Newtown and America's Culture of Death

 

“The horrifying truth is this: we live now in a culture that not only does not respect life, but discards it like trash — not only at the beginning of life, but also at the end, and every place in between.  What has happened to us?” 

— Catholic Deacon Greg Kandra, 2 October 2011

By Jeffrey Lord


Discards life like trash.

One does not have to be a Catholic, which I am not, to appreciate the irony today in the words above from over a year ago by a Catholic Deacon named Greg Kandra. (You can find the full text of Deacon Kandra’s remarks here.)

Since the demands for a national discussion about what caused Newtown are already flowing from President Obama, the New York Times, Washington Post and every liberal with tweetability, they should be respectfully yet candidly obliged.

And the very first issue to mention is what has become the great unmentionable in the world of liberalism, and alas too many other precincts as well — and to say it plainly and hopefully politely.

What went on in Newtown, Connecticut this past Friday — what has been going on at intervals for almost four decades in places like Portland, Oregon, Aurora, Colorado, Virginia Tech, and Columbine, Colorado and, sadly, elsewhere in America for some 39 years since January of 1973 is the wholesale discarding of human life like trash.

The perpetuation of a culture of violence in a society that has turned the protection of the most vulnerable — babies — into the unmentionable.

Now, with 20 innocents murdered in Newtown, it is time for someone to say what for millions is the obvious: the abortion movement’s chickens have come home to roost — again.

Will anything be done? Or will the politicians run and hide?

President Obama traveled to Newtown on Sunday and delivered this nationally televised speech in which he said this:

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change. Since I’ve been president, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by mass shootings, fourth time we’ve hugged survivors, the fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims.

And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and in big cities all across America, victims whose — much of the time their only fault was being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

When one looks at available statistics, in all of American history since these kind of events began to be recorded, (roughly 1863) there is one very interesting find.

From 1863 until 1972 — the last year before Roe v. Wade — in all those 109 years there were 36 mass murder rampages, and that’s before one adds in school shootings of the kind that went on in Newton this last week.

Since 1973, and Roe v. Wade was decided in January of that year, there have been a shocking 54 rampages. Which is to say there have been 54 of these things in the mere 39 years since Roe v. Wade. 

And as mentioned that doesn’t count the school massacres in the U.S. Counting Newtown there have been 5. Before 1973 there was one in 1927 Michigan (where the killer used not bullets but dynamite) and another at the University of Texas in 1966. Since 1973 there have been three — Newtown, Columbine, and Virginia Tech.

Which is to say in all of the recorded American history of school massacres from the time records were first kept, until 1973 — there were but two instances of this. Since 1973, in a mere 39 years there have been three.

The Post decries “political cowardice” in dealing with gun laws. The Times, without the slightest sense of irony — really — actually says:

There is no crime greater than violence against children….

Times columnist Charles Blow — again without the slightest sense of irony — talks about “A Tragedy of Silence” while quoting the leftist Mother Jones magazine about all the mass shootings that magazine has counted (their number is 61) “over the last 30 years.” Meaning columnist Blow makes the point without even realizing he has made it: those mass shooting have occurred in the world created by Roe v. Wade 39 years ago. 

Perhaps more ironic still is a Times column from the paper’s Gail Collins. Collins begins by focusing on Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, the Long Island nurse-turned-congresswoman. McCarthy ran for Congress after her husband died and her son was badly injured in one of those post-Roe v. Wade mass shootings, this particular one on the Long Island Railroad.

McCarthy is nothing if not fervent when it comes to gun control, saying earlier this year on Meet the Press of her House colleagues’ lack of willingness to stand up to the NRA:

A lot of politicians know it’s the right thing to try to fight for something to save lives. They don’t have a spine anymore. They pander to who’s giving them money…

Catch that line about it being the “right thing to try to fight for something to save lives”?

Does McCarthy, a Catholic, stand up to the “pro-choice” — read: abortion — lobby?

Of course not. Not a prayer. She not only gets a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America and whatever contributions come along with that, she has voted against banning partial-birth abortions. So much for Representative McCarthy’s spine about saving the lives of children.

Does Collins mention any of this? You’re kidding, right?

In fairness to Representative McCarthy and all these folks at the Times and the Post, they are far from alone in having this Grand Canyon-sized hypocrisy about violence against defenseless children.

