The act is evil. The actor commits an evil act. But the actor may well be mentally ill.

I was very clearly not making a political point.

He is too stupid to understand that and is yet another idiot so willing to scream when someone dares mention the word God or Jesus Christ. People like are him are described in the Bible as fools.

What is evil? The act? Or the warped thinking leading to the act?

I think you’re going into a slippery slope when labeling things evil, Erick. For what must one do when encountering things deemed evil? Eradicate it? Destroy it?
This is an act of a madman with a purpose… whatever that was is irrelevant. We as a people must show support to those that are grieving now. God is not the story today… it is the innocent, the young and finding ways to protect them.

Eric, I don’t at all see opportunism in those comments. I don’t see them as proselytizing, but as thoughts shared generously in a moment with anyone that would like to partake.

I’m 54. I Remember a time when the act of coming together in times of tragedy did not feel so stark: almost mirroring in a lesser way, the starkness of the tragedy itself. Without ascribing blame – and in support – we might have sounded blaming in a cumbersome way, but it was an attempt to help. Those we shared with weren’t so quick to reprove, because that wasn’t the task at hand anyway, and we knew the difference, and it certainly, still, isn’t the point today.

As all tragedy is itself an anomaly compared to the day before, so too now the act of our coming together seems to be itself at variance with the everyday divisiveness in the overall discourse that I see more and more among Americans.

I think I remember a great unity among ‘fellow Americans’, which kept us close on some level beyond our stated labels and beliefs. This made the distance to travel into each other’s arms so much shorter, and that act so much less fortuitous.

I think it’s both fair and perfectly fitting to label the deliberate murder of children as evil.

I sure hope so. Cause if your Jesus believes the crap you have been typing, then we are all in trouble.

I agree with you in that sense.

Depending on the translation many readers don’t think the Old Testament god came off looking all that good in the Book of Job. But is that really the conversation we’re looking to have on this day?

All I know is that an evil coward killed his mother and a lot of innocent adults and cjildren. All I can do is pray for the parents of the dead children and the survivors of the dead adults. I’m not looking for any politicizing or any verbal (or posting) tug of war about God, but Eric is perfectly fine to mention the Lord God regarding this horrible, horrible tragedy.. And I commend him for it.

Ever notice where all the gun violence occurs. It’s called a free kill zone also known as a Guns Prohibited Area.
Evil is Evil by any other name. My evil weapon is not capable of commiting a crime without a persons assistance.

It’s not just words that have power, more importantly it’s about taking Americans and subdividing them into tiny interest groups – which used to be called factionalism – and then casting them against each other for political sport, which is what passes for responsible governance these days.

He didn’t say anything about gun control.

Mr. Erickson, I’m a fan and I respect you, but I take issue with your column. My wife and I are atheists, and parents of a 9-year-old boy. Like all parents, we are shocked and sad today, grieving for the families in Newton, waiting to hear more of the story and how we can help, and hugging our son a little more tightly tonight. We believe in good and evil too, and that the senseless violence in Newton certainly represents evil. Isn’t that enough for us to “come together?” History gives us plenty of examples of believers and nonbelievers who have committed atrocities, and believers and nonbelievers who have done great good. We don’t know yet, and may never know, why this man gunned down innocent children. When you jump straight to the inference that atheism and secularism are the obstacles to confronting evil, you are neither confronting evil nor helping us to come together as a nation. I admit there are a few loud, hostile voices among nonbelievers, but there are plenty of loud voices on the other end of the spectrum too. I’m encouraged, at least, that people as different as you and I can grieve together over this horrible tragedy.

So there is more than one Christ? Tell me more about this one you follow.

And the fear comes when one fully understands that decisions here on earth have eternal consequences, and that God is loving and gracious, but also just.

Im just making the point that a national commenter starting to make a big political/religious issue out of dead kids before they are put in the ground is way out of bounds. In a week, yes. But now? I dont have words. We dont know what happened, we dont know what type of insanity it was. Evil, sure. But to use this in any way, at this moment? Sorry, Im so angry at the moment I may become impolite.

It is my opinion that the One who informs my beliefs and views are the only possible comfort for those who lost so much today.

Then what sort of issue is it?

Ban this ahole.

I agree that it is unhealthy that we only come together as a nation during a tragedy, but I must admit I am puzzled by the last sentence that it is unhealthy that we come together at tragedy so far removed from God. Perhaps our coming together may point us more to God, not away from Him. At least, that is my prayer.

I do fear that the political demagoguery (which has already begun on the Left) regarding gun control will completely overshadow the real issues here which are a). the horrible way we handle mental illness in this country (please do not infer that I am disregarding the presence of evil in this world by this statement) and b). the moral and cultural breakdown in our society.

Quite frankly the amount of violence parents expose their children via video games and movies is shocking. It does not matter that there are rating systems on these things, parents just do not care. So we have an entire generation desensitized to violence. Sad to say, Christians are often not much better in this area than non-Christians. The First Amendment prevents us from censoring these games and that would not be something I would support. But perhaps a massive ad campaign directed towards parents and children about the negative consequences of what you allow in your head (similar to the anti-smoking campaign) would help change the hearts and minds in this area.

I agree particularly with a. and b., as well as your solution to the desensitization to violence.

Your perfectly entitled to that view however if you’re trying to bring people together, including those who don’t share that specific and in this case ancillary opinion, is it helpful to highlight that difference?

I rarely bring up my opinion on religion so as to not cloud the argument I’m trying to make unless that argument is about religion.

I can tell you one thing for certain – the people of that town and this nation will not be flocking to the homes of atheists for comfort this weekend. I beg you to consider why this is the case, and why a moral framework that includes atheism is no moral framework at all.

Agreed. And it is sickening.

that wasn’t a leap of logic, that was a catapult of logic… which landed you off the site. For the record, I don’t think any of us believe your profession of faith.

granted.

then you weren’t listening. From his speech: “As a country, we have been through this too many times…we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

Given his politics and policies there is no other interpretation.

Children and parents are preached to repetitively about recycling, anti-smoking, etc. and these campaigns have been successful at changing the way people look at these issues. Why could we not start a similar campaign regarding violent media? If we stop buying that garbage, it ceases being created. I will guarantee you that the Hollywood Left will jump on the ant-gun bandwagon, while completely ignoring the violent images they put on the screen. I apologize if that is too political at this point and I really want to steer away from that, but this is such a tragic event and I am a bit emotional at this point.

We also need to re-evaluate our school security policies, but that can be discussed at a later time.

You make a common mistake in what you believe “fear” means in this context. Get a linear Bible, or a good concordance and correct your ignorance. I just don’t understand you folks that claim Christianity then reveal themselves to be ignorant about some basic doctrines.

As someone who is involved in school construction, there are ways to construct doors, windows, traffic flow and security systems so this horrible tragedy either does not happen, or is very, very limited in its scope.

P.S. I thought we weren’t allowed to talk about religion on RedState. “God” is one thing but the comments are all about “Christianity” “Old Testament” “Book of Job” “Jesus”. I am a Christian but I don’t think it is appropriate to be debating this on a political blog. Just saying…

read the diary for context. Your views do not trump those of others.

national holidays are about…getting drunk, religious holidays are about sports and…getting drunk. national tragedies unfortunately are about coming together for about two seconds then more schism and turmoil and more getting drunk. our culture is dying and we sing a dirge as we watch it go by us. i think of the LOTR The Two Towers, when Theodon king of Rohan asks, “how did it come to this?”. answer was, when good men fail to confront evil…Please keep up the good work you do here at Redstate.

Probably not.

Did not intend to deflect, so maybe I misunderstood the post. It sounded like the poster was saying that NOT believing in moral absolutes is essentially the same as believing everything is acceptable, and that’s what I disagree with. I agree with what the poster actually said about violent images.

I think the point is that if you don’t believe in moral absolutes, yet you believe some things are unacceptable, the question would naturally be – Why?

the human heart summarized
Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their
thoughts are evil thoughts; ruin and destruction mark their ways. Isaiah 59:7

I don’t know about schoolchildren, but Peter Singer at Princeton, for one, has no problem with infanticide. He thinks society should be allowed to exterminate non-productive members.

If you have to hear the words to understand the message, you will never get it. Go back over what he said in his campaigns and then see which actions he took, and you should be able to understand the direction he will go without him having to spell it out again and again. He only moves in one direction.

I have no proposals for “we”. I’m not qualified to speak for everyone here on this forum. Sorry.

I’m leaving for the night too, but I will try to answer quickly. I appreciate the civil conversation and would like to continue another day. I’m familiar with the Christian ethic, as I grew up immersed in it (conservative Presbyterian). I doubt that our ideas of OK conflict very often, and when they do, I wouldn’t see it as a contest with a winner, as much as an honest difference of opinion, where one of us is probably happy with the laws we’ve enacted around that issue, and one of us isn’t. We clearly agree on murder, I bet we agree on adultery, and probably a lot of other things. Maybe we don’t agree on gay marriage, for example, but I shouldn’t presume that. Anyway, best to you too.

Kowalski, Or worse those who try to force others to remove God from everyone’s life. It is respect for God that causes people to try to treat others better, not respect for the government, or the snail darter or spotted owl. If there is no God, as some claim, or if He is not allowed to be in the public arena, what would impel anyone to treat others better? And, of someone’s religion teaches him to treat others better, why do so-called atheists resent that and try to stop it?

You wrote “the Christian ethic, properly understood, is the upside-down, inside-out of every other ethic ever contemplated”. I honestly have no idea what you mean by this.

Can you explain and give examples of common problems and how a proper Christian would approach them?

I’m leaving for the night, but basically my answer is in the conversation with Jack_Savage below. There are some wonderful ideas to follow in the scriptures, in Christianity and in other religions. I think the Golden Rule (present in virtually all religions) is pure genius, and I try to live by that for starters. But there are also things in scripture that I believe should not be followed. For example, I think it’s wrong to beat your child with a rod. There are also things I think are immoral that ancient scriptures either condone or don’t address at all (slavery, for example). I believe humans can be civilized and agree on laws that support good and punish evil. But I also agree with you that there have been societies where the norms are evil – it seems to me those have occurred under both atheist and religious regimes. Anyway, gotta run. Peace to you.

This has nothing to do with serial killers. The advent of mass murderers as in “going postal” came with the advent of anti-depressants. Of course not all people react to them by killing themselves and others in the process but the subset that do cause a lot of grief. And if you think the President and Bloomberg really cares about those kids other than as political fodder, you are a real fool.

It’s reasonable to expect that none of us is likely to react to this event, or to others’ reactions, very well. We will demand to know why. We will lash out at others.

America will only be safe when every man, woman, and child is armed and ready to kill each other.

Well written.

I am not making a claim to know what you believe, that would be presumptuous. I have never encountered people who think murdering schoolchildren is acceptable, thank goodness. But there are unfortunately people out there who do, as today’s tragedy shows.

My point was that atheism and secularism as a philosophy (not you personally) have no central moral code that they adhere to. It is subject to interpretation or whatever current trends are. A philosophy without a central core for conduct or belief, will even by omission, admit almost anything. After all, there is no Authority to restrict behavior or belief.

I am glad we can agree on the violence in our media. I suggested upthread that we launch a massive ad campaign geared towards parents and children (similar to the anti-smoking campaign) about the dangers of allowing children to consume violent images and role play in video games.

In other words, doctors came up with MAO inhibitors and then later SSRIs and other classes of drugs and suddenly there was an outbreak of mass murderers worldwide? Who were all taking antidepressants?

Tbone, I absolutely think the President and Bloomberg have an anti-gun, anti-2nd Amendment agenda: Bloomberg has made it a central mission of his political career and the President has made it an “under the radar” feature of his Presidency, which he is now trying to turn into a mandate. But I think blaming antidepressants for mass murders is really stretching the facts.

One of the worst mass “murders” in American history happened in Hartford, CT by an arsonist: The Hartford Circus Fire in 1944, which killed almost 170 and injured 700.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire

“In 1950, Robert Dale Segee of Circleville, Ohio, claimed he was responsible for setting the circus fire. Segee, a roustabout
for the show from June 30 to July 14, 1944, when he was about 14 years
old, said he had a nightmare in which an Indian riding on a “flaming
horse” told him to set fires. He further claimed that after this
nightmare his mind went blank, and that he did not come out of this
state until the circus fire had already been set.”

You might as well blame the use of paraffin wax as a waterproofing agent for those people dying. It was the gasoline that did it!

“Because the big top tent had been coated with 1,800 lb (816 kg) of paraffin wax dissolved in 6,000 US gallons (23 m³) of gasoline (some sources say kerosene),
a common waterproofing method of the time, the flames spread rapidly.
Many people were badly burned by the melting paraffin, which rained down
like napalm
from the roof. The fiery tent collapsed in about eight minutes
according to eyewitness survivors, trapping hundreds of spectators
beneath it.”

One thing is quite certain: we keep much better track of mass murderers since MAO inhibitors and SSRIs were invented than we did, say, a hundred years ago. I think you’re confusing statistical coincidence with causation.

Anyway, I’m not in a fight with you, Tbone. I’m very much a 2nd Amendment supporter and everyone here knows that.

