South Carolina Gunman Partially a Product of Left-Leaning Culture
A pattern is beginning to emerge regarding gunmen who go on shooting rampages, and it's bad news for the left and their values. Deranged shooter Jared Loughner, who shot former Congresswoman Gabbie Giffords in 2011, was a creepy leftist. Sandy Hook school shooter Adam Lanza spent all day addicted to violent video games, had no contact with his father and only communicated with his mother through email. Last week, 21-year-old loner Dylann Roof senselessly shot and killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Somewhere along his life, someone stopped caring about Roof's education. He was allowed to drop out of ninth grade, and at the time of the shootings was unemployed. He had been arrested for petty crimes after getting caught with drugs.
The radicalization of Roof appeared to start when he bought into the left's mantra of blacks and other minorities vs. whites. In what is believed to be Roof's manifesto, he says the race wars stirred up by the Trayvon Martin shooting were what influenced him. After searching on the Internet for answers, he came across white supremacist websites that further incited his developing racism.
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In the manifesto, he reserves his worst racism toward blacks, but also targets Jews and Hispanics. He said Americans needs to "stop fighting for the Jews." The site, named The Last Rhodesian after the former white supremacist African country, includes photos of Roof burning and trampling on the American flag. He wrote, "I hate the sight of the American flag." Another photo shows him pointing a gun into the camera. Other photos show him wearing white supremacist clothing and celebrating the Confederate flag and its history. In most of the photos, he is unsmiling with a cold, hard look in his eyes. He was reportedly taking Suboxone, a powerful medication which is used to treat drug addiction, and friends said he also abused prescription drugs he bought off the street like Xanax.
Where were this young man's mother and father? A child that attempts to drop out of ninth grade should not be permitted to just drift along uneducated and unemployed – he should have been sent to a military or boarding school where he would have developed conservative values, working hard alongside other students of all races, developing a healthy perspective. Instead, he was allowed to become isolated, cut off from society.
Unfortunately, the left has successfully spread the message today that anything goes when it comes to parenting – unless it's something conservative like spanking or teaching children to abstain from sex before marriage. No stay-at-home parent? Single mom? No church youth group for the kids? We're no longer allowed to point out that these types of parenting situations might not be as ideal for children – or risk ridicule and attacks by the left. If this troubled young man had been sent to military school and regularly participated in a church youth group, do you think he would have committed these heinous crimes? Instead, everyone just politely looks the other way, afraid to be labeled "judgmental."
Obama could have used the opportunity of becoming the first black president to heal race relations, moving us toward a colorblind society. Racism can no longer be as bad if Americans elect a black president. Instead, Obama has used his bully pulpit to exacerbate racial tensions, quick to find racism against blacks and quick to attack white police officers. He stirs up race relations deliberately to gain Democratic support. As a result, 84 percent of Americans say race relations have worsened or stayed the same since Obama has been in office.
Until we can have an open and blunt conversation about how the left's lack of parenting values and efforts to stir up race relations are helping create these monsters, they're not going to go away. Everyone agrees the white supremacist sites are sick and contributed to Roof's radicalization. But no one dares to talk about the balkanization that is occurring on the left.
When Roof was arrested, he told police that he "almost didn't go through with it because everyone was so nice to him." If he had gotten to know the decent, kind people at that church, instead of isolating himself in hate, perhaps this tragedy would have been avoided. It is overdue for conservatives to speak up and turn our cultural focus back on family values, church and a colorblind society.
