editorials

Bill Cosby knows how to fix this problem. It will take 2 generations though. Stop paying uneducated, unemployed teens to support their children! The poverty industry is to blame for this dysfunction, pain, murders, life in prison etc. People that cannot afford children, don't have a spouse, should not be having children.

If you cannot (or will not) support yourself much less your first child and need tax payer assistance, then you should have to go on Norplant or some other long term contraceptive. It is outright wrong to fund child after child after child to unfit parents. This cycle must stop. Enough is enough.

It's quite easy to see the editorial bias, just from their question in the last paragraph, "The question for governments, nonprofits, businesses, families and faith communities is....". It's subtle, but to the editor, the government is the first place to turn for an answer. As eluted to by the previous posters, the family (mothers and fathers) are the first, most important place to turn for answers. First and foremost, the individual most take responsibility for their lives, and for the lives of their children.

If government is the answer, then the question was stupid.

The problem? Liberals conviced women that they didn't need men in their lives and that government would take care of them. Liberals taught men that they didn't need to take a role in raising their children because government would raise the children for them.

Not one liberal has explained how guns are to blame when gun ownership, until recently, has been illegal in Chicago. In fact, it is still extremely difficult to own a gun in that city. I would bet that none of the 500+ murders were committed by legally purchased firearms.

