Both extremes on the political spectrum go into kneejerk mode when something like this happens, and that gets in the way of having a meaningful conversation. The extremes actually represent a fairly small portion of the population, but their arguments are so shrill and their insistence upon being heard is so dedicated that they drown out everything else. Talk about sucking the oxygen out of the room.
I don't really have to describe their by–now quite predictable arguments, do I?
Deep down, I often suspect that both sides secretly love it when children account for most of the victims of a tragedy like this because it magnifies both causes. Both would deny that, but it is surely true. Dead children give the extreme left a chance to trot out its favorite position — America must outlaw military–grade weapons in civilian hands (psst: That's already been done).
And they give the right a chance to argue that everyone should be armed because a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. Like many things, that looks good on paper but not so much in practice.
Both extremes are uncompromising, and that is simply undemocratic, but it is the inevitable outcome of our tribalistic, polarized culture. It is a clear indication of just how polarized we are that each side blames the other for this. The right blames Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. The left blames Ronald Reagan or the Bushes. The truth is that no one is blameless. This problem predates all of those presidencies. The buck has been passed for many decades.
This nation has faced many problems in the past, and it was through compromise that we found solutions. But sometime — and I am not sure when — it was apparently decided that compromise equals weakness. That is undemocratic.
No one is willing to compromise anymore. No one is willing to listen to the other side — or even to acknowledge that the other side might have a legitimate point or two to make.
We need to pull back from the extremes now and have this conversation from a more centrally located perspective. If we can do that, we will have taken the first crucial step to finding an answer instead of making the situation worse.
Today is George Washington's real birthday — not the manufactured Presidents Day that serves as the commemoration for Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom were born in February but neither of whom was born on Presidents Day.
When I was a little boy in elementary school, the practice was to recognize each president on his birthday. My teachers would decorate one bulletin board with images of Washington and another with images of Lincoln, and they would talk about each president on the appropriate day.
Then, at some point, it was decided that it was better to honor both presidents with a single day.
I don't know how or why it was decided that would be better — or for whom. Maybe Lincoln's actual birthday distracted too much from Valentine's Day two days later. More likely, it interfered with Valentine's Day sales.
Whatever the reason for it, that is how things were done when I was a little boy. And then that is what changed.
A lot of other things have changed over the years. Whether they are connected is not necessarily for me to say but rather for others to decide for themselves.
But it seems to me that the clear theme is a greater disregard for history than at any other time in my life.
That is certainly saying something. After all, history was never a popular subject when I was in school.
I'm not really sure how I developed my interest in history, actually. Seems I've always had it, and it distresses me to see the lack of respect for the lessons of history.
After all, as George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And we humans seem determined never to learn from the past.
The ongoing debate over guns is a good example of that. Proponents of what is popularly known as gun control like to speak about it in terms of need — i.e., a hunter doesn't need a certain number of bullets to kill a duck or a deer.
I never believed the Bill of Rights was about needs — other than the fact that the Founding Fathers believed that Americans needed to have their rights spelled out in writing.
In the 18th century, the right to defend yourself and your freedom against all enemies, foreign and domestic, was very important to the men who had just fought a revolutionary war against a tyrannical ruler.
Although I have done other things in my life, at heart I am — and always will be — a journalist. As such, I value things like freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which were just as important to the Founding Fathers as the right of self–defense. So was freedom of religion. And a lot of other things.
We don't speak of things like the right to a trial by a jury of one's peers as needs. We speak of such things as rights — which are, I suppose, special kinds of needs.
Free men do need to have rights that are constant and respected. And such rights cannot be doled out as gifts from the government to the masses. They aren't the government's to give — or take — away.
The Founding Fathers essentially told the generations to come that, if they lived on this land, they had all the rights (as well as the responsibilities) that come with freedom.
(And over the years, by the way, the procedure for someone from another country to become an American citizen has evolved and been spelled out clearly. Nothing has been hidden from potential citizens. There are no surprises, and all are welcome — but that is not unconditional.
(By definition, anyone who attempts to enter the United States illegally is not an immigrant. That person is an alien.)
If the government can restrict a single right that is mentioned in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, what is to prevent it from restricting other rights?
What is to keep the government from shutting down news outlets that have been critical of its performance? Or attempting to intimidate citizens to keep them from speaking out?
What is to keep the government from telling you which religious institution, if any, you may attend?
What is to keep the government from conducting all legal proceedings in private, presided over by judges who have made up their minds before hearing a single witness?
Well, that's the main problem I have with the gun control debate.
A lesser — but not inconsequential — issue I have with it is the fact that, typically, when such a tragedy occurs (whether it involves guns, public or private health and safety measures or whatever), the legislation that is usually proposed is aimed at dealing with some aspect that made the tragedy possible.
In the case of the Newtown shootings, none of the proposals I have read would have prevented that tragedy from happening.
That's frustrating, I know. I guess it's human nature — or a free human's nature — to believe there is a quick and ready solution to all of life's problems.
In this case, I have yet to find one.