You actually proved my point. You personally have found a moral code to follow that is very subjective on how you feel or current trends, which is what atheism and secularism as a philosophy leads to. It is whatever one thinks is acceptable, which by omission, allows almost anything.

You personally may have found a solid moral code. But that is not to say another adherent of atheist philosophy would, as there are no absolutes or firm moral principles from which to live one’s life.

Bye.

No one is even close to saying that a disbelief in the supernatural is why this tragedy occurred today. In the wake of this tragedy, it is so unbecoming to be so hostile and angry.

The point of the post was that when you move away from God, who has a set of moral absolutes (that by the way have nothing to do with what you eat, wear a hat, etc) moral and cultural decline will occur. Even if you share no such belief yourself, the facts and the trajectory of society show this to be true.

How sad do you have to be to troll about a subject like this. There are no words.

Its ironic and maybe a little sad that from the posts I am reading seem to be backing up the premise of this piece. I am a Christian and so of course I believe in a God, as well as good and evil. But I can understand why that is such a hard thing for so many to believe. I don’t think the belief or not of a diety is either a commendation or a handicap in the quality of someones opinion. But the premise of the story is not what God, if any, you believe in, nor is it trying to score political points. WHat is it simply is this. We should all take a look at ourselves honestly and determine if what we see in the mirror is what we would want our parents or children, friends or strangers to see.
I can tell you I don’t like what I see in the mirror sometimes, and I don’t like the feeling that came over me when my candidate lost the election. I have serious reservations about our president, our government, and our nations seeming inability to pursue a path where we are solving problemas as opposed to kicking the can down the road. But I do know one thing with certanty. That is if we as a nation permit our elected officials of all political persuasions to continue to put off making the hard decisions that have to be made we will all suffer from the consequence of inaction.
So I am willing to think and explore any option that might help this nation to avoid the pitfalls that are awaiting us. That is going to take an honest onversation with folks that don’t see things the way I do very often. ANd if that is what uniting as a nation means then I am all for it.

Are you crazy?
Definitely, I wouldn’t want young children anywhere to have guns, or have guns brought near schools.
But I suspect you’re just trolling.

You mean Connecticut, the home state to Sturm, Ruger and Comapny?

All wars are about power, real estate, liberty and/or enslavement. Religion was used only as an excuse and a recruitment tool, nothing more.

Actually, the problem started with Ronald Reagan.

As governor of California he systematically began closing down mental hospitals.

Later as president, he drastically cut aid for federally-funded community mental health programs. It is not a coincidence that the homeless populations in the United States grew at an astonishing rate during the seventies and eighties. The people were put out on the street when mental hospitals started to close all over the country.

So, let me get this straight: Ronald Reagan is personally responsible for the zombie apocalypse?

Agreed.

Moreover, your contention that religion serves as an effective “recruitment tool” further undermines DaveinSanAntonio’s claim that “It is respect for God that causes people to try to treat others better”

Trolling? I’m agreeing with Ann Coulter on Hannity this morning. Funny how this conservative site has been overrun by bleeding heart libs since Obummer took office. Guess Erickson hasn’t banned enough of you yet.

Hmmm…reasonable question. First, I would suggest that you look up the Beatitudes in the New Testament, read them and perhaps some commentary related to them to get a good start on understanding this particular concept. An incredible book by N.T. Wright is “After You Believe”, and it goes into this in some detail. It is scholarly and dense, but magnificent in my view.

It isn’t easy, I will admit, but it is worth some serious study.

So what is your solution? Just let armed nuts roam through schools and shoot who they please until the police get there. Seem like you just want people to get killed without any right to defend themselves.

For shame? What’s your solution. Allow kids to be killed with no ability to defend themselves? 20 children died today needlessly because noone was able to stop this nut. If you don’t have a way to solve this don’t judge those who are.

Well then, just yourself is fine.

Yes, you are wrong.

Much like President Broken Promises, I wouldn’t be surprised if they pick one of the kid’s names and make some gun control legislation and name it after them. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

“The tragedy unfolding today is not an act of the insane, but an act of evil. That evil may drive the shooter insane, but in focusing on the insanity we lose focus on the evil.”

I listened to Levin today and it spoke of “evil” although he pointed out that we’d have to see down the line if the shooter was somehow mentally impaired. I watched and listened to O’Reilly and one of his guests, G. Rivera. O’Reilly called the shooter “evil” and Rivera called him “wicked.”

Then, I got pissed. It’s too soon to know –was this young man schizophrenic? If he suffered from mental illness, then all of you yelling “evil” do nothing but drive the mentally ill underground where they’ll stay, where they’ll never seek help, where they’ll emerge one day to do who knows what?
Erik, unless I misunderstand your words, you believe it’s “evil” that “may drive the shooter insane”?
I’m lost here. Those of you with heart disease, with diseased arteries. You do know you have an illness, right? A diseased state? No one calls you “evil” even though part of your body is diseased. Those of you with unhealthy livers (maybe from an unfortunate encounter with hepatitis or from drinking), a part of your body is diseased.
The brain is an organ. It’s susceptible to the same disease that are all the other organs of the body. Schizophrenia is not one brain disease but a collection of them but one word suffices (for now) to refer to the collection of symptoms that describe it and to the functional and structural deterioration of the brain. Arteries harden and break down due to atherosclerosis; neurons misfire and brain circuitry breakdowns due to schizophrenia.
While almost all schiz researchers believe that there are many triggers/etiologies for the disease we call schizophrenia, they do know that influenza, yes, that’s right, the flu, is a major trigger in many. Certain genotypes + the flu = eventual schiz in some families.
I have no idea if this shooter suffered from mental illness, schiz, bi-polar disease, but no one else calling him “evil” yet does either.
What he did was horrid, “evil,” if you will. However, if it turns out that he suffered from a brain disease the way many suffer from, say, heart disease, then what profit society and what profit you to call him “evil”?
I feel as if you want to go back to throwing diabetics into basements and tying them up.
Can we wait, please? Can we wait? And if it turns out that he has a brain disease, can we begin to educate people instead of talking about him and the children for a week, then turning our attention elsewhere, as we did with the AZ shooter? We could have really used that case to help an entire nation learn to look for signs of mental illness, and we could have taken the opportunity to talk, not about “minds” (Freud was right about next to nothing, yet we pay the price for those who cling to the notion of the “mind”), but about brains. We talk of hearts, of breasts, of prostates, of uteruses….but never about brains.

“I am a Christian but I don’t think it is appropriate to be debating this on a political blog. Just saying…”

I really doubt that your above statement is true. There is never a bad time to share the news of Christ, bring God into the subject matter, especially when the author of this article initiated the discussion. Methinks to myself you may be lying in your last comment just to try to make a point and yet you still fail.

