Pointing Fingers Two Opinions
The high school massacre in Oregon merits a powerful moral response - an outburst of rage and moral censure. But it is important to remember where the blame belongs: on the shoulders of the shooter, identified by authorities as 15-year-old Kip Kinkel.
For some reason in modern America, assigning individual blame isn’t always people’s first response to individual crimes.
For example, after the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, “It makes me angry not so much at individual children that have done it as much as angry at a world in which such a thing can happen.”
In Oregon, a local resident placed a sign among the flowers left in memory of the dead and in honor of the wounded at Springfield’s Thurston High, reading: “Will we ever learn?”
With all due respect to the anguish of whoever placed that sign, it must be said: What do you mean, we?
It wasn’t we who allegedly murdered our parents and then marched into our high school cafeteria armed with three weapons and opened fire. It was one kid, the authorities say - and that kid has a lesson to learn.
The line of thinking behind that anonymous sign and Huckabee’s statement should be familiar to all newspaper readers.
Pundits and experts are quick to avoid casting blame on those who commit atrocities, but feel free to profligately spread the blame around on social forces, on “all of us,” on inanimate objects, on the media.
A USA Today headline about the Jonesboro shooting stated this idea baldly: “Who’s to blame for school shooting? We all are.”
A Los Angeles Times headline on reaction to Jonesboro read, “Violent culture, media share blame, experts say.” Who but an expert would say such a thing? The whole profession of being an “expert” demands complicated answers.
Nothing so simple as individual evil can be considered. The one ultimate cause of any sinister act, no matter how many outside forces of social pressure are brought to bear, is individual choice.
But to the “experts,” it is too simple to just admit someone has done wrong and must be punished. The tangled web of “social forces” is always there to be analyzed and charted - without that, those “experts” would be out of a job.
It can’t be denied that outside forces brought to bear on individuals can influence them in a certain direction, can be part of the decision-making process that makes certain twisted individuals do horrible things.
But it must be remembered that whatever social forces of gun worship and violent entertainment allegedly stewed the brains of the kids who kill, hundreds of thousands of other young men are exposed to the same influences. Only a rare few take guns in hand and begin firing at schoolmates.
Who benefits from this curious moral inversion that tries to blame everyone who hasn’t committed a crime for that crime? The fact that it was Gov. Huckabee making the comment about being “angry at a world in which such a thing can happen” gives a clue.
Even if the blame-everyone-else-first impulse makes no moral sense, it makes a great deal of political sense.
After all, if only criminals are to blame for their acts, there’s nothing much for government to do but nab those criminals, hold a trial and, if a guilty verdict is brought down, impose punishment.
But if social forces or guns, or violent TV shows and movies are to blame, then cops and judges aren’t enough. We need programs, crusades, concerted government action to change the very nature of our culture.
We need V-chips, gun control, new forms of educational indoctrination - and for that we need the brave leadership of the likes of Huckabee and a squad of experts.
The state gains advantages from blaming social forces, and not individuals, in areas beyond the sort of colorful violence that makes newspaper headlines.
Many social problems for which politicians scramble to find solutions, among them single-parent households, drug abuse and long-term welfare dependency, result from the cumulative effect of bad decisions made by individuals - decisions that are never made by everyone in the same social milieu.
Avoiding pregnancy, getting educated, becoming self-sufficient and, most certainly, not resorting to murder when one is upset or troubled are within the power of most people, no matter the social forces surrounding them.
Anger at the world, wondering when “we will learn,” shifts attention from where real change is needed and possible: in the choices people make.
It leads to further airy plans for state action, even though many of the “negative social forces” in America, from terrible public schools to streets torn by drug warfare, are of the government’s own making.
It’s not enough to be angry at the world, to wonder when we will learn. We need to be angry at the kids who commit these horrible acts. They are to blame.
For opposing view, see column by Diane Griego Erwin under the headline: Pointing fingers