Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnists have been quick to assign blame for the Newtown massacre -- making sure to exclude guns, of course.
Joseph Farah blames "secularism" and removing prayer from public schools (which isn't exactly the case -- school-sponsored prayer was banned) for this:
What should we expect when we not only prohibit weapons of self-defense in our schools, but when we banish the Creator from them?
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decisions that removed prayer from the public schools of America. Just look what has happened since. It’s not that God is exacting punishment on America as a result. He is giving America over to the desires of its wicked heart.
We are reaping the seeds of the whirlwind we ourselves planted.It’s not that America’s highest court chose neutrality with respect to religion, as Justice Potter Stewart, the lone dissent on one of those key cases wrote. It’s that the court chose “the establishment of a religion of secularism.”
Secularism is indeed a religion. It places its faith in the hearts of men, rather than in the heart of a loving God who wrote the highest laws, those that guide the universe and offer the only path to salvation and eternal life as well as blessings in this one.
No amount of gun control can save us from ourselves. In fact, it can only quicken the judgment that is already upon us.
Pat Boone does pretty much the same thing:
The vast majority of Americans allowed a few militant, narrow-minded activists to effectively exclude the calming, moral, motivational and spiritual guidelines for healthy living from the daily environment of our children.
We let them shut God out of our schools and out of the very lives of countless young kids.
With what predictable result? In just the last few years, unprecedented in our history, our schools are hotbeds of drug usage and trafficking, guns and violence, rampant sexual immorality (some involving teachers with students), increasing required subject matter teaching kids all manner of things that the Bible condemns. And we don’t see the connection?
And the quality of the education itself is declining in shocking, undeniable ways. Of course, how could it be otherwise, in such a rudderless, polluted environment? While parents send their children to school, hoping they’ll come back alive.
Boone also makes the libelous accusation that Kevin Jennings, former safe school czar, is a "pedophilia advocate."
William Murray -- son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who led efforts to remove state-sponsored prayer from schools -- takes much the same tack, also blaming churches for being too wimpy:
My mother, atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, fought to make the public schools the armed camps they are today by removing prayer, the recognition of the authority of God. In 1962 and 1963, I was attending an all-boys public high school in downtown Baltimore, Md. The school was a magnet school before the term even existed and was intended to prepare young men for college, majoring in science and engineering. There were 1,800 teenage boys in the school, and there was not a cop in the building – ever. The doors were unlocked and often the un-air-conditioned rooms had open windows. There were no metal detectors, no picture IDs, and students went in and out the doors on the honor system.
[...]
In the vast majority of America’s public schools, the authority of God has been replaced with the authority of the iron fist of government. Morals? Without the authority of God, there are no morals, and none are taught in the public schools today. The ethics that are taught are situational, perhaps the same situational ethics that led to the logic that caused the tragic shootings in Newtown.
This condition exists in the schools and the society in general because of a failed church that is splintered and weak.
A large advertising sign near my home reads, “A church for those who don’t like church.” Translation: “No condemnation of sin here – we have coffee latte and great music.”
Barbara Simpson blames anti-depressants, even though it hasn't been made public what, if anything, the shooter was taking:
While not giving specific details, police are investigating allegations that Lanza suffered from a personality disorder and had anger issues, perhaps had Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder.
This raises an issue that every anti-gun partisan chooses to ignore: the effect of anti-depressants on the human brain.
We’ve become a society where even basic human reactions to life situations are diagnosed as “syndromes” or “illnesses” and, of course, the solution is drugs.
We know anti-depressant drugs literally change the chemistry of the brain, often leaving the individual a shell of themselves and with dangerous tendencies.
They are the SSRIs – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – Prozac, Paxil, Luvox and Zoloft. They’re casually referred to as “chemical babysitters,” dispensed like water when the natural rambunctiousness of children bothers adults. It “quiets kids down,” makes them easily controlled, and often puts them at the edge of homicide or suicide or both.
Just read the package insert warnings on those commonly used drugs.
Doubts? Look at the drug connection in other horrific killings: Columbine, Kip Kinkel, Colorado, Tucson and too many others to recount.
If Lanza was being “medicated,” it raises the issue that guns aren’t the problem, prescription drugs are, and so are the doctors who prescribe them.
Simpson apparently doesn't understand that antidepressants are not a treatment for autism, though it has been used (to questionable effect) to treat some of the obsessive-compulsive that has ben associated with autism.