Now run along, the bridge needs some cleaning. (If you do not get the reference to the bridge just say so and many shall help you understand.)

After reading your twitter feed, I see you are a trolling leftist. Goodbye asshole. Your attempt to moby as a conservative was weak.

The Golden Rule comes from the Bible.

hoo boy.

“…based on the norms of the society I live in…” That is a pretty sad moral code.

I think you are personalizing something that I meant as a general philosophical discussion on atheism and secularism. The fact that atheism and secularism have no consistent moral code does not mean that a person who holds such a view is automatically void of any moral compass/code or sense of right or wrong. But in the absence of absolutes, by definition the moral code must be subjective and dependent on each individual’s viewpoint.

It is curious that you deny absolutes, and yet refer to “good” people. What constitutes “good” in your mind? How do you define that? If your moral code is what you make it, who defines which moral code is “good” and which is “bad?” I do not intend these to be “gotcha” questions, just points to ponder. Thank you for a respectful and interesting conversation.

I care. Schizophrenia is not a bastardized term.

If I gave you a hallucinogen for days or weeks at certain times in certain doses, you’d still have cognitive function, would still be able to plan. That someone can plan murders down to the last detail is not evidence that contradicts the existence of mental illness, especially schizophrenia. Schizophrenics are like those on hallucinogens, often hearing voices. I suspect you know that though and your hurt and anger have the better of you right now.

By categorizing a break down of neuronic and brain pathway function as “evil” you are seeing to it we don’t find a cure for a diseased brain since no one thinks “evil” can be cured.

Is there a handshake so we can tell the “real” Christians from the fakes? or Does perhaps various groups all think “they” are the “real” ones?

Be the change you want to be Erick. You want us to come together during times other than tragedy. What have you done, with all that you have been given by God, to make your plea come true? How have you contributed to bring everyone to the table. How does pitting the beliefs of some against others and choosing a side “bring people together?” Be the change you want to see, Erick.

http://dirtygrin.com/2012/12/14/changeerickson/

Your posts rebuke the others as if we all are at fault and mean harm to families. Such words are hurful annd confusing since you rebuke the ariter for making GOD central in discussing the tragedy. Only you know the true way is what you imply. Be gone and done with you.

You can tell the real ones by the way they treat others, especially others who cannot help or injure them in any way. It is how we treat the powerless, innocent, and needy that we show our true beliefs.

Good point. Evil was here and present today in that school. mental illness or not.

To add perspective—

I disagree all wars were using religion as recruitment and nothing more. That sweeping unfounded statement renders people of faith as nonbelieving power mongers. Faith was a driving force for good in many cases. Faith was the core essence of life.
You think the English civil wars with King Charles execution and the Glorious Revolution that installed WIlliman and James daughter Mary by acclaimation not Divine right were not motivated by faith? The Declartaion of Rights of Man were not sincere in their beliefs?
if so , then all that has followed including the US constitution is one big faux or fake.

Dear sir, it is highly unlikely that my comments will be seen by you above the multitude already posted and those yet to be posted, but I want to adjust the perspective a bit. Why do we all come together only in times of great tragedy? 9/11, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, and now NewTown. All names synonymous in the American collective consciousness with tragedy at the hands of evil men. There are a number other examples of American tragedy that can be named that are sourced by other, non-malignant causes. Yet the result is the same. We come together with our neighbors in tragedy. We grieve together. Time passes. We (those of us not immediately effected by the tragedy) return to our “normal” lives. We don’t see each other again until the next time we are rocked by another horror. Why is that? There was a time when everyone knew their neighbors. Everyone knew and watched out for their neighborhood kids and watched out for each other. Ever since our days in caves, man has sought safety and assurance in numbers. Small communities banding together to survive. Everyone doing their part and looking after each other. With such vigilance, evil has difficulty manifesting itself. Whether that evil is malicious mental instability, or despair, or hate and malice; those in the tight-nit community are quick to recognize dangers before they occur. It wasn’t so long ago that America fit the old Norman Rockwell art depicting ideal America. Where did that go? We are so inwardly focused, we come home and hide in our homes, we don’t go out on our porches and talk to our neighbors, get to know them, check in on them like we used to.
I personally and Christian, and find myself in agreement with Erick’s positions on good v. evil and Christianity v. secularism/atheism. However, if you strip away any religious reference, the problem still exists. In the days of the strong close-nit communities where everyone went to the same church or few churches in a town, you had that sense or community as well. We don’t worship together like we used to. We don’t eat/fellowship/communicate like we used to (both religiously and secularly). And then we are shocked that something like this could happen and no one could have seen it coming.

I’m so tired of this. Why? Why do we allow it to happen? We sit by and let cowardly people, people unwilling to invest the same amount of time in their communities forming a more perfect union as they do prepping shelters in their backyards and spewing racial and religious intolerance, tell us that guns don’t kill people, people kill people or evil kills people.

BS… Guns kill… That is the only purpose of the design.

GUNS KILL PEOPLE!!!

Yesterday, guns killed five-year olds. Our founders would be so proud of us.

The Second Amendment:

‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’

It’s obvious to see and easy to understand the intentions of the men that wrote that amendment. As they look on us today, the founders are so, so very proud of the rest us for allowing their intentions to be twisted by a vocal minority and a powerful industry lobby.

Why aren’t we in the streets demanding laws that severely restrict the sale of all handguns and automatic or semi-automatic weapons of any kind? Why? Why do we allow it to happen? That’s the evil in all this. I’m so, so very tired of this.

labeling these people as “crazy” is a cheap way out that slanders most people who we’d deem crazy. There are things out there that are inscrutable and thinking that we can control and manage them is a huge and unjustified conceit.

not really. If your “moral code” is not grounded in absolute truth, which you denigrate as “supernatural teachings” then you don’t have a moral code at all but a code of conveniences. I really don’t care what you “think is right or wrong” because absent religion I can’t predict what you will believe ten minutes from now when your circumstances suddenly dictate that coveting my property is ok because you need it more than I do.

I don’t think anyone “wins”. In a free society everyone is allowed to follow their own moral compass. Atheism is amoral – not immoral, the concept itself does not lend to a particular moral framework as religion leads to moral objectivism.

that is really crap. Reason doesn’t provide anything but a rationale to do what you want. There is no reason to not cheat someone or to cheat on your spouse or any number of other behaviors. The Golden Rule and “turn the other cheek” go against reason. These people are deterred by fear of punishment not because they have scruples.

Your first two comments here were fails. I’ll put you out of our misery now.

