Up Standing

Seldom do the great tragedies of the modern day weigh upon the national conscience, but this past week witnessed an awakening to the unbridled evil among us and within us. While dueling political worldviews haughtily condemn the breach of decency or feign solidarity with the victims of society, mothers grieve and struggle to cope with the murder of their children, and we can barely empathize. The grief is schizophrenic, variously masquerading as aggressive rage towards the hands that murdered, ... paralyzing numbness to the pain of reality, ... depressing apathy to the prospect of hope, ... crushing guilt from the endless what-ifs, ... ethereal attachment to the child snatched away, ... and overwhelming despair from the impossibility of peace. These mothers of students at Virginia Tech and of partially-birthed aborted children have spent this past week unable to forget and hard-pressed to forgive. The tragedy is that we do not disavow the culture of self-gratification that causes, not forestalls, and aggravates, not alleviates, the soul-searching suffering of these mothers. Like Norma McCorvey, we must come to our senses, oppose the culture we formerly ignored or supported, and support others who do the same. Nine years before becoming a presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee opposed this culture in his book Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence:

Violence, infidelity, mayhem, perversity, gore, betrayal, lust, and disrespect have all been sanctified in music, television, movies and video games as necessary complements of a culture of self-fulfillment, self-absorption and self-realization. As we refuse to stand for morality, we easily fall into serving immorality.

Will you stand for morality?