COLUMN: The seeds we've sown

From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '00 From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '00Little Kayla Rolland lay bleeding on the floor of a classroom outside Flint, Mich., dying of a gunshot wound inflicted by her 6-year-old classmate. Was it poor gun control laws? Violent Hollywood movies? Bad parents? Let me end some of the suspense for you -- I don't have the answer. I am just as dumfounded and shocked as the next guy by the painfully young murdering one another. Indeed, this problem of violence in our schools and our society seems too complex for only one answer. Nonetheless, politicians and parents wasted little time pointing their fingers in every direction last week. President Clinton didn't hesitate a moment before he used this tragedy to mount yet another assault on the gun lobby. And as Clinton blamed the NRA, the NRA blamed parents for not parenting and law enforcement officials for not doing their job of cracking down on crime. And as the NRA blamed parents and cops, the parents and cops blamed Hollywood. (And Hollywood? Well, it just continues making blood-and-guts action movies that will keep the lines long and wallets open come the summer movie season.) So we still haven't come to grips with the fact that it may be a combination of factors that have led to this rash of school violence, not one "bogeyman" cause like the NRA or Hollywood. But there is one theory we haven't let enter our heads. That is, the problems that led to these acts of violence have their roots in society itself, not an easily identifiable group within it. Somehow these killers all lacked a mechanism that inhibited them from doing the atrocious. This, to me, is symptomatic of a society in which we are afraid to say -- and tell others at an early age -- what is right and wrong. The boys who have killed on school grounds across America are products of a country that has embraced relativism and is increasinly hesitant to establish clear boundaries of moral and immoral behavior, even to its children. This is a society forged by the '60s, when we were told to "do as we feel," not "do what's right." And so it is not without irony that all these people pointing fingers at one another seem to have one thing in common -- they're all part of that baby boomer generation of the '60s that wrested power from their parents and is running the country these days. They were the ones that first commanded "if it feels good, do it," and these kids are doing just that, expressing their anger and frustration in the most primitive way. The boy who killed Kayla Rolland -- like Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Andrew Golden, Kip Kinkel, Mitchell Johnson, Luke Woodham and the countless other playground murderers that have come before him -- was simply not aware that pulling a trigger and ending the life of another was wrong. Sure, the boy who killed Kayla Rolland differed from Eric Harris and Kip Kinkel in that he certainly had less of a concept of what he was doing. But he was similar to these other killers in the way that he expressed his anger and rage -- in violence ending in the life of another. And he was also similar in that while all of us may feel like killing someone every once in a while, nothing inside the heads of these boys actually stopped them from doing it. The "anything goes" baby boomers -- who were once tricked into thinking that cheating on your wife is OK as long as you are the president and the economy is doing well -- are now reaping the harvest of the seeds they began to sow 30 years ago. And they know it, too. Just watch the guilt set in. They remorsefully praise the generation they ousted from power as "the greatest generation" and offer up books and movies as penitent tributes to the parents against whom they once rebelled. But if our grandparents were part of the greatest generation, our parents are part of the worst generation. Three decades after the '60s ended, they are still morally bankrupt. And here, in the year 2000, they are stuck pointing fingers and placing blame over why their children and grandchildren are, too.