Perhaps an audio link to Paul Harvey’s “If I were the Devil” is appropriate here? When our society trades God for gay marriage, atheism, abortion and an all out attack on the traditional family unit, what should we expect from here on out? I say this is the new normal, get used to it…

thanks, there’s a lot of wisdom in your first sentence.

Just because someone has a brain disorder such as schizophrenia or a form of a psychosis does not automatically mean that the patient has no conscience or moral compass; no understanding of right from wrong, good from evil. To assume so is as erroneous as concluding that there is no form of brain disorder which does leaves one completely unable to apprehend rational ethics.

Most of the people with the brain diseases described, even those so
unable to function that they live on the streets, raising a ruckus and
causing passersby to walk down the opposite sidewalk are not in custody because they know damn well they’re not supposed to just walk off with bread and shoes from a shop’s shelves, or shove passengers from the seat of a bus because they want their place.

Certainly there are those few who lock their children in rooms for years so they remain sexually innocent and paranoids who shoot blameless ‘stalkers’, but mass murderers, such as the one we discuss here, are generally not so delusional or lacking in appropriate guilt that they’d ever confide in the police and ask them to help commit or cover up their crimes, or report proudly to the principal after their school shootout that they have rid their classrooms of the body snatching invaders. Most schizophrenics do have as strong an understanding of the immorality – the evil – of taking life as do the rest of us, but some do make the choice, like other criminals, to commit atrocities anyway – it’s a form of bigotry to assume that free will is inoperative in all or even the majority of these cases.

Just curious, hobokenred, but what is your viewpoint on being deceived?

Moral absolutes can serve more than one purpose. Dependent on the mindset and mentality that exists in a society in which a person lives, there are things that can be conveyed and portrayed as being “good” and “acceptable”. Yet things aren’t always as they seem to be and human beings can be deceived by the way things seem to be.

Moral absolutes are not altered dependent on the mindset and mentality of a society. Neither are moral absolutes altered by the way people feel at the time. Moral absolutes are consistent factors in the equation of human behavior, not a variable “how I feel” or “going along with society” factor.

Adhering to moral absolutes can allow a person to succeed in not only achieving a high moral and ethical code of behavior but also to guard against being deceived into believing that evil is good or vice versa. Just because society deems something to be “acceptable” doesn’t make it morally right or wise or prudent.

it’s actually all the same Jesus…

He won’t be answering. He was the proud recipient of the coveted “Idiot Ban”

I completely agree with your views here, and to be honest, after reading the other commentary from atheists, your oped becomes even more relevant. I pray for those who cannot or will not have faith in the one God, because they cannot recognize Evil for what it is. How can you fight against an enemy you cannot name or will not recognize? Evil is not just “bad things or people who do bad things” Evil is a conscious presence who I will not name here, who actively works against God and Godly people, to create chaos in the world and destroy hope and faith. Those with eyes to see and ears to listen see this Evil every day, and use prayer and faith in our God as the only way to push back. I pray for the innocents sent too soon to their Lord, and for their families, that they may come to accept their deaths and forgive their killer.

Yes, it’s about decorum, compassion at time like this. Any sane person should immediately default to a general inadequacy at a time like this. That means that discipline which all mature adults should have developed while they were ‘growing up’: that of ‘holding your tongue’.

That “bright line” can be harsh, aggressive, unnecessary when it is asserted in responses to the column. I say that, while realizing that Mr. Erickson drew bright lines with his original comments, the responses seem to be gratuitously diverse.

Diversity is over-rated.

I strongly disagree. “Respect for God” more often than not has nothing do with religion.

Now who’s making “sweeping” statements? The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and, for that matter, the American Revolution were based in achieving liberty from Britain. Religion was not used as a pretext, since the colonists who fought against the British were of many different faiths. They fought based on the belief that our Creator intended for men to be free to join any religion or none–something that most religions of the time did not carry as a fundamental belief.

Mr. Dad…because you believe in “good and evil” proves that you are not a true atheists…or you would not know the difference.

You can’t have reason without God. If you are atheist…you can have self-justification, wherein you are God….but then reason does not follow.

I disagree. You have no more standing to say I’m not a true atheist than I have to say you are not a true Christian (or whatever you are). When I say I’m an atheist, I mean one and only one thing – that I, personally, don’t believe in God. Do you “know” that slavery is evil? If so, how did you arrive at that knowledge?

An excellent principle, which I also do my best to follow. So is that the principle that guides your definition of good and evil? If so, I think you and I are on the same page.

It is simpler, we need to recognize what is the motivation behind these shootings… It is not guns.

Even though the basic principle stated by rightlane111 is solid, that principle in and of itself isn’t enough to establish a means of identifying and differentiating between good and evil, is it? Isn’t there the danger that defining good and evil in the context of something subjective, i.e. “what I would have others do unto me”, can leave the personal susceptible to a biased or incorrect interpretation of what is good/evil dependent on their emotions rather than on logic and reason?

That’s a fair question, and that’s why I was curious as to how one arrives at the knowledge that slavery is evil. Where does that objective knowledge come from?

OK – I’ll try to check it out sometime.

My feelings are very similar to yours. I believe every person should be treated as having inherent worth and dignity, and slavery is terribly counter to that belief. Because slavery strips that worth and dignity away, I believe it is evil. But the Bible permits slavery. Thus, while I have read many things in the Bible I agree with, it is not my moral guide in and of itself.

So you believe that disease–multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, macular degeneration, polycystic ovary disease, all cancers, brain diseases, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s….in other words, *all disease,* is “evil… which is loosed” and “is an effort to destroy the common good by making good appear powerless, ineffectual, weak”?
I take it, then, that you believe an ill physical state (and what we term “mental illness” IS an ill physical state of the brain and the nervous system), down to a bout with a rhinovirus, is a result of evil, that a succumbing of the body to a pathogen is ther result of evil, that pathogens, even those that live symbiotically in us, indeed are needed by us (consider the gut) are evil?
I don’t “get” it.

Doggone it – I was hoping you would read those texts, experience a blinding light, then follow Christ. But since you want to make your road to Christianity difficult for me, here goes an inadequate summary of what I am talking about, leaning heavily on N.T. Wright.

For Aristotle and those who came after him, there were four principle virtues – courage, justice, prudence and temperance. They were the “hinges” for the door that opens to a flourishing human being. They are not the only virtues, but they are the central ones. Their focus is on the individual, culminating in a hero walking through crowds to great applause. That was the goal.

Jesus saw the goal, and the definition of a flourishing human being, differently. Of course, the four virtues were important, but they were only two dimensions of a three-dimensional existence. Love, kindness and forgiveness are essential to Christ, and Christianity, as is humility – which would be rated as worthless by the pagan world.

