Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Feel-gooders are Back

A feel-gooder is a person who will react to a problem in a manner that cannot possibly solve the problem, but since they are "doing something", they feel good.

Dylann Roof kills nine people in a Charleston church and predictably, the feel-gooders come out of the woodwork.  The shootings were no doubt a tragedy for the community and the families, but what happens next is just as much a tragedy.  This time we see the feel-gooders attempting to score political points on two fronts.

First is a new pointless feel-gooder demand - eradication of the confederate flag.  I am a Yankee and don't fully understand the devotion some southerners have toward the confederate flag.  To me it is a symbol that says "we lost".  But I understand that those whose ancestors fought and died for the confederacy might have a reverence that escapes me.  I also suspect that most who fly the flag do so more as a personal statement and not out of respect of Civil War dead.  It's a red neck rebel thing.

It is however, free speech.  Even red neck rebels have that right.  Inexplicably, the feel-gooders believe they would be doing society a solid by removing the right to fly the confederate flag by those who want to for whatever reason.  And how would fewer confederate flags flapping in the breeze bring healing to the families of the Charleston victims?  It wouldn't.  The feel-gooders are attempting to punish a group of people they do not agree with simply because Dylann Roof choose a symbol that group also associates with.  In the end, the demand is pointless and only diminishes free speech for all Americans.

Second, the well worn and predictable gun control discussion surfaces from feel-gooders libs and those who would blame the shootings on the NRA, the gun, or another scapegoat, anyone or anything but Dylann Roof himself.  Their gun control mantra is illogical and unnecessary.  To prove the idiocy, let's assume they are correct, that by outlawing guns, mass murders will end.  Let's pretend that gun ownership is now against the law.

There are millions, maybe billions of guns on earth.  Just as the guns didn't actually commit the mass murder, neither can they be expected to turn themselves in for destruction. So we are left with a world full of guns, regardless of how hard the feel-gooders wish it were not true.  It is reasonable to assume the next Dylann Roof will be able to obtain one of the millions or billions of guns and commit the next mass murder.  My question to the feel-gooders is "what would you do next?"  Since outlawing guns is as effective as emptying the ocean with a tea cup, maybe they should begin with whatever comes after gun control.

A reasonable approach to curbing gun violence and murders must start within society.  Guns and flags have never killed anyone.  Only humans have the ability and the will to kill another.  The deterioration of families, schools, churches, and morals are direct contributors to the conditions that led to Charleston, Newton, Aurora, Virginia Tech and others.  Until the feel-gooders are willing to do the politically incorrect and demand that morals be reinforced in schools, that government cease supporting programs that weaken the family, that God through the church again becomes the moral compass of the nation, and that life be held as sacred, there are many more Charlestons and Dylann Roofs in our future.