Jim Simpson
Needless, senseless, tragedy: why is this happening?
By Jim Simpson
Losing a child is the worst possible thing that can happen. Losing 20, as occurred today in Newtown, Connecticut is a monstrous, indescribable tragedy. My heart bleeds for those devastated families. Their Christmases, their lives, will never be the same.
Some have used this tragedy as an opportunity to vilify our "gun culture" and predictably, right up to the President, have said we need "meaningful action," by which of course he means more gun control. But guns are not the problem here.
Throughout the last century, up until the gun control act of 1968, there were few restrictions on gun ownership, save the heavy regulation of automatic weapons. A kid could order a rifle through the mail. There were no Columbines, no Virginia Techs', no Auroras, no Newtowns. There were many people with mental illnesses, ADD, Asperger's, autism and other problems, although perhaps they went by different names. But these kinds of things just did not happen.
What changed? What changed is that our society became unhinged from its bedrock belief in God. In earlier times, churches were filled on Sundays and people generally conformed to a code of decency and behavior accepted throughout society. We swore less, raged less, dressed more modestly, frowned upon braggarts and liars, respected authority and approached life with a modesty and humility borne both of hard experience and religious training.
Of course there were exceptions, but for all our collective failings as human beings, we took our religions and our religious beliefs seriously. Organized religion, especially Christianity, demands a level of decency, modesty and humility that is largely missing in today's distracted, self-absorbed, ego-driven, anything-goes culture. And we are reaping the rewards.
Back in the 1920s, a group of German Communists started the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. It would become known as simply the Frankfurt School. Its goal was to implement communism in the West quietly by gradually subverting popular culture — a movement known as Cultural Marxism.
Early on, these people recognized that Christianity was the single greatest impediment to the advancement of communism in the West and they set out to destroy it by every means possible. Soviet propagandist and organizer Willi Munzenberg articulated the school's goals:
Our culture is indeed becoming so corrupt it stinks, and it is not surprising that evil now finds such an easy home here. Gun control will not cure this. Stricter laws will not cure this. Stricter enforcement may not even cure this. The only cure is a healthy society, a humble society; a society whose strong Christian heritage used to make it uncool to feed off others, uncool to boast, uncool to have a self-serving attitude; uncool to ignore the Golden Rule.
This is nothing new. The pattern has been repeated since the days of antiquity. When a society finds and abides in God, health, peace and affluence follow; when it forgets God, disaster is not far behind. We as a nation have forgotten God.
Do you want to do something in response to this tragedy? Get down on your knees and pray. Ask God to save this country from such insanity. Ask God to help us restore the decency we once knew.
God bless those innocent little children who have gone; God bless those parents living in a sea of grief that knows no bounds. God bless and God save the United States of America.
© Jim Simpson
December 17, 2012
Losing a child is the worst possible thing that can happen. Losing 20, as occurred today in Newtown, Connecticut is a monstrous, indescribable tragedy. My heart bleeds for those devastated families. Their Christmases, their lives, will never be the same.
Some have used this tragedy as an opportunity to vilify our "gun culture" and predictably, right up to the President, have said we need "meaningful action," by which of course he means more gun control. But guns are not the problem here.
Throughout the last century, up until the gun control act of 1968, there were few restrictions on gun ownership, save the heavy regulation of automatic weapons. A kid could order a rifle through the mail. There were no Columbines, no Virginia Techs', no Auroras, no Newtowns. There were many people with mental illnesses, ADD, Asperger's, autism and other problems, although perhaps they went by different names. But these kinds of things just did not happen.
What changed? What changed is that our society became unhinged from its bedrock belief in God. In earlier times, churches were filled on Sundays and people generally conformed to a code of decency and behavior accepted throughout society. We swore less, raged less, dressed more modestly, frowned upon braggarts and liars, respected authority and approached life with a modesty and humility borne both of hard experience and religious training.
Of course there were exceptions, but for all our collective failings as human beings, we took our religions and our religious beliefs seriously. Organized religion, especially Christianity, demands a level of decency, modesty and humility that is largely missing in today's distracted, self-absorbed, ego-driven, anything-goes culture. And we are reaping the rewards.
Back in the 1920s, a group of German Communists started the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. It would become known as simply the Frankfurt School. Its goal was to implement communism in the West quietly by gradually subverting popular culture — a movement known as Cultural Marxism.
Early on, these people recognized that Christianity was the single greatest impediment to the advancement of communism in the West and they set out to destroy it by every means possible. Soviet propagandist and organizer Willi Munzenberg articulated the school's goals:
-
We will make the West so corrupt it stinks... [We will] organise the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilisation stink [sic]. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Our culture is indeed becoming so corrupt it stinks, and it is not surprising that evil now finds such an easy home here. Gun control will not cure this. Stricter laws will not cure this. Stricter enforcement may not even cure this. The only cure is a healthy society, a humble society; a society whose strong Christian heritage used to make it uncool to feed off others, uncool to boast, uncool to have a self-serving attitude; uncool to ignore the Golden Rule.
This is nothing new. The pattern has been repeated since the days of antiquity. When a society finds and abides in God, health, peace and affluence follow; when it forgets God, disaster is not far behind. We as a nation have forgotten God.
Do you want to do something in response to this tragedy? Get down on your knees and pray. Ask God to save this country from such insanity. Ask God to help us restore the decency we once knew.
God bless those innocent little children who have gone; God bless those parents living in a sea of grief that knows no bounds. God bless and God save the United States of America.
© Jim Simpson
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