Christ came to earth as the Son of God. Christmas is the joyous celebration of that fact – he came to earth! He cared that much about me! Christianity is the only religion that dares to not only make the claim that God came and dwelt among us, but that is was necessary. He taught us how to live, yes, but he offered himself as a willing sacrifice. Jesus paid the price of the incredible sin we see in the world – a debt that none of us could pay, a debt that only he could pay. We cannot work our way to heaven, no matter how hard we try. Jesus did the work for us on the cross. He paid the Great Debt.

Our Hero went to the cross willingly, even though he could have called legions of angels to destroy creation. Inside-out. Upside- down. Our Hero was humble, and loving, and caring, and forgiving – not a glorious warrior as was anticipated, or called for by the ethics of the day. Inside-out. Upside-down. He was born in a barn, was falsely accused, beaten and nailed to a wooden cross as most of those closest to him fled, and most of those who watched jeered. And he calls us not to be heroes in the sense of Aristotle, but heroes in the sense that He was. Inside-out. Upside-down. He who created everything set aside his glory and came to earth to be with His creation, and to give us a glimpse of heaven – what it will be like in eternity.

The most important thing, and the thing that matters, is that he did not remain in the tomb. Without the cross, His example is incomplete, and without Him rising from the tomb, he is only a teacher who met an untimely end.

He wanted all of his creation to be reconciled with Him and to be in relationship with Him forever.

So, I guess that is a start.

No offense taken – fair question. I recall reading Old Testament passages (Exodus & Leviticus maybe?) that were very descriptive about the rules of buying, selling and treating slaves, as if slavery was a given. Those verses did not say slavery was wrong (except that God’s “chosen people” should not be made slaves). I also remember reading in Paul’s letters, instructions that slaves should obey their masters. My recollection is that Paul said slaves should be treated humanely, but never said that slavery was evil. I don’t remember Jesus saying anything about slavery one way or the other. If you’ll bear with me, I’m sure I can find these passages by googling. I’d also be curious to know where the Bible explicitly forbids slavery. Will update soon.

Well done, Jack. That’s was superb.

And given how personal that relationship with God can be…it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? A thousand times a day I can find myself tempted to do or say something that I know would not be pleasing to God for me to do. Or I can fail to do things that I know would be pleasing to Him for me to do. I don’t always succeed in overcoming those temptations either. Human weakness, all of my own.

Yet the amazing scope of love He displayed, taking on my failures, weaknesses and sins on Himself for my sake….it leaves no questions at all to the phrase “no greater love” doesn’t it?

Yes. They are all product of original sin…the fall of man. It allowed evil to enter the world and brought death and sickness to the world.

I positively believe that God does not exist. I do not seek to prove or disprove my belief, because I don’t think either is possible. I’ve always understood that atheists believe there is no God, and agnostics are not sure which way to believe. Going by that understanding, I am an atheist.

As the song says, when I think of it I scarce can take it in.
You are kind, but N.T. Wright deserves the credit.

based on that, if you continue to comment on this thread you are inevitably going to get banned. My advice to you is to find another thread to comment on.

While it’s true that Reagan did close such hospitals, I find that when people say this today, they use it as a political argument to attack the opposing political party and are uninterested in today’s realities concerning the mentally ill.
First, you are indeed correct that many who are homeless on the streets of our cities are the mentally ill. However, do not believe that they have no families, families that wished/wish to care for them. There are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, extended families who wish that they COULD get their ill family member to stay with them or get them into treatment.
However, they have to fight the judges, the courts, who make it very hard early on to force the family member into treatment.
I am sick of progressives who love to lay this problem at the feet of a governor, a POTUS, who has been out of office for decades.
Look to the liberal judges, to their liberal policies of “oh, we can’t commit someone or even force him to ‘get help’ because he hasn’t done anything wrong yet.”
People on this blog know what I mean by progressive judges.

And none of these great atrocities [even if they were true and historical] hold a candle to the victims of atheism under Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Nor under the nihilistic, post modern philosophy of fascism and Hitler.

actually it is true only in the most superficial way. The Supreme Court ruled in 1975 that a person could not be confined against their will unless they were done so by court order. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson

Mental hospitals began closing in California in 1957 with the Short-Doyle Act and accelerated in 1968 with the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which made community based care the norm. Your rush to blame Reagan for a trend which began before he was governor is startling.

Nationwide mental hospitals began closing after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson. Any funding cut was done by a Democrat Congress.

Interesting notes there by Wiki. My understanding has always been that servants were treated extremely well…even to the point of being taken in as a member of a family if they had been serving for an extended period of time. And that the reference to “slaves” had more to do with the “spoils of war”…that they were taken captive and acted as slaves rather than being killed, and this also allowed time for the captives to become acclimated to a new societal structure.

It wasn’t “slavery” in the terms of slavery that we think of today, with a tyrannical or cruel master who misused authority for the purpose of acting as an oppressive influence on those who were under that authority.

Okay, thanks. At least now I understand your position better. All dis-ease on earth is the result of man’s fall, Original Sin.
Now, do you think it good to use our free will to cure some of the results of our Fall? Do you think it worthy, do you think it part of man’s good nature in his battle with evil to use his intellect to do research, to use technology in that research, to donate money to that research, to educate oneself and society, etc. all in an effort to alleviate the suffering from at least one result of man’s fall, the physical state we called “disease”?

In short it is very possible to have a strong moral code and live a just life without the belief in the supernatural.

But your moral code is most likely still derived from Christian ethics because those ethics saturate the culture that you developed in. What happens a couple of generations down the road as those ethics are increasing marginalized and people develop without being saturated in them?

The Nazi scenario is really an example of inaccurate premises in an emotional situation being used to attempt justify the principle that lying is sometime morally acceptable.

The faulty premise is that the Nazi’s soldier’s actions are dependent on your answer. Guess what – it’s not necessarily so. Which means there are far more effective ways to respond besides a simple yes or no.

My answer would be that the writers of the Bible, and Jesus, dealt with things as they were, while knowing that things would not remain as they were as the Kingdom neared.

For example “render unto Caesar”, knowing that soon, there would be no Caesar, and no Roman Empire.
Jesus did not say that slavery was evil, but there are many things he did not single out as being evil. He depended on the development of Christian character and the involvement of the Holy Spirit in order for His followers to make that call.

Now the Washington Post is reporting that he *did* use the rifle. Earlier in the day it was that he had not used it, that he had left it in the car.

You missed the ‘at least, not according to the ‘other’.
At the time, Protestants didn’t see Catholics as praying to G-d, but to the Pope in Rome. Catholics didn’t see Anglicans as praying to G-d, but as a religion with the King of England as it’s head. As so on and so forth.
It’s quite easy to see in history. I mean, had the Catholics and the Protestants been all peachy-keen together, there would never have been a 30-years war in Germany (where many of our immigrants came from)… nor the problems in Ireland (more immigrants), nor in Poland and Russia (even more of our immigrants).

