Colorado Carnage
By Jennifer King
kingfish@ucnsb.net
Featured Rightgrrl December 1998
May 2, 1999

Nietzche said, "If God is dead, all is permissible." God was proclaimed dead, famously, on a Time magazine cover of the 1960's and it sure seems to follow that everything is now permissible.

The boys who gunned down their fellow classmates were evil, no doubt. However, who was responsible for that dark void in their souls? Was it their parents, perhaps obsessed with social status and not their children - never noticing that their sons were making pipe bombs in their garages and leaving sawed off shotgun barrels in their rooms? Was it the school principal who was ignorant of the fact that a group of kids were showing up at his school every day wearing black trench coats and Nazi regalia? Was it the teacher who helped these children make a video for class showing themselves blowing away fellow students in a macabre parallel to the actual event? Such tolerance, such diversity, such open-mindedness. Let us celebrate the individual above all, and allow our kids to parade around school with shaved heads, pierced tongues and baggy pants drooping over exposed boxer shorts. Wouldn't want to "stifle" their creativity, you know.

The liberal pundits in the 1960's urged us all to misinterpret the First Amendment, and we went along. "Free Speech" now excuses all sorts of deviancy, from pornography to ceaseless gore to obscenities uttered nightly on TV during "family" hour. We are pummeled with affronts to decency and morality at every turn, the religious among us mocked and ridiculed - held up as fuddy-duddies, fogies and cranks.

Far better to be deviant and hip.

Today, "Freedom of religion" has been twisted into "Freedom FROM religion" and every mention of our nation's Judeo-Christian heritage has been systematically erased from the school system. If those boys had proselytized about Jesus, quoted the Torah or put down a prayer rug in order to pray towards Mecca instead of making that video, you can bet the principal would have known about them and they would have gotten a stern lecture - perhaps even have been suspended.

With religion erased, the void in these children's souls was filled with all the dark horrors of liberalism unbound. Consequence-less immorality and personal gratification at all costs. Dennis Rodman in drag. Marilyn Manson burning on a cross. Cop killing rap lyrics. Senseless violence on TV, on the big screen and in video games. Newborn infants in trash cans and toilets. Meaningless life and the embrace of death. Who, without a strong moral foundation, could avoid being tainted by this dark and evil side of our God-less society.

Why should we be surprised that our kids are so depressed and hopeless. Our President mouths platitudes about "seeking alternatives to violence" while he pummels the hapless Serbians. Feminists decry love and marriage and heap scorn upon men and fathers - deeming them unnecessary and intolerable. Environmentalists tell us that the earth will be uninhabitable in 20 years. We have no heroes anymore, only anti-heroes - and they are celebrated, heralded and made millionaires by our corrupt society.

John Milton said, "None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom but license". Our Founding Fathers clearly understood the need for morality in a free society, which is why the discussion of proper behavior and restraint takes up much of their writings. But today, our current "Father" in the White House is a poster boy for 60's morality and laissez faire "so what" adherence to the rules. Rules are made to be broken, you know. Hail to the counter-culture.

However, a bright spark of hope glistens in the aftermath of Littleton. That light came in the courage of six students. The gunmen asked, "Do you believe in God?". Six students stood up and answered, "yes". They looked into the face of evil and spoke bravely for the ultimate good. When good permeates society, evil withers on the vine like the twisted entity that it is. When evil is shunned and defied, good will prevail as it did in America for so many years. Let this be the legacy of Littleton.

This article copyright © 1999 by Jennifer King and may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of its author. All rights reserved.