The guns were purchased legally by a middle–aged woman who most likely was subjected to background checks prior to purchase. The weapons were used by her son, who had not paid for them, who had in fact killed his mother to obtain them.
They were not automatic weapons, which are the kind of weapons that spray many bullets with a single pull of the trigger. Such weapons have been strictly regulated — and deservedly so — for decades.
They were semiautomatic weapons — handguns like the ones tens of millions of Americans own to protect themselves and their families. Those Americans don't necessarily go hunting for sport — neither did the Founding Fathers, for that matter, although many, if not all, hunted for food.
That was another practical application of firearms for people of the 18th century — but it was also practical to say that free citizens had the right to defend themselves against any enemies.
I can only wonder what Washington would think of this debate.
Over the years, sadly, the American culture has grown accustomed to the reality that, from time to time, somewhere someone will open fire on students at a high school or a college.
It's to be expected, I have heard some people say, in a country where private gun ownership is not only legal but encouraged.
I don't know if that is true or not, but there are a few things I do know.
For one, I know that we seem to have shootings on school grounds every year, at least since the mid–20th century.
Now, even though gun ownership in the United States has been legal — but not absolute — since the nation broke from England in the 18th century, we haven't had school shootings every year.
The first one that I know of occurred in 1966 on the University of Texas campus. There might have been some before that, but if there were, I haven't heard about them.
There were occasional shootings on campuses throughout the 1970s, but not very many, and each was followed by shock and dismay — and then by recrimination. How could such a thing happen? What reason could there have been?
In the last three decades, though, there has been a literal explosion of such incidents. They have not been confined to a single state or region. Sometimes they involve other students; sometimes they involve adults.
I guess the culture adapted to the new reality because it became more difficult to shock people. I suppose people started running out of senseless reasons for senseless acts and just accepted shootings as things that could happen anywhere (not just on school grounds) at any time for any reason.
(Frankly, I have long believed the ultimate in pointless reasons for committing a pointless act was given when a teenage girl gave this as her excuse for shooting at children in a school playground: "I don't like Mondays."
(The gender of the shooter in that case was highly unusual. As the cold and clinical studies of this phenomenon have demonstrated, nearly all school shootings are perpetrated by males.)
Another thing I know is that the body count at Virginia Tech was the greatest of any school shooting with which I am familiar. In nearly all such incidents, the body count can be done with one hand, maybe two. But more than 30 people died on the Virginia Tech campus — and more than two dozen others were injured, some permanently.I have been a student on three college/university campuses in my life. I've been a journalism instructor on two others, one of which was at the time and in the vicinity of the Oklahoma City bombing.
And I can only imagine what it must have been like on the Virginia Tech campus that day.
Make no mistake about it. The Oklahoma City bombing was a horrific experience for my students, many of whom had grown up in Oklahoma City. That bombing was literally in their own back yards. One of my students lost her father in the explosion.
It doesn't get more personal than that.
But I think it would have been an even more personal event for those students if the bomb had been set off on the OU campus — in the campus food court where just about everyone must have eaten a meal at least once or along the sidewalks the students traversed every day.
That had become their daily lives, and an attack on that setting would have been an even more egregious violation.
It must have been that way for the students of Virginia Tech five years ago today. On that Monday, they were getting up and going about their early morning routines when the first victims were shot. When the other attacks began, of course, classes were under way all over campus.
What started as an ordinary day suddenly went terribly wrong.
And a nation watched in pained — and mostly stunned — silence.
Many other campuses probably could have (and would have) said similar things about the victims if such a terrible event had happened somewhere else. It would have been proper to do so — as it certainly was for the Virginia Tech community. It was, I suppose, a way of seeking closure.
I've written here before of my skepticism that such a thing as closure is really possible, but even a thing as elusive as closure is easier to achieve than finding answers for why things like this happen. The News & Advocate of Lynchburg, Va., reports there have been few answers for the victims' survivors in the last five years.
It is doubtful that they will find more in the next five years.
Today is the 11th anniversary of the Columbine shootings.
And all I can think about is an incident from my own high school days.
I guess I was a sophomore in those days. The weather was pleasant, and I was one of several students who had decided to eat lunch outside.
Anyway, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and all of a sudden there was a disturbance off to one side. I didn't see how it started. By the time I looked in that direction, a black student was on his feet and keeping other students at a distance with the knife he held in his right hand.
We all just sort of froze, including my group of lunch companions (even though we probably were a safe distance from the action). I couldn't hear what was being said, only the anger with which it was said. It was frightening, not necessarily because I was concerned for my own safety but because the whole situation was so unpredictable.
Well, some alert person in the office must have contacted the police because a squad car pulled up a few minutes later, and a couple of officers got out. They confronted the knife–wielding student, and, almost in the blink of an eye, subdued him. They handcuffed him and maneuvered him to the squad car while he loudly protested that he was a victim of racism. "Racial profiling" has been in use for centuries, but, if it had been as controversial at that time as it has become in recent years, it probably would have been his accusation of choice.
