The Amish child said, "Shoot me first." The survivors counseled forgiveness and prayed for the soul of the murderer. This was all too solemn and too real to be purveyed by the mainstream media as picturesque curiosity, horse-and-buggy morality in the age of the Hummer.
The Amish modeled courage and healing for the rest of America. They modeled a peace built not on intimidation and conquest but on respect and forgiveness. They shut down the cynics for almost a week. They grieved, they buried their dead and they reached out to the killer's widow.
Kneel with them, mourn with them, rise up angry.
The body count in our nation's schools over a period of barely a week was eight innocents: students, a teacher, a principal, shot point-blank by psycho-terrorists with easy access to personal arsenals. Another eight were injured and at least one of them, an Amish girl, is in grave condition. More than 400 people have died in school violence in the last dozen years, many hundreds of others have been wounded, and uncounted close calls - like the one this past Monday morning - have been averted.
On Monday, a 13-year-old boy in a black trench coat walked into his school in Joplin, Mo., with a Mac-90 assault rifle and fired it into the ceiling. No one was injured, but "it was a very close call," the superintendent said. Let me repeat: 13-year-old boy, Mac-90. An officer interviewed by the Associated Press said, "Police believe they know where the student got the weapon but would not disclose those details. He said it was not uncommon for people in the area to own high-power firearms."
We're stalled in the pretense of not knowing. "Experts can only speculate . . ." Who the hell are these experts the media invoke in the wake of every slaughter, to blink and shrug through their fog of innocence and tell us nothing? We know, I submit, more than we think we know. We know that the path to begin addressing this horror lies in the direction we most fear: the path of disarmament.
"This is imitation of Christ at its most naked," author Tom Shachtman told the New York Times, speaking of the Amish practice of nonviolence (I came across the quote in a fine column by Rod Dreher in the Dallas Morning News). Who of us dares to stand naked in the presence of our deepest fears? Yet this is what we must do. What a leap we'll have to make if we are to save our children - if we are to survive.
This is not about having the right religion. This is not about being Amish. This is about living our lives with a calm courage that understands that survival lies in reaching out, not striking back. Even more so, it is about renouncing the culture of heavily armed fear that surrounds us. Look where it's gotten us.
Consider: "But the enduring tragedy of Bush's 'mother of all presidential miscalculations,'" writes Robert Parry for Consortium News, "is that his underlying theory for addressing the problem of Islamic militancy hasn't changed. It is still a strategy of 'kill, kill, kill' - get revenge for 9/11 even against Muslims who had nothing to do with it - and that is likely to continue, if not expand, after the Nov. 7 elections."
Milk-truck driver Charlie Roberts, who was angry with God, had pretty much the same policy. So did the Columbine killers and all the other lost souls who have yielded to the ultimate temptation of our times. What if this kind of behavior were not role-modeled from the top?
A week after the murder of the schoolgirls in Lancaster County, Pa., and the day after the 13-year-old boy loosed a round of Mac-90 ammo at a water pipe on the ceiling of his school in Joplin, the Bush administration convened a summit on school violence in Maryland. It was led by, of all people, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the guy who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and asserted that torture was legal.
The highlight of the summit seems to have been a rebuke of Bush administration policy by the manager of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in Raleigh, N.C. He wanted to know why the administration attempted to cut the $347 million allotted for school-safety grants for states this year.
In the context of what the administration actually stands for - bloated militarism, niggardly incompetence in the social sphere and, of course, a president who's above the law - the platitudes the first lady and others mouthed at the summit were particularly painful. "I urge all adults across the country to take their responsibility to children - their own children, and their community's children - seriously," Laura Bush said.
Responsibility this vague has a way of being passed along to someone else. I fear Marian Fisher won't be the last child to have to say, "Shoot me first."
(Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com.)
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
I have been a gunowner for 50 years. They will have to pry my cold dead fingers off the trigger.... etc, etc. The answer to the guns in schools, (and at home), is not to melt down all the guns in private hands, but to EDUCATE OUR PARENTS AND KIDS. When kids get guns at home- put the parents/gun owners in jail. Our schools need to be better funded so we have enough teachers and counselors to indentify and help kids at risk. All kinds of risks.
We shove violence down the throats of our kids on TV, video games, and alas, on the evening news, (not to mention violence at home), and then are suprised when violence erupts from a troubled kid. Iraq is a fine example of what we are teaching our kids. If we "stay the course", in four years these kids will be in Iraq,(or Iran, or North Korea), getting there asses shot off over there. Of course, everyone will bitch about the higher taxes to raise the bar in our schools, but what has the Iraq war cost us? And remember, without intervention, violence in our schools will continue, whether with a gun, a knife, or a claw hammer.
by
Quietman (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 1:34:19 AM
Study history (including our own) and the reason WHY we were guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms becomes immediately apparent. It transcends the issue of defending ourselves against petty criminals. Some might enjoy this video as a reference: http://tree3.com/Video/china.wmv
by
Joe Plummer (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 3:11:58 AM
I cannot fathom how people can be so surprised when someone goes into a school and blows a few teachers and students away. We are living in a society that glorifies violence at every turn. Whether in musical lyrics, television or cinematic bloodbaths, video games where the dominant color is red, or in books, magazines, and other forms of media, we Americans dearly love violence.
