From Where I Stand:
A Teenager's Voice from Inside the Culture of Death
On April 20, 1999,
there was yet another gruesome shooting in Littleton, Colorado. Kids killing kids. And again, the entire nation in its
uproar is trying to figure out why.
I am eighteen years old. I live in a small town near Madison,
Wisconsin. A
small town just like the ones where these horrifying shootings always
seem to take place. Every time
those stories come on the television, I can't help but notice how easily it could
be my small town next. And I want
to know why this is happening just as badly as any parent or police chief or
anchorman.
The thing is,
I am right in the middle of it. I
am in the same age group as all of these high school kids. So I may have some insight for the world
that has been otherwise unattainable since these shootings started some years
ago.
The night of the Littleton shooting, as
I was flipping through the various news channels that were covering the story
in Littleton, Colorado, I heard something that struck a chord in me. An anchorman was interviewing the mother
of a victim in the Jonesboro shooting.
His question was:
If you look at
America in the 1950's, you will find that this kind of thing never happened;
whereas if you look at America today, this kind of thing is becoming more and
more frequent. Why do you think
this is happening?
The woman, of course, could not answer
the question. In fact, she didn't
really even try. But I did. I thought about it for a long time that
night. And again the next morning,
when my favorite morning radio talk show asked its listeners why they thought
this has been happening. Many
people said it's the parents of the kids.
Many people suggested television and video games. Many people even turned to popular
musicians, looking to put the blame somewhere.
But I will tell you what I think it
is. What I, a regular teenager
riding on the coattails of Generation X, blame it on. It is not the parents or the movies or
the rock stars. It is America. It is this culture of death, this
culture in which liberals and feminists and activists are so anxious to let
anything be "OK" that the once tightened, knotted rope of society is
unraveling right beneath us.
Don't you see? There can be no order without discipline. All of those things people think are
causing children to run into a school and shoot their teachers and peers and
even kids they don't know—the movies, the video games, the parents, the
rap artists—they are only reflections of our society. Society breaks down, from one big
metaphoric "family" into 50 metaphoric "families" and so on
and so on, until you have the actual family, the one with the parents
and the kids and the dog. It is not
one thing or two things; it is the attitude of an entire "familial"
nation being reflected back at us in the kids.
Just as that anchorman suggested,
something was different about the 1950's.
We were conservative.
We had boundaries; we had a definite knowledge of right and wrong
throughout the entire nation. We
didn't have feminists pushing women so hard to go get a job; that a woman who
didn't have a job was somehow "bad," thereby leaving kids at home
with inadequate parental guidance and often times with parents who were truly
unhappy. We didn't have liberals
fighting so avidly to legalize everything that it was at the point of
completely blurring the line between good and bad. We didn't have a nationwide media surge
dedicated to sex and violence so intense that if you weren't playing killing
video games at age 14, then you were trying to choose between contraceptives
beforehand or abortion afterwards.
We didn't have disputes over whether or not we should help someone who
is dying die sooner—over whether or not we
should assist them in committing suicide. And we certainly didn't have a President
who was in favor of NATO bombing and killing children in Serbia come on the
television to grieve the loss for the families of children killed in America.
We live in a loosely tied society, a
culture dedicated to death. If you
don't want the kid, kill it. If you
don't want to live out the rest of your God-given days, kill yourself. Or better yet, have someone else come
help you do it. I guess, no matter
how horrible or gruesome or gut-wrenching it may be, it was just a matter of
time before someone got that "killing-as-a-means-to-an-end" idea
stuck in their head for the part between birth and death as well. Everything that happens in families and
cities and states and countries is the mirror image of the big picture. We are falling apart as a society. Am
I—some random normal teenager in Farmertown,
U.S.A.—the only one who sees that?
It's sad and it's hard to believe, but what's worse is that it's scary.
I think it's time for
our—America's—Mom and Dad to ground us—to say, "If you
don't shape up by the time I count to three…" And then really count to three. Because we are running wild and pretty
soon we're going to be too far from home to ever get back.
There was once a great saying by a
famous man that has rung true throughout the history of mankind—in every
family and in every society and in every social group and in every
religion—it was a frighteningly true statement that cannot be
disputed. I am reminded of it now,
in the wake of yet another indescribably tormenting result of a nation gone
haywire…
By their fruits you
shall know them.
Sarah Roney
April 21, 1999
Who is Sarah Roney? Says her mother…
…Sarah is an
amazing person. She just turned 19 … She is a
gifted musician, poet, writer, singer and artist. She is a composer and bass player in a
rock band. She is making a CD of
her own music. She is also a very
beautiful girl, former prom queen, tennis team captain, and has friends in both
the "jock" group and the "gothics." Her friends know that she is a firecracker
conservative Christian, an outspoken and opinionated leader but is tender and
kind and accepting of people with other points of view. She learned to think critically and to
"wonder" about things in our very talkative family. …
Her mother also says that…
She wrote her
article at the computer in her bedroom, all alone, in one hour and no adult
even touched it with revisions.
© April 1999
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