Then what do you do with a patient in the throes of psychosis? And after? Or before?

That is the essence of the question, and the issue, and the problem.

Hell, yeah we need to protect ourselves, our kids, life, no matter if the bomb maker makes his bomb freely or if he is led to it through physiological madness.
The shooter in AZ who killed innocents? Did you see the look on his face? That is the “look” of schizophrenia. It sickens me so few people have been educated to know that, but they can look at the colors of nfl uniforms and tell you the cities those colors represent.
Have you seen the pic of this kid released today? The thin face, but more importantly, the wide-eyed blank stare, the look of a person with NO affect at all? I wouldn’t say it’s the look of a schizophrenic. It definitely IS the look of a deranged person.
Too often people think that a bright person or a person capable of using words that form decent sentences or a person who walks a straight line without wavering or a person who can complete tasks is not “crazy.” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. So, they walk among us and yes, many are indeed ticking time bombs. You bet.

Boring and baloney. I could care less about your bleeding heart crap.

PS Giving someone a drug such as a hallucinogen is no where near the same as a mental issue. It is like trying to compare a piano to the drums.

Now, I am going to move along, maybe you will find someone willing to cry that river with you.

Yep, you must be correct. The poor guy is not responsible, his poor mind controlled him.

The stupidity is getting deep in here.

If we are going to “come together”, then let’s start finding common ground instead of using tragedy for partisan gain. What do we all (or at least most of us) agree here? That the mentally ill should not have access to deadly weapons.

Seems like a step that most of us would agree is that HIPAA be amended to allow for certain diagnoses of mental illness (such as psychosis, sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies) should land folks on the DO NOT SELL list on insta-check, and that physicians issuing that diagnosis must provide that info to local authorities.

Not saying this would eliminate all mass killings — nothing will do that — but it is a step with which I would bet 80% of Americans could agree.

Going beyond that to seek to outlaw the private ownership of certain firearms, as the statist left will surely try, will NOT help us “come together” but instead will drive us further apart. But what do you want to bet that this is exactly what the Obamites do?

But who constitutes what moral absolutes are legitimate absolutes – or even what is “good” or “evil”?.

The Nazi’s had moral absolutes – were those absolutes correct? They killed millions of people (Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Disabled, Mentally Retarded, etc) – all because their moral absolute was that superior people had the right to dominate over others and purge society of supposed “inferior elements.”

Simply believing in a moral absolute doesn’t make it correct or good. This is where subjective scrutiny comes into play: we have to somehow be able to assess if a moral absolute really is moral – or even absolute.

But that is not to say that there are no absolutes. I think they are just more vague than we want to believe. For example, I’ve been on multiple political blogs today – of all sorts of different prominent ideologies – and they’re all saying the exact same TWO things:

1) What happened was definitely wrong.
2) We should all give some sort of positive effort to ease the pain of the victim’s families and correct the injustice – however small (a prayer, a moment of silence, possibly even political action, etc).

I personally know many people on these sites; some sites are predominantly atheist, some (like here) are not. One is even mostly foreign. But those differences didn’t stop any of the people on them from coming to an overwhelming consensus on both the negativity of what occurred AND the positivity of a range of acts that can help resolve the current dilemma of negativity – and acknowledging that something needs to be done to avoid this in the future.

Are these not examples of moral absolutes, both positive and negative, stretching beyond philosophical and societal boundaries?

I believe that there is an intuitive sense that all people (in their right mind of course) have about what is “good” and what is “bad” in a very general way. When we get to details however – that is where the line between objectivity and subjectivity becomes more blurred.

I also have a theory of how an atheist without moral absolutes can rationally come to the same moral understanding as a Christian. It’s not as impossible, believe it or not.

Hey runner12, how are you? I sent you another message, and you never replied back. You may have missed my formal apology which has been eating at me for months. I am very sorry about our last encounter, and I’d like to make it up to you somehow.

That said, I think it’s possible for someone to rationally come to what is right or wrong. But I am concerned with the lack of acknowledgement of mental illness on this site.

What say you about depression and a resulting suicide? Any person with a Judeo-Christian understanding or an understanding derived from such would never do such a thing – and yet suicide permeates every and all ideologies and philosophies (including Christians).

In short: do you think it’s possible for someone to lose their sense of right and wrong due to mental illness?

That’s all this time (getting better at keeping my responses short!) Hope you well – God bless, and Merry Christmas!

No worries. Disqus is a pain sometimes and it takes forever to load on an Ipad, so I did not read your post.

Read through more comments, including mine, and you will see that I and others are very much concerned about the mental health aspect of this. In fact, I am very concerned that this (as well as the influence of violence in the media) will be completely overshadowed by the politicization of the gun debate.

As a Christian, I believe that we are both spiritual and physical. Thus mental illness is both a spiritual and physical condition. I do think that people can become so overwhelmed with depression and commit suicide, even when in principle they strongly disagree with it. I have great compassion for these people.

But this murderer was not simply depressed. He was psychotic and should mever have been walking the streets. We have demonized institutionalizing individuals who are a danger to others due to mental illness. This needs to change. We also need to be more bold in reporting these people to the authorities when we see warning signs.

again, without a belief in absolute Truth any life you lead is a moral life. A rational person strives to improve his condition, and arguably the condition of his family, above all. It is the Hobbesian life, short, nasty, brutish, and alone. What you are doing is taking Christian values and claiming they are “rational.”

I’m done here. Have fun with your own mythology.

My religious teacher says that morality doesn’t depend on religion, even a child has a notion of right and wrong based on the golden rule. Religion is to teach us about the reality that is not easily accessible, buried as we are in our daily mundane lives.

Sigh, wasn’t trying to be clever, was asking a legitimate question. Please review the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Or see the down stream comment.

“We believe in good and evil too, and that the senseless violence in Newton certainly represents evil.”
Good and Evil are absolutes. The tables of Good and Evil are handed down by God, and from which no deviation can ever be tolerated. The Roman Catholic Church calls such actions “intrinsinctly evil” – that is there are never any moral reasons for doing them. Athiests, by definition cannot believe in Good and Evil. But, they do believe in “values”. Values are what replace Good and Evil. And Values, but definition are relative. Catholic Values are no different from Calvanist Values, which no different from Muslim Values, which in turn do not differ from Bhuddist Values. In Post-Modern philosophy no Values are more correct than other Values.
For sixty years we’ve been taught that it is almost criminal that the West imposed its Values on the various indigenous peoples of the world. Mayan religion featured human sacrifices. In Pagan Rome and Greece infanticide and matricide were accepted “values”. In today’s Muslim world the mass murdering of children (in schools) or innocent bystanders (in markets, funerals, and mosques) are daily occurences. But, we have been lectured for decades that Christianity and its Western Values are no better than Muslim Values.
Perhaps we in the West are quietly thrilled by such gross acts of immorality. The mass killings of innocents are the new reality TV. We are no different than Nietzsche’s Pale Criminal that finds joy in the knife – that is killing for the sake of killing is the ultimate Value. When you go Beyond Good and Evil (ie create a relatvistic world of Values) this is what you get. Welcome to the Brave New World.

