Thursday, October 19, 2006

God's Out. There Are Consequences

Stolen from Neo-Con*Tastic

Dear God,

Why didn't you save the school children at:

Moses Lake, Washington 2/2/96, Bethel, Alaska 2/19/97, Pearl, Mississippi 10/1/97, West Paducah, Kentucky 12/1/97, Stamp, Arkansas 12/15/97, Jonesboro, Arkansas 3/24/98, Edinboro, Pennsylvania 4/24/98, Fayetteville, Tennessee 5/19/98, Springfield, Oregon 5/21/98, Richmond, Virginia 6/15/98, Littleton, Colorado 4/20/99, Taber, Alberta, Canada 5/28/99, Conyers, Georgia 5/20/99, Deming, New Mexico 11/19/99, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma 12/6/99, Santee, California 3/ 5/01 and El Cajon, California 3/22/01?

Sincerely,

Concerned StudentReply:

My Sweet Child,

I am not allowed in schools.

Sincerely,

God

Slightly more serious: note that all these events occurred about one generation after Roe v Wade?

Just co-incidence, of course.

8 comments:

Amy said...

Slightly more serious: note that all these events occurred about one generation after Roe v Wade?

Of course. Don't think that my generation is so naive as to think that any of us could have been sacrificed on the altar of abortion. Many of us are very aware that our mothers could have easily gotten rid of us.

I was born ten years to the day after Roe v. Wade passed, so I'm one of the "survivors" of a horrific and evil practice that has taken the lives of millions of my peers.

So how can we expect anyone who's committed violence in schools to respect the sacredness of life, especially the lives of children, when the past 30 years have allowed many people to toss away the unborn?

Much like women are able to kill their children because they are unwanted or inconvenient, school shooters have been raised in a culture that teaches them they are justified in doing whatever they need to do should they feel somehow hurt, inconvenienced, or otherwised challenged.

They may go to jail, but a portion of the population will always defend their actions as the result of something else...bullying, a bad homelife, etc.

What it all boils down to is this: few are held accountable for their actions anymore. Violence, death, and immorality follow suit.

Anonymous said...

Slightly more serious: note that all these events occurred about one generation after Roe v Wade?

Of course, all of these shootings took place after the GOP and the NRA took control of Congress; or after the rise of the religious right; or after Watergate; or after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Dad, you need to work on the causal explanation. It's mighty weak.

Anonymous said...

Oh goody, let's start listing all the bad things that happened BEFORE Roe v. Wade.

We haven't had World War III. We haven't had 50 million lives lost in a war, including more than 400,000 U.S. troops.

Case closed. By Dad's logic, keep Roe v. Wade, because it keeps us from world wars.

Dad29 said...

You think it's post hoc/propter hoc; think in terms of consequences.

Roe was a positivist statement of the absurd: that some lives were not sacred.

There's room to argue about the consequences of materialism and consumerism.

But there's little wiggle-room over the consequences of the statement made by Roe.

These are major-league new criminal ventures. Dahmer and Gien (there are others) were as deadly, but they were serial killers with other psyco-sexual problems.

Classroom/school killers don't fit that pattern, nor the pattern of Hitler.

Stalin. Pot, and Mao were the only comparos in the 20th Century--and guess what? They had the same ideology as Roe, at root.

Anonymous said...

Dad, it's not that complex. Not if we get back to where you began.

School shootings and much more mayhem go back a long way; there have been plenty of "comparos" (comparates) much closer to the point than yer Stalins and Hitlers.

Look at studies of school violence going back many decades across the country.

Heck, closer to home, look at history books -- like Wisconsin Death Trip (the book, not the movie, although the movie isn't bad). And then tell me that the world and Wisconsin are not better places.

But if you must date the downfall of civilization to 1973, I would have to agree. That's the year that it became clear that Republicans had put the White House in the hands of a crook.

It certainly has been downhill in American politics much of the time since, since most of the time, it's been in Republican control. Not that they ever wanted to use that control to actually repeal Roe v. Wade and lose that wedge issue with the unthinking, uncaring followers.

Dad29 said...

Perhaps you'd like to share a bit of your knowledge, citing specific instances of mass-killings in schools PRIOR to 1973 (in this country.)

BTW, "Nixon's a Crook" is not exactly news to sentient Americans. But here we're dealing with a somewhat larger issue.

And thanks for the tip. I now see that the hatred for GWB has to do with his Supreme Court appointments--which will have the effect of overturning Roe.

Anonymous said...

I have no idea what half of your post is about, where it comes from -- not this thread. But par for your course.

Here's some food for your arcing thoughts:

"Actually despite the increase in dramatic cases of multiple victims, like the Columbine shootings, school violence in general, and homicides in schools are going down, and have been since 1992. There were 40 school shooting deaths during the 1997-98 school year, down from 55 in 1992-93. (National School Safety Center at Pepperdine University). The chances of a child being killed at school are less than one in a million, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. The most current data on school violence (not just homicides) in the United States also indicates that over all school violence (including rape, sexual assault, robbery, attacks with weapons, and suicide) has been declining since 1993. Schools are actually the safest places for children to be; 99% of children die away from school, (Washington Post, Justice Policy Institute). Children are far more likely to be victims of violent crime at home or in their neighborhoods and most crime in schools is non-violent theft. (U.S. Department of Education, 1999)."

The National School Safety Center has a lot of useful data for you:
http://www.schoolsafety.us/pubfiles/school_crime_and_violence_statistics.pdf

As for the specific article with a lot of data on pre-1970s school violence, I'm sorry that I didn't save that cite. But I'll find it and get it to you, too.

Dad29 said...

Thanks. The pre-1970 info will be very helpful, either way.

Don't really care much about rape, assault/battery, etc.

Just mass-killings.