Let’s name some more names, shall we?

Let’s focus on a politician not so familiar to Americans. What is his stance on abortion and what the good Deacon refers to as “a culture that not only does not respect life, but discards it like trash — not only at the beginning of life, but also at the end, and every place in between.”

This politician’s view is this:

With the unwavering belief that our nation’s Constitution protects the right to privacy and a woman’s autonomy over her own body, I have a voting record and moral compass that is unequivocally pro-choice.

Catch that reference to his “moral compass”?

Which is to say, this man is an enthusiastic supporter of what the Deacon calls “a culture …that does not respect life…. but discards it like trash.” Or, in the words of Newtown’s Monsignor Robert Weiss, who spoke at the televised Newtown memorial service that featured President Obama, this man is a staunch supporter of “a culture of death.”

Who is this politician? That would be the new U.S. Senator-elect from Connecticut, Congressman Chris Murphy. Mr. Murphy has been representing the Fifth District of Connecticut the last few years — and yes, you guessed it. Mr. Murphy represents the Fifth District town of Newtown. Where, this past Friday, someone who was bred to the bone in “a culture that does not respect life” walked into a school in Murphy’s own district and proceeded to “discard it like trash.”

Will Senator-elect Murphy suddenly see the light on the moral issue involved with abortion and the corrosive, not to mention horrific, affect Roe v. Wade has now abruptly had on his own constituents with the slaughter of 20 innocents and 6 adults? Doubtful.

Then there’s President Obama’s contribution to all this.

Much quoted is this statement from the President on Friday:

We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics. 

And then the Obama line mentioned above, which he made in his Sunday night speech at Newtown. This one:

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

Change? Really?

Let’s recall that it was Illinois State Senator Obama, when dealing with a state version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, who voted that it was OK by him if babies who emerged alive from their mother after a failed attempt at abortion should be left to die. Or, as, State Senator Obama described them at the time, “that fetus, or child — however you want to describe it.”

Andy McCarthy over at National Review (a different McCarthy altogether than the congresswoman with the same last name) recounts this episode involving a nurse named Jill Stanek, who testified to the Illinois State Senate and State Senator Obama, as follows:

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s the only word that fits. Obama heard the testimony of a nurse, Jill Stanek. She recounted how she’d spent 45 minutes holding a living baby left to die.

The child had lacked the good grace to expire as planned in an induced-labor abortion — one in which an abortionist artificially induces labor with the expectation that the underdeveloped “fetus, or child — however you want to describe it” will not survive the delivery.

Stanek encountered another nurse carrying the child to a “soiled utility room” where it would be left to die. It wasn’t that unusual. The induced-labor method was used for late-term abortions. Many of the babies were strong enough to survive the delivery. At least for a time.

So something had to be done with them. They couldn’t be left out in the open, struggling in the presence of fellow human beings. After all, those fellow human beings — health-care providers — would then be forced to confront the inconvenient question of why they were standing idly by. That would hold a mirror up to the whole grisly business.

Better the utility room. Alone, out of sight and out of mind. Next case. 

Quite literally, then- State Senator Obama was face to face with a true story of a living baby being “discarded as trash.” The man who shed tears for the children of Newtown could find none for those babies born alive after failed abortions — and signed on to let them be, quite literally, discarded as trash. These children were disposable.

The Newtown mass murders — and the Obama “we must change” speech have, ironically, forced an unwanted spotlight on a key Obama political ally.

Planned Parenthood.

Out of the blue, barely weeks into celebrating the Obama political triumph that featured Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, as a speaker at the Democrats’ convention in Charlotte, the mass murder of children in Newtown abruptly confronts liberals with a very serious problem.

Taking aim at the NRA and the culture of guns is winding up only in bringing a fierce, quite unintended yet inevitable spotlight to Planned Parenthood and the culture of abortion that so many Americans associate with the large culture of a valueless culture of violence.

Effectively, a startling shift blows in the political winds: Planned Parenthood is becoming the NRA of abortion.

What is unfolding in Newtown at this very moment is as heartrending as it is chilling.  One cannot possibly fathom the grief.

