They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
After every mass shooting—and the one in Uvalde, Texas, is unspeakably heinous and heartbreaking—Americans hunker down in their political camps and claim either guns or mental illness is to blame. We must be collectively insane!
Don’t get me wrong, some measures already implemented (and others proposed) to harden our schools and provide for the mentally ill will or have already saved lives. However, these are only necessary surface measures that are insufficient to end this epidemic because they do not and cannot address the deeper causes. Thus, the constant debate around them misses the forest for the trees.
For example, it was once common for students and school officials to bring firearms onto campus to participate in sport shooting and hunting clubs—largely, without incident. However, toting a firearm to school—and into other institutions where it was once an ordinary thing—is effectively barred throughout the country today and yet, we see horrendous gun violence in these places. What happened between then and now and how do we fix this?
We have a deeply systemic and long-term problem of culture. To fix it we must accept that culture is the underlying illness and the solution is hard, but remain committed to the cure.
We increasingly have a society awash with disconnected adolescents and young adults—that is, they are not in school, they are unemployed, and are not actively seeking either. They are essentially outside of society.
It need not be said, but these types are also unmarried and not seeking to be. Many are young men whose hormones lead to hot tempers, wild mood swings, and who lack the elements like a loving spouse, kids, and gainful employment that help to make them civilized gentlemen with a lot to lose.
This is all at an age when mature adult-thinking has often not yet taken hold and when we know these young men are statistically, and by far, the most likely to be perpetrators of violent crime. Like so many of our problems, this disconnectedness starts in the home.
Generations now of parents have failed to inculcate in their children values of a healthy, well-adjusted human being, among them, discipline, dignity, empathy, and reverence. They have failed—with the help of other societal influences—to persuade them of the importance of education, work, marriage, and family. We have a nation now filled with adults who did not get this guidance.
Clearly, these young people are and have been given license to be disgruntled. They have been taught to blame for their discontent and to dislike what is described to them as a hateful country and by extension, various of its inhabitants. They are told with increasing frequency that America is irredeemably racist, unjust, exploitative, and there is little or nothing that can be done about it.
No longer is the country the land of the free and the home of the brave. They are far less likely to be told today than in years past that by their own effort they can achieve anything. The American dream, they are told and believe, was snuffed out generations ago.
Replaced in our schools are the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer with CRT and progressive identity politics. This has been a slow but steady destruction of American culture once teeming with optimism for the future and love of country.
Finally, these same young people have been desensitized to violence and carnage through the proliferation of ever more graphic movies, media sensationalism of horrific crime, unbridled internet access, and yes, video games. Prolonged exposure to vivid images and video of carnage is a tactic used to prepare military combatants for war. I experienced this firsthand during my military service in marine infantry training.
It bears repeating, we cannot fix this problem by retreating to our political corners and simply yelling for either the eradication of guns or the reestablishment of the mental institutions of yore. If we Americans continue this pattern, we will never cure the disease that uniquely plagues our society. Nor, as so many wish, can we rely solely on government or schools or mental health professionals and medication or prisons or churches or communities or “good guys” with guns to fix it.
We have an almost intractable, multi-faceted cultural sickness that must be treated by an equally difficult and serious therapy—there is no magic pill. It is a whole-of-country issue in which we all have a stake and a responsibility.
The first step is to recognize the stubborn reality that our current approach keeps getting us the same result.
Devon Westhill is president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity.