by: Agnes Cross-White
The nation is horrified over the mass shootings, the death and carnage wrought on the citizens of El Paso and Dayton. Everyone is puzzled as to the reason one human being could plot and carry out such heinous crimes against innocent fellow human beings. What could cause one human being to commit such a crime and what can we do to stop these incidents?
As expected, the usual set of political miscreants and pundits are blaming the president, the NRA and calling for rigid gun control, gun confiscation and the repeal of the Second Amendment. These are liberal fixes, bandage remedies for an insidious problem that has seeped into the core of the cultural fabric of the nation.
Each time we have one of these events, we ring our hands and spew out the same old rhetoric. Everyone is feeling the frustration, but doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing. We are Americans, and we are a solution-oriented people. There is a solution, but WE may not want to face our culpability in the situation. If we fail, we shall continue to have these incidents and probably with increased frequency and ferocity.
Mental illness, drug addiction and homelessness play a role, but are collateral results of the cumulative effects of the decay and collapse of the American family. That’s right, look into the mirror at the real culprits, ourselves, our valueless society, our Godlessness, our lack of integrity. character and our divisiveness.
I would guarantee that someone from generation X or Z will perpetrate another of these hideous events sooner or later. Why? The problem is American children are being reared without a sense of morality, integrity, a sense of patriotism, standards and most of all a belief in Almighty God and the tenets of Christianity which are the foundational blocks that built this nation.
Today’s parents and society are woefully negligent in the preparation of today’s young people with the skills necessary to cope with the rigors of today’s world.
The Bible seems to have become irrelevant in the rearing of children, and the instilling of rules and principles of behavior and conduct. Proverbs 22:6 – “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Deuteronomy 11:19 – And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up.”
Children are the future of a nation and it is the responsibility of parents to provide the tools for their growth into productive citizens. Parents are NOT their children’s’ friends, but rather should concentrate on being PARENTS. Parenting means making the hard decisions. A parent is the caretaker of the future and the best guidebook is the Bible.
Today’s children are being bubble-wrapped, protected from failing and discouraged from taking risk. Parents do not exercise discipline for fear of alienating their children and would rather allow them to behave like uncontrollable heathen than to challenge them and exercise authority.
Our children grow up with no respect for themselves, their parents or society. Our children are looking for love, acceptance, security, boundaries and what do we give them, computers, iPhones, drugs and “friendly parents.” American parents are so concentrated on providing the “trappings” of American society that we fail to provide the foundational blocks of love of God, family and country.
Many may have not noticed but young people feel lost, unconnected and empty. To fill this gap, many take drugs and engage in unacceptable and dangerous behaviors endeavoring to rid themselves of that feeling of emptiness that pervades their bodies and minds. A sense of self-worth and a longing for relevancy can only be filled by a relationship with our Lord and it is up to parents to guide their children along this path to successful humanness, giving them the tools. Success is not measured in the things one has, but in the person, we are and become.
We as a nation will continue to experience these types of incidents that we had this weekend, if we continue to foist these disenchanted, materialistic, selfish and entitled young people on to society. We need to take control of our children, love them, teach them, and live a righteous life, a life of character and integrity before them, being an example for them. Parenthood is a sacrificial endeavor, not to be undertaken likely.
Parents cannot continue to shirk their responsibilities and look to the politicians or to the schools to provide remedies. We cannot continue to let our young people grow up in a nation where they have no responsibilities, and everything is free and there is no God.
This is a recipe for our destruction:
- Breakdown of the family
- Removal of God
- Decreased human interaction
- Increased isolation
- Lack of empathy
- Increase in mental illness
- Cultural irresponsibility
Stop the violence, Be a PARENT!
—Agnes Cross-White is the former publisher of The Tribune, Charlottesville’s longest running black-owned newspaper.
Agree with the need for good parenting, but why does it have to be based on the human creations of a Christian god and a combination fiction/non-fiction book?
look into the mirror at the real culprits, ourselves, our valueless society, our Godlessness, our lack of integrity. character and our divisiveness.