Nor can one possibly imagine what must run through the minds of those who, as the events of Newtown recede into the rear-view mirror of time, silently realize that the so-called “pro-choice” movement has in fact resulted — yet again…and again and again and again — in a culture of violence that engulfed yet another troubled young mind and heart and leading him to his own “pro-choice” action.

There was another irony in that Newtown ceremony with the president. It was opened by the pastor of the Newtown Congregational Church, a member of the larger United Church of Christ denomination. Which happens to be my own denomination. The UCC says this on its website: 

The United Church of Christ is one of the founding faith groups of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, formed in 1973 as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights.

One has to ask when my church will begin to question itself on the connection between its stance on abortion — and the culture of violence that has taken so many lives in Newtown.

The other night Fox’s Geraldo Rivera said “imagine the children screaming.”

In 1984 a documentary called The Silent Scream was produced. Hosted by an obstetrician named Bernard Nathanson, a chastened founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, the film was a graphic video of a baby being aborted and silently “screaming” as it the abortion “provider” went about the task needed to “dismember, crush, and destroy” the baby.

A screaming child indeed.

The question Americans have a right to ask in the wake of this horrific tragedy is Obama’s Newtown question precisely.

Will America change? Will President Obama change?

In truth?

In very sad truth I don’t think President Obama — or those, the many those — like Senator-elect Murphy, Representative McCarthy and so many liberal others in the media and out of it — have the courage to change.

To borrow from Representative McCarthy?

I don’t think they have “the spine.”

The real question after the murder of those Newtown innocents is:

Do the rest of us?

Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown

There were 18 random mass shootings in the 1980s, 54 in the 1990s, and 87 in the 2000s.

By David Kopel

Has the rate of random mass shootings in the United States increased? Over the past 30 years, the answer is definitely yes. It is also true that the total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by over half since 1980, and the gun homicide rate has fallen along with it. Today, Americans are safer from violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s.

Mass shootings, defined as four or more fatalities, fluctuate from year to year, but over the past 30 years there has been no long-term increase or decrease. But "random" mass shootings, such as the horrific crimes last Friday in Newtown, Conn., have increased.

Alan Lankford of the University of Alabama analyzed data from a recent New York Police Department study of "active shooters"—criminals who attempted to murder people in a confined area, where there are lots of people, and who chose at least some victims randomly. Counting only the incidents with at least two casualties, there were 179 such crimes between 1966 and 2010.  In the 1980s, there were 18. In the 1990s, there were 54. In the 2000s, there were 87.

If you count only such crimes in which five or more victims were killed, there were six in the 1980s and 19 in the 2000s.

Why the increase? It cannot be because gun-control laws have become more lax. Before the 1968 Gun Control Act, there were almost no federal gun-control laws. The exception was the National Firearms Act of 1934, which set up an extremely severe registration and tax system for automatic weapons and has remained in force for 78 years.

Nor are magazines holding more than 10 rounds something new. They were invented decades ago and have long been standard for many handguns. Police officers carry them for the same reason that civilians do: Especially if a person is attacked by multiple assailants, there is no guarantee that a 10-round magazine will end the assault.

The 1980s were much worse than today in terms of overall violent crime, including gun homicide, but they were much better than today in terms of mass random shootings. The difference wasn't that the 1980s had tougher controls on so-called "assault weapons." No assault weapons law existed in the U.S. until California passed a ban in 1989.

Connecticut followed in 1993. None of the guns that the Newtown murderer used was an assault weapon under Connecticut law. This illustrates the uselessness of bans on so-called assault weapons, since those bans concentrate on guns' cosmetics, such as whether the gun has a bayonet lug, rather than their function.

What some people call "assault weapons" function like every other normal firearm—they fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Unlike automatics (machine guns), they do not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held. They are "semi-automatic" because they eject the empty shell case and load the next round into the firing chamber.

Today in America, most handguns are semi-automatics, as are many long guns, including the best-selling rifle today, the AR-15, the model used in the Newtown shooting. Some of these guns look like machine guns, but they do not function like machine guns.

 

Back in the mid-1960s, in most states, an adult could walk into a store and buy an AR-15 rifle, no questions asked. Today, firearms are the most heavily regulated consumer product in the United States. If someone wants to purchase an AR-15 or any other firearm, the store must first get permission for the sale from the FBI or its state counterpart. Permission is denied if the buyer is in one of nine categories of "prohibited persons," including felons, domestic-violence misdemeanants, and persons who have been adjudicated mentally ill or alcoholic.

Since gun controls today are far stricter than at the time when "active shooters" were rare, what can account for the increase in these shootings? One plausible answer is the media. Cable TV in the 1990s, and the Internet today, greatly magnify the instant celebrity that a mass killer can achieve. We know that many would-be mass killers obsessively study their predecessors.

Loren Coleman's 2004 book "The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines" shows that the copycat effect is as old as the media itself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 classic "The Sorrows of Young Werther" triggered a spate of copycat suicides all over Europe. But today the velocity and pervasiveness of the media make the problem much worse.

A second explanation is the deinstitutionalization of the violently mentally ill. A 2000 New York Times study of 100 rampage murderers found that 47 were mentally ill. In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2008), Jason C. Matejkowski and his co-authors reported that 16% of state prisoners who had perpetrated murders were mentally ill.

In the mid-1960s, many of the killings would have been prevented because the severely mentally ill would have been confined and cared for in a state institution. But today, while government at most every level has bloated over the past half-century, mental-health treatment has been decimated. According to a study released in July by the Treatment Advocacy Center, the number of state hospital beds in America per capita has plummeted to 1850 levels, or 14.1 beds per 100,000 people.

Moreover, a 2011 paper by Steven P. Segal at the University of California, Berkeley, "Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates," found that a third of the state-to-state variation in homicide rates was attributable to the strength or weakness of involuntary civil-commitment laws.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that many of these attacks today unfortunately take place in pretend "gun-free zones," such as schools, movie theaters and shopping malls. According to Ron Borsch's study for the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato, active shooters are different from the gangsters and other street toughs whom a police officer might engage in a gunfight. They are predominantly weaklings and cowards who crumble easily as soon as an armed person shows up.

The problem is that by the time the police arrive, lots of people are already dead. So when armed citizens are on the scene, many lives are saved. The media rarely mention the mass murders that were thwarted by armed citizens at the Shoney's Restaurant in Anniston, Ala. (1991), the high school in Pearl, Miss. (1997), the middle-school dance in Edinboro, Penn. (1998), and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2007), among others.

At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer's next shot was to kill himself.

Real gun-free zones are a wonderful idea, but they are only real if they are created by metal detectors backed up by armed guards. Pretend gun-free zones, where law-abiding adults (who pass a fingerprint-based background check and a safety training class) are still disarmed, are magnets for evildoers who know they will be able to murder at will with little threat of being fired upon.

People who are serious about preventing the next Newtown should embrace much greater funding for mental health, strong laws for civil commitment of the violently mentally ill—and stop kidding themselves that pretend gun-free zones will stop killers.

 Mr. Kopel is research director of the Independence Institute and co-author of the law school textbook, "Firearms Law and the Second Amendment" (Aspen, 2012). 

Proof of a Scandal: U.S. Policy is Making Syria into an Anti-Western, Antisemitic Islamist State

 

 

 

 

By Roger Simon

In his article “The Revolt of Islam in Syria” (Jerusalem Post, December 12), Jonathan Spyer — senior fellow at the GLORIA Center — points out compelling information about the new Western-backed leadership in Syria.

The bottom line: if this is Syria’s new government, then Syria now has an Islamist regime.

This is happening with the knowledge and collaboration of the Obama administration and a number of European governments. It is a catastrophe, and one that’s taking place due to the deliberate decisions of President Barack Obama and other Western leaders. Even if one rationalizes the Islamist takeover in Egypt as due to internal events, this one is U.S.-made.

As Spyer points out, U.S. and European policy can be summarized as follows:

To align with and strengthen Muslim Brotherhood-associated elements, while painting Salafi forces as the sole real Islamist danger. At the same time, secular forces are ignored or brushed aside.

The new regime, recognized by the United States and most European countries as the legitimate leadership of the Syrian people, is the Syrian National Coalition, which has also established a military council.

Spyer’s detailed evidence for these arguments — much of which comes from raw wire service reports, for which praise is due to Reuters in this case — is undeniable. And if we know about these things, there is no doubt that the highest level of the U.S. government does as well.

Why is this happening? Because Obama and others believe that they can moderate the Muslim Brotherhood and this will tame the Salafists, despite massive evidence to the contrary. This is going to be the biggest foreign policy blunder of the last century, and the cost for it will be high. It should be stressed: such a strategy is totally unnecessary; the alternatives have been ignored; and the real moderates are being betrayed.

Here is some of the proof for these assertions:

– “The founder of the Free Syrian Army, former Syrian Air Force Colonel Riad Asaad, is notably absent [from the leadership].  General Mustafa al-Sheikh, the first of his rank to defect to the rebels, is also not there. Sheikh is known for his fierce opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hussein Haj Ali, the highest ranking officer to defect so far, was similarly absent.” These men are all anti-Islamists.

– “A Reuters report on the new joint military council calculated that the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies account for about two-thirds of the 263 men who met in Antalya and formed the new body. Salafi commanders are also there.” In other words, the Islamists will get the overwhelming share of weapons provided under U.S. sponsorship, Turkish oversight, and Qatari and Saudi financing. And the United States has not objected to the arming of Salafist super-extremists as long as they aren’t affiliated to al-Qaeda.

– “The new council is headed by Brigadier Selim Idriss, who is described as a non-ideological military man. But his deputies, Abdel-basset Tawil of Idleb and Abdel-Qader Saleh of Aleppo governate are associated with the Salafi trend.” In other words, there’s a non-Islamist front man for what will be an Islamist-controlled army.

– “The domination by the Muslim Brotherhood of the new military council mirrors the movement’s leading position in the new civilian leadership body — the Syrian National Coalition. The leader of this coalition is Ahmed Mouaz al-Khatib, former Imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

“Khatib is closely associated with the Damascus Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The leader of the new coalition has a long history of anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and anti-Shia remarks. (He praised Saddam Hussein, for example, for “terrifying the Jews” and wrote an article asking if Facebook was an “American-Israeli intelligence website.”) He is also an admirer of the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

– “Within the body headed by Khatib, the Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian National Council controls around 27 of the 65 seats on the executive body of the new coalition. There are also Islamists and fellow travelers among the non-SNC delegates. The Brotherhood is by far the best organized single body within the coalition. One secular delegate at the first full meeting of the coalition accused the MB of `pushing more of its hawks into the coalition, although it already has half of the seats.’”

Let me add two other points:

– The U.S. government backed the previous opposition “leadership,” the Syrian National Council, which was formed as a result of American initiative operating through Islamist Turkey. The fact that this council had a Muslim Brotherhood majority in the leadership did not deter the Obama administration from proclaiming it to be the address for support. Only when the council had clearly failed — and despite the fact that months earlier several moderates had resigned complaining about Brotherhood domination — did the U.S. government change strategy to organizing a new, yet also Muslim Brotherhood-dominated group.

– American intelligence agents in southern Turkey supervise the handover of weapons to the rebels. They make no attempt to stop arms from going to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists while they make no attempt to funnel the guns to moderates. The only restriction is that they not go to al-Qaeda-affiliated Salafists.

One day, those guns will be used to commit unspeakable atrocities against Christians and other minority groups just as they will be used to install an Islamist regime and to kill or intimidate its opponents.

How has the United States handled this threat?

Well, it declared one Salafi group off-limits, because it is linked to al-Qaeda. That’s it.

As Spyer points out, there has been and still is an alternative: for the West to back non-Islamist leaders, including liberals, Arab nationalists, and Kurdish nationalist forces. Such a strategy was not pursued either in Egypt or in Tunisia.

So when Syria gets an anti-Western, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic (aside from holding elections) regime, don’t be surprised. You can read it in the surprised and grudging admissions of the Western mass media a year or two after this regime takes power, or you can know about it right now.

This outcome might have been inevitable anyway — but I don’t think that’s true. A vigorous policy of supplying non- and anti-Islamist forces while doing nothing to help the Brotherhood and Salafist militias, plus the formation of a non-Islamist dominated political grouping that would receive Western aid could have produced a very different result.

But Western policy, and especially Obama administration policy, is now putting into power yet another anti-Western regime that will oppress its own people and put a high priority on trying to wipe out Israel.