I remember many years ago, Larry Flint published an issue of Hustler that showed real violence, real gore, and real gunshot victims. In other words, he took the glorious mask off violence and showed the nauseating reality of it. Oh, the outcry! People were shocked and disgusted because for once, violence was shown for what it was, revolting.
Our society is being destroyed because of the eroding away the middle class. Parents can't afford to live on one income. Since mom and dad both have to work, who's there to make sure Billy and Suzie aren't running amuck? No one.
Billy and Suzie are fed a diet rich in "sanitized" televised violence. They snack on heaping helpings of blood drenched video games. Their world is an unceasing orgy of violence. With no one or nothing there to give them perspective, they begin to think this is the norm.
So it's no surprise when they snap and take out half the cafeteria at school. They are only reacting to the world in the only way they know. Violence has been hammered into their heads morning, noon, and night. What's really surprising is when they don't react violently. That's almost amazing!
So what can we do? Apparently nothing. For right or wrong, the First Amendment assures that the "entertainment" blood-fest will continue. The demands on parents to make ends meet assures that Billy and Suzie will continue to be immersed in that blood-fest. The ready availability of firearms and the Second Amendment assure there will be a plentiful arsenal on hand when they do snap. And since one doesn't need guns to commit murder, only a mind inundated with violence, we can rest assured that even those who can't get firearms will still be there to do their damage.
You know, maybe the Amish have it right in more ways than we know. Mom runs the house and corrals the kids. Dad works the farm. When the kids are old enough, they work as well. No TV, no radio, no computers, no morbid unending media bloodbaths. Hell, if I thought I could handle it, I'd be an Amish myself. Of course, the fact that I am gay might preclude me. Also the fact I'd have to give up my beard is simply out of the question.
Oh well, at least I know that somewhere in America, there are some people who aren't drowning in an orgy of blood. It's a small comfort, anyway.
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 3:33:07 AM
You may have noticed how rapidly the schoolhouse was knocked down in Nickel Mine, Pennsylvania.
In the dark before sunrise the bulldozers went to work. They were not taking any chances that someone would intervene and want to examine the building a little more closely for evidence of what really happened and why.
This is a tip off for those who are "Tuned" into our war criminals and some of their "Intelligence" operations here in Der Hausland.
The Mainstream news media reported that the building was brought down so quickly to help the community "heal." The mainstream media is an instrument of warfare against the people of this nation.
The plane crash in New York; how much insurance did they have on that fellow?
The other killing in a school in Colorado; the perpetrator was sitting in the school parking lot for a couple of hours before the attack? Gee, wonder why he wasn't questioned by the locals.
This is all part and parcel of operation "Chaos" something done at all levels to fill our heads and place us under their control.
Our nuclear war fighting elite know that we have minds so they want to fill them with shit pudding, so as to never allow the people to get a clear thought.
Locally, the same day a 17 year old girl told Police that a man in a Ford Contour tried to pull her by the arm into his car. This again is a classic "Intelligence" operation, designed mostly for the evening news.
She no doubt goes to a church that does these things for the "Intelligence" services. It is a form of role playing that is known in the business as "Staging." They teach these bunch of stupid asswholes for Jesus, how to set their neighbors up and generally degrade other people.
The reward is that their stupider parents and other relatives get to keep their jobs as prison guards.
Many of their lame relatives are put onto Social Security as a payoff.
Many of the folks who are serving prison time were unknowingly set up by the "Intelligence" services.
One family that this writer spoke with, learned that their young son was enticed by an young girl into sexual acts with him. He was given 40 years in prison.
The family were simple folks who may have never endured having a clear thought in their lives, and were not active in either the political or union movement.
Why then was their son set up by a young girl from a local church?
The answer is that his conviction allowed the State to turn him into a "Slave."
"Intelligence" operations are really manifestations of human predator behavior. America is overloaded with predatory types of people, so human predation is popular.
The system itself creates predator behavior, with the intent to use the privations suffered by the ordinary people, to put them to commit other predator acts to further the designs of the "Murdering Rich," the biggest predators of them all.
If not for nuclear weapons and the plans to use them on us, it could all be considered a malignant form of humor.
It brings to Mind the conversation between the Wall street investment banker Mr. Mulheren and Ivan Boesky.
Mulheren said: "Stay out of the papers Boesky, the people might figure out whats going on. When they figure it out; revolutions come and people get thrown in gas ovens."
It is somewhat interesting that the Wall street war criminals are warning one another about what could happen when the people "Figure it out."
This is why the nuclear weapons were created: For when we all figure it out, they planned all along to nuke us before then.
.
by
Patrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 365 comments)
on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 9:49:46 PM