As far as I was concerned, though, the incident was over, and that was about the extent of my exposure to school violence when I was growing up. Lots of my friends knew how to handle a gun, but I don't think it ever would have occurred to any of them to bring one to school.
For that matter, that incident from my sophomore year is the only time I can recall seeing a knife at school. I'll bet my parents never thought about the possibility that one of my schoolmates — or one of my brother's — would bring a knife or a gun or a bomb to school. It has to be more than a fleeting thought for parents these days, though.
Times sure have changed — and not always for the better. And I often wonder: What happened?
Granted, I'm no longer a high school student. But I'm not an ancient relic, either. I have no children of my own, but my friends do, and many have children who are high school age or younger.
School violence is not a recent phenomenon. When I was small, a man went to the top of the tower on the University of Texas campus and opened fire on the people below. Just a few years ago, a student went on a rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech.
But those were college shootings. They were not entirely uncommon when I was growing up. But high school shootings were. Not so in recent years.
And, on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were responsible for the deadliest high school shooting on record. They killed a dozen students and a teacher, and they injured two dozen more.
That might not have been enough to please them. There was a lot of speculation at the time that Harris and Klebold were retaliating for having been picked on at school, but, on the fifth anniversary of the shooting, Dave Cullen revealed in Slate both the extent of their plan and the reasons why the FBI had concluded that they were cold–blooded killers.
There was also speculation that the callous nature of the shootings at Columbine implied that young people could be numbed to human suffering by exposure to violent video games, TV programs and movies. No conclusive link has ever been shown between violence in the media and what happened in Littleton, Col., 11 years ago today.
The so–called "goth" culture was criticized by some. So was popular music. But aren't those the kinds of things that people always blame when seemingly inexplicable things happen?
I am inclined to agree with what Cullen suggested, that Harris was a psychopath and Klebold was clinically depressed. Neither could have pulled off the massacre without the other. Didn't matter whether they watched "Natural Born Killers" or "Bambi." Didn't matter whether they listened to Marilyn Manson or Pat Boone. Didn't matter whether they wore black trenchcoats or business suits.
That doesn't mean that, in the aftermath of the massacre, it wasn't a good thing that some things were done.
For example, stronger security measures were put in place in many schools, and, in addition to cracking down on weapons, schools also started cracking down on bullying behavior. There are those who say these things rob children of their innocence. That may be true, but it seems to me that, until we devote more money and attention to mental health research, we will never know all that we need to know about psychopaths. And until we know more about psychopaths, how can we be sure we are devoting our resources to the appropriate causes of school violence?
We may never know what we need to know, anyway. Life has always been tough for adolescents. I suspect it always will be, and the psychopaths among them probably always will play roles in most of their peers' woes. Psychopaths, I am told, represent less than 1% of the total population, but I would guess they are responsible for a far greater percentage of the world's misery.
Even if we can prove, as many researchers have long believed, that psychopathy is biological, we cannot be sure of preventing future Columbines by identifying and then isolating those with this defect. Psychopaths are self–centered and manipulative. What matters to them is the satisfaction of their needs.
The rest is, to use a term favored by Timothy McVeigh, "collateral damage," in one form or another. Killing is the objective for some psychopaths. It is the means to an end for others, not even a factor for still others.
If you identify and isolate a psychopath, that does not necessarily mean you have prevented a massacre. It means you have engaged in preventive detention — which introduces a whole new set of issues.
And we will almost certainly never restore our schools to the sanctuaries of safety that they were when I was growing up.
Perhaps my schools were never as idyllic as they sometimes appear from this distance, but the only bullets I had to dodge were verbal. Sometimes they hurt, but they never killed. If there were psychopaths in our midst, they never brought guns to school.
If any bullets are fired at Columbine High School today, there won't be anyone there to be hit by them. The Denver Post reports that classes were canceled. That is probably a good idea. Can't imagine that Columbine would be much of a learning environment today.
And the New York Times flogs another familiar whipping boy, urging Congress to "close the gun show loophole that made the carnage possible."
That's a good idea. But I still think we need to do more research into psychopathy.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."
Unknown
"Everything in life can teach you a lesson. You just have to be willing to observe and learn."
Howard Arnold Walter (1883-1918)
"I would be true, for there are those who trust me; I would be pure, for there are those who care; I would be strong, for there is much to suffer; I would be brave, for there is much to dare."
"In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball and to bounce a baby."
Unknown
"If you're lucky enough to get a second chance at something, don't waste it."
Harry Truman (1884-1972)
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
George Carlin (1937-2008)
"I've got this real moron thing I do. It's called thinking. And I'm not really a good American because I like to form my own opinions. I don't just roll over when I'm told to. Sad to say, most Americans just roll over on command. Not me. I have certain rules I live by. My first rule, I don't believe anything the government tells me."
Stephen King (1947- )
"People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad."
Dr. Seuss
"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
"Whatever it is, I'm against it."
Mel Brooks (1926- )
"If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none."
Edward R. Murrow (1908-65)
"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue."
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
"Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him."
Confucius (551-479 B.C.)
"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
Ancient proverb
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
"Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people."
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
"The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
