The American Mind

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

William Hillman

(3/2018) This month I had planned on a column about the Super Bowl, The Eagles win, and the fun of taking the family into Philadelphia to celebrate with the city. Maybe next month.

On Valentine’s Day, 17 students and faculty members were murdered by a former classmate at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., a small community west of Boca Raton.

Another school shooting. I cannot think of a more tragic and sad experience for a parent than to lose a child. As a parent, I’m not sure how I would survive what these parents are going through. Tragedies like this are the result of actions by a mentality damaged person. There is no understanding the actions of people who commit acts like this, which is why I don’t have much to say about it. We will grieve as a community and cry for the children and the parents. Political activists will elbow to make money from selling snake-oil solutions.

Last month I wrote about the current sex scandals - #metoo movement and how Hollywood shares much of the blame for this culture yet refuses to take responsibility for any. Much the same can be said for the glorification of violence kids are exposed to.

My friend Raynard Jackson, in his column this month in "Black Press USA" said it best:

In American society today, many people have bought into the notion that man, not God, is the measure of all things. There are no rules. No restraints. American society has cast the traditional nuclear family by the wayside. For liberals, normal is whatever you feel like doing at any given moment.

Liberal Hollywood elites, the most vociferous advocates for gun control, refuse to take responsibility for the violence and lack of morals that are constant themes in their movies and TV shows; most of them won’t even acknowledge the negative effects that their industry has on the minds of young people.

The result is generations of children who become desensitized to violence and mayhem, who then lash out in real life, without ever considering the repercussions of their actions.

These kids don’t wake up one day and decide to go on murderous rampages at their schools, simply because someone picked on them during lunch or they experienced a bad breakup. We have all gone through that as teenagers and young adults and we got through it without killing and maiming dozens of our classmates."

What is different now? Today, it’s very hard to get teenagers and young adults to think critically about the world they live in. No one wants to accept personal responsibility for anything that happens in their lives; everyone gets a trophy; everything bad that happens to them is always someone else’s fault.

The state of Florida and the F.B.I. are going to spend millions of dollars trying to figure out why this kid killed students and faculty members at that school in Parkland. In reality, there are no simple solutions to most problems that we wrestle with as a society.

Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to good people and banning guns won’t change that.

The left has jumped into full Saul Alinsky mode and has seized on the shooting to push their own fascist political ends. Less guns and more control over the people.

CNN starts spreading the false information that there have been 18 school shootings since the start of this year. What they did not tell their audience is their count included events such as a man who committed suicide in a school parking lot while the school was closed, and misfires at police academies, etc. CNN then went on to hold a town hall with the students of Parkland, in which their questions and comments were scripted by CNN. Comments that did not follow the narrative were disallowed.

The story first ran on Real Clear Politics then was picked up by other outlets. The MSM has done everything it can to kill the story.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor, Colton Haab, appeared on FOX News' Tucker Carlson Tonight to talk about his saga with CNN and how they "scripted" a question for him to use at Wednesday night's town hall event hosted by the network and moderated by CNN's Jake Tapper.

Haab, a JROTC member who helped shepherd students to safety, was approached by the network to ask a question at the town hall. Haab showed CNN what he wanted to say but said Carrie Stevenson, an executive producer at CNN, ultimately rejected it and instead after several conversations "scripted" a question for him.

"CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted," Haab said to a local news outlet Wednesday night.

"Originally I had thought that it was going to be more of my own question and my own say and then it turned out to be more of just a script. And she had actually said that over the phone that I needed to stick to the script."

In just 9 days these "kids" raised 9 million dollars for a student anti-gun actions. They have organized massive social media and MSM events that normally take professionals weeks to organize. I find this very hard to believe. The left’s handbook, as written by Saul Alinsky, suggests that this reaction was scripted and planned. They create the environment for these events to incubate, (See Raynard Jackson quote above) then take advantage of the tragedy for their own political ends.

Let me make this clear. If we want to make schools safe, we can. And it can be done without taking away the rights that this country was founded on. Funny how the ruling class has no problem securing banks, government officials and offices, and Hollywood elites, but when it comes to schools their answer is to hang a sign that says, "gun free zone".

The left’s motive is clear. The first and second amendment stand in the way of the left’s solution to all the world’s problems through centralized planning. Any event that gives them traction to chip away at those rights will be exploited.

In order to achieve their ends, the planners must create power – power over men wielded by other men – of a magnitude never before known. Their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve power. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires. Hence arises the clash between planning and democracy. – Friedrich A. Hayek