June-July 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel
FROM WHERE I STAND: A Teenager's Voice from Inside the Culture
of Death
by Sarah Roney
Eighteen-year-old Wisconsin resident Sarah Roney wrote this
essay. Inspired by the Columbine High school massacre, she
says what all the pundits couldn't seem to say.
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
"familiar" 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."
TSS
June - July 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel
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