Erick Erickson is the editor in chief. If he wants to post on religion, he can and will. You undoubtedly missed the point that the absence of focus on God and evil is the proble. Let me direct you to this:

Our nation once shared a God who we all prayed to. Increasingly, the loudest voices in the nation are hostile to that God and those who worship him. The conversation at times of evil is immediately drown out by political opportunists seeking to drive their agenda. The news channels meditate on the nature of gun violence and gun restrictions or what other restrictions or laws can ever be used.

We do that, in part, because in times of helplessness it makes us feel like we can do something.

But we can do nothing in the face of evil until we confront evil itself.

The tragedy unfolding today is not an act of the insane, but an act of evil. That evil may drive the shooter insane, but in focusing on the insanity we lose focus on the evil.

I’d expect more of it, not less. And not just from Erick. The poin here is the impact from not focusing on

As a mod said, when you are appointed king of the site, your interpretation of what the rules mean will count and you will make the decisions. When the actual king of the site starts a topic that contains a religious element, your opinion means even less.

Since you seem to be so against anything religious and do not like how the site “broke” its own rules, the only thing to do is for you to leave. We would not want to view you as a hypocrite.

Now move along moron, you are boring and ignorant, two qualities I detest and am unwilling to engage. Especially when you are either unable to understand the meaning of the rule or unwilling to be truthful. Either way I am unwilling to waste my weekly allotment of “spend time with fools” on you.

Agreed. It’s not guns. It’s a complete breakdown of society. We love to blame everyone else for our own shortcomings. It’s the government’s fault. It’s the companies fault. It’s taxes. It’s a lack of God. No. We’re all to blame. Parents used to spend time with their families. They lived and worked together in an agrarian society. They farmed, hunted, worshipped and struggled together in the day to day living. Today both parents work and the substitute babysitter is video games and violence, but even this doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. We are all role models for our children and whether we want to admit it or not, the way we treat others, is learned behavior and that behavior becomes our children’s behavior. People need to get outside and live in nature. Boys and girls need to experience life–take those kids out in to the woods and show them how to hunt with their brains and with their hands. Anyone can use a bushmaster to hunt a deer. Get them out there and show them what it means to survive in nature for a few days alone. My father when I was twelve gave me two things: Ralph Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance” and a hunting knife, then two years later he drove me 200 miles from home out into the woods out around Table Rock Lake in Missouri and dropped me off and said, Hope to see you home by next Saturday. You get resourceful, but at the same time you learn to treat others with respect even if you don’t agree. Kids today live vicariously through the media and their parents live vicariously through their children. When we talk about being self reliant, it means just that. Live what you preach, and teach your own to do the same.

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

As progressive politics expands, divisions increase. There are smaller and smaller groups of “victims” to be championed by the state. But it separates us from each other for the positive things that used to bring us all together into “community”. Erick is right. When the only times we come together without grievances and divisions is that brief window when we are in shock because of tragedy, it is not healthy. It doesn’t promote a healthy society. Like Erick, I believe that the more we deny God in any public venue, the more unhealthy we will become. The more displays–symptoms–of that “illness” will be manifested. Our Constitution specifies that “state” and “Church” were separate entities. That the “state” should not create the “church”, not that the two should in all ways remain rigidly separated. That the “state” should not sanction any specific religion or any faith at all. But to deny faith’s 1st amendment right is to try to separate body from soul. To separate body from soul is death.

Erick I believe your
article Coming Together was very good.

Here is I think is a very
good written article and the link.

Child Safety and State Failure

Ludwig von Mises Institute :
http://mises.org/daily/2354/Child-Safety-and-State-Failure

you’re right. murder of 20-25 native american indians and slavery top the list. right?

you’re right. this guy is an idiot. the murder of 20-25 million native american indians and slavery over millions of Americans probably tops the list.

how are facts spam?

I’m not selling anything other than the truth.

Prove me wrong.

not a very good evolutionary strategy

dad21jedi – There are few books that may inform you from a scientific perspective about afterlife. One book is titled “The afterlife experiments” and another is called “proof of heaven.” The first book is a compilation of controlled experiments yielding empirical evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and the second book was quite recently written by a renowned neuroscientist as a first hand experience, and previously a staunch critic of the presence of … God. My references herein are not meant as a coercive contribution – just the facts. I too am a scientist. Don’t take my word for it. Read, absorb, challenge, conclude.

Hi, Jack & norishman, interesting discussion, and I agree. More simply, our initial approach should be to “feed the hungry, clothe the naked and comfort the oppressed” as we are admonished to do over and over throughout the Bible, not to mention it’s the example Jesus set. He fed before teaching. He met the physical needs before the spiritual. This is how our light shines so that others may see.

Realistically and politically.. The reason there’s not more “togetherness” is because the ideas of our adversaries haven’t been vanquished. There’s an entire generation that doesn’t know who Ronald Reagan is. Nor are they familiar with the man he replaced, for example. Nor are they familiar with the conditions they operated under.. (The Cold War and the USSR, the inflation, etc) For them, George Bush is the contemporary face of “Conservatism”

Our ideas will have to be implemented in an unadulterated manner, and be proven to work and to produce superior outcomes before there will be more “togetherness” in a political sense.

I would submit that the GOP has done a terrible job of marketing Conservatism, and specifically during the Bush years.. And that if our differences are boiled down to (for example) large government intrusion V/S huge government intrusion. Small losses of freedom and abrogations of the Constitution V/S immense ones.. Our pointless militarism V/S theirs and Tax “cuts” that are merely deferments, because we persist in growing a federal apparatus that will eventually have to be fed, that we don’t stand as good a chance of vanquishing the opposition, proving the merit of our beliefs and drawing people to us as we otherwise would.

If we vanquish the opposition for a generation and our ideas are seen as superior, we’ll be much more “together” than we currently are.

In a sense it’s our own fault that we’re not more together.. Conservatism hasn’t performed as favorably as it might have.. and it certainly hasn’t been marketed as well as it might have been.

IMVHO.