If only we had the Christian values, and the integrity, character and unity of European nations and European societies. But wait, Europe is largely “godless.” They don’t share “a belief in Almighty God and the tenets of Christianity.” You people inveigh against “godless” Europe all the time, but Europe has nowhere near this level of mass shootings by lone gunman. Neither does any other region of the world. The man who killed 50 people in New Zealand mosques, however, cited Donald Trump as inspiration.
Today’s parents are at fault, you say. Red States have higher divorce rates than blue ones. A Pew Center study found a divorce rate of 51% among Protestants which is higher, or much higher depending on which study you look at, than Muslims. Among Protestants, evangelicals had the highest rate, three times higher than black Protestants, who are mostly liberal. Your version of Christianity is not succeeding in giving most kids good parenting.
Note that of the 100 terrorism suspects arrested by the FBI in the last nine months, most are believed to be white supremacists. Read the manifestos of many of the shooters. Read the El Paso shooter talking about “The Great Replacement” rhetoric. Then think of Trump talking about “shithole countries” and telling U.S.-born congresswomen to go back where they supposedly came from, and saying that Mexico is “sending” us “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.” Just a coincidence, right?
The Dayton shooter apparently was mentally ill, but a mentally ill man can’t fire 41 shots in less than 30 seconds, killing 9 people and injuring 37 more, without a gun no one needs for hunting or for self-defense and which your side has succeeded in keeping legal. All the good parenting in the world won’t prevent many instances of mental illness, and no amount of mental health services, which conservatives always want to cut, will catch every mentally ill person before he becomes violent. Nor, as Sandy Hook illustrated, will just not selling guns to unstable people keep those guns out of their hands. But banning the sale of semi-automatic weapons will. Individual liberty is good and should be recognized as such, but “Love you neighbor” means that it shouldn’t trump, no pun intended, consideration of what’s best for the nation. Your privileging of your individual liberty over the common good produced carnage in Dayton, and in El Paso, and . . . fill in the blanks. Your president took away funds for fighting these domestic terrorists.
A 16-year-old boy in Columbia, SC was expelled from school for making a violent and threatening video about how he hates black people. The school is Christian. Didn’t his parents do what they could to see that he was taught good values? The problem is that kids like that have other teachers as well. A South African cartoon depicts the obvious. The left panel, showing a crazed gunman, is captioned “Shooter.” The right panel shows Trump yelling “Stop the Invasion!” The caption: “Tutor.” It’s unfortunate that so many of you are in such deep denial.
1.“I’m not your friend. I’m your Mother.” If I said it once I said it a million times.
2. “You are an ambassador for our family. Embarrass us publicly and you’ll be punished (when they were young) publicly!”
3. Honor God, family, friends and (respect) yourself.
4. To raise a decent child requires a parent who believes and follows the same rules that they preach.
Looks like Agnes tweaked a very sensitive nerve. A black man writes an apolitical article that echoes what many others have previously stated and Ken goes on a anti-religious tirade along with the usual TDS raving. He concludes his unbalanced attack by going all the way to South Africa for a political cartoon to administer his social coup d’e-tat. Yep, that must have been a nasty stinger.
Al, the article was hardly apolitical (read the second paragraph), I go to church three times a week (because I need it, LOL), and if you could rebut my argument you wouldn’t feel the need to insult me.
More facts from Pew: The states with the strongest levels of faith in God are Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma. The states with the lowest levels are Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Alaska, Oregon and California. Now look at homicide and violent crime rates: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/crime-and-corrections/public-safety. There goes the conservative theory about taking God out of the schools.
Here are more facts, time from USA Today (just Fake News, right?): Since 2017, when talking about immigration, Trump has used the world “invasion” at least 19 times, the word “animal” 34 times, and the word “killer” nearly three dozen times.
An invasion is when an armed force comes pouring over the border all at once, guns blazing at whoever gets in its way, and takes your property and overruns your government by force. “Animal” is not a word you can find in the Bible describing human beings. “Killer” describes only a very tiny minority of illegal immigrants.
Kamala Harris is correct: “No, [Trump] didn’t pull the trigger. But he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition.” Will you condemn these lies, slanders, and dehumanizing terms, Al and Agnes, and stop to think about the effect they might have on an unbalanced person? It wouldn’t make you socialists.