Shootings and us

Will mass shootings never stop? What to do? This is a cultural problem, not legal or political. As our culture is unique, so are our problems.

Americans have little social cohesiveness except for the short-lived solidarity that follows something like 9/11. We have become enthralled with diversity, as if it were a virtue all by itself. But tolerance by its very nature is a coiled spring; some cannot keep it checked. Nearly everyone is sick of something, someone or some group. Love for our fellow man or fear of him keeps us civilized.

Without some compensation for human nature, diversity enables cultural chaos, not unity. Those who feel angry or depressed have no innate tether on their behavior, since prevailing social dogma entitles each of us to do what is right in his or her own mind. This is hard to articulate because language is inadequate to address intangibles. We can pass laws and fund programs, but a problem like this always finds some outlet.

Until the influential voices among us begin to steer the culture toward something outside of man, something that transcends the corrupt nature lurking in all of us, something that has power to help people see their own and others’ intrinsic value, something that calls us steadily toward the truly noble, something that compels us to examine our own hearts in light of timeless truth, something that is universally available to us all, we’d better be ready to duck and cover or run. HOWARD GLASS

Grove City