A week ago today, after a three week hiatus, I returned to this blog with an intent to take a new, non-political direction with my posts. After Obama’s re-election, I felt that to continue to dwell on America doubling-down on stupid would serve no constructive purpose for the time being.
For three full weeks I waited for something positive to come to me and still had nothing positive to say. I finally returned with a quick post sharing some honest, well-intentioned Marriage Advice and a tongue-in-cheek post about the Final Week on Earth. I was purposefully avoiding the news feeds and had no idea the scope of the horror that had happened in Newtown earlier that day.
In retrospect, when I finally caught wind of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, after the initial shock and incomprehension, it felt like I’d just posted something along the lines of grandma’s favorite recipe for peach cobbler on the day of the attacks on the Twin Towers, so completely oblivious that I was to the great tragedy that had just occurred.
A week after evil visited that community, what can I possibly add here that hasn’t already been thought and felt by any loving parent and caring human being?
For those who lost loved ones, for those who lost children in the full flower of their innocence, we can only imagine the heartache. For the parents of the survivors, we can only imagine their resulting loss of faith in humanity and what they will have to deal with in helping to guide their children forward from a day they will never forget. For the children who survived we can only imagine the ways in which they will be forever changed after that day.
It’s probably a good thing I didn’t allow myself to react on Sandy Hook here until today. While my emotions in commiserating the tragedy would have been heartfelt, my commiseration would ultimately have ended up as a prelude to the political angle, perhaps nothing as blatant as Democrat Congressman Jerrold Nadler laying out his agenda by saying the opportunity for gun control “will be there if the president exploits it,” but left to my way of seeing all things through the lens of politics, my response would have been unseemly nonetheless.
With the tragedy now a week behind, Dr. Charles Krauthammer has added his thoughts on Sandy Hook, and in the spirit of leaving it up to others to tackle the politics, I share with you his article on “the roots of mass murder.”
While most columnists were almost immediate to leap to the conclusion you know they had already come to long before Sandy Hook, hammering away at their chosen angle the way you would expect a left-winger or a right-winger to do, the brilliance of Krauthammer in his piece is how even-handedly he looks at all three issues regarding the Second Amendment, imposing mental health treatment for those who might refuse it and the way the right of free speech has fostered a desensitized Hollywood / video game culture in which, especially for the generation coming of age, can make mass murder seem like nothing to even shrug your shoulders over. His piece couldn’t be any more even-handed in the way he deals with the effort to strike a balance between liberty and public safety.
Once you’ve gotten past the abject horror of Sandy Hook, Krauthammer’s piece is well worth the read and thoughtful consideration.
( The preceding was an opinion piece from one of our regular TNAM Twitter teammates, http://www.mikecornelison.com )
