Hugh Hewitt's discussing the Amish school shooting today, and made a comment about how we are breeding more crazies.

are we? I am not so sure. There are a number of possibilities. It could be that they just have much more mediia attention--100 years ago, a shooting in an Amish community would not become news in California, would it? How long would that news take to arrive? 


I wonder more if the modern world creates soft targets through anonymity and effortless, fast travel. In the past, didn't the unstable have to stay in their homes? The community knew who the misfits were. They judged who was dangerous. Certainly outsiders without proper introductions from other towns were viewed with great suspicion. In fact, it seems clear that the outsider was generally the person that the depraved person managed to hurt or kill, as the town's suspicion of them often left them without help.

Could it be too that the depraved and unstable were removed from society by socially acceptable violence, too? Lynchings and hangings certainly missed the mark of justice too often for our modern sensibilities, but perhaps even if they didn't reduce the number of defective people, they scared them into submission. Fundamentally, we are creating a world where no one will establish societal limits. Over and over again, we are withdrawing from our duty to unequivocally state as a society what behaviors are beyond the pale. Every additional moment of tv sensation ads to the lurid enjoyment; even hearing the tales must build up the bloodlust.

Still, I doubt there is more evil in the world. I just think it has an easier time reaching out to us, just as we reach out to each other in some many other ways. This reminded me of an interesting film, The Reflecting Skin. It's a story about evil. A variety of evils, I guess. And of our silence in the face of evil. We watch people who are or who become monsters. Do we even admit what we are seeing?