American Paradox
Something’s Wrong with the World — Can We Set It Right?
by Robert C. Koehler
“Evil visited this community today,†the governor of Connecticut said, though he might have been more accurate if he had quoted Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.â€
This may be the hardest truth of all to swallow. But the point-blank murders of 27 people, including 20 small children as they sat in their classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School — in Newtown, Conn., as safe and secure as any community in the country — shattered, at least for some people, the illusion that all our troubles are out there, beyond our borders and our exceptionalism, and that safety requires heavily armed protection from an incomprehensible “other.â€
In one of the safest communities in America, we couldn’t protect our 6-year-olds and our 7-year-olds, despite the fact that we have been waging a “war on evil†for the past decade-plus. (more…)