OPINION-EDITORIAL

Another way

How best to protest school violence

Kids all over Arkansas and the rest of the country walked out of their classrooms for a few minutes last week to protest the school shootings that have shocked the American public. What a democracy, what a country.

Although the best way to protest violence in the schools might be staring the kids in the face: Stick to your books and make something of yourselves, to wit, rational individuals quite capable of making your own decisions and then defending those decisions in the kind of open public debate that should be the hallmark of democracy. As opposed to a largely anonymous mobocracy no different in the end from a lonely crowd--a crowd that roams the marketplace of ideas in search of targets of opportunity to attack.

Instead of trusting a foolish and faulty FBI to detect and detain the nutcases out there, and then protect the rest of us from them, why not let all men and women take some of the responsibility for looking out for themselves, their families, and the overall community? Not to mention what would be best for the mentally disturbed, who need to be protected against their irresistible homicidal instincts of the moment. The degree of a society's civilization may be judged by how well or poorly it treats those of less than sound mind and sound body amongst it.

Come, let us reason together instead of acting like the hydra-headed monster that a society in the throes of its own sociopolitical delusions can be. Surely, so reasonable an accommodation would not be too much to ask of a society. Even one so taken by its own egotism that it seems unable to see what it's doing to itself by chasing its own self-important delusions.

But the cheerleaders for chaos we will always have among us, including familiar figures ready to exploit present chaos for future advantage. Types like Bernie Sanders, who just won't go away, as much as he needs to. The all too independent senator from Vermont declaims, "All across the country, people are sick and tired of gun violence, and the time is now for all of us together to stand up to the NRA and pass common-sense gun legislation." As if all these guns were firing themselves, instead of being used by real live human beings to kill the innocent.

Alas, nothing is so uncommon as common sense when guns are at the center of a political firestorm in these not always United States of America. Sen. Sanders may have reaped the usual round of applause when he resorted to such political bromides, but that doesn't make his rhetoric any more original or acceptable in the eyes of discerning citizens. Please spare us your well-worn pieties, Senator. For this isn't the first time you've been weighed in the balance and come up short. Worse, some of us who've followed your ill-starred political career suspect it won't be the last.

Editorial on 03/19/2018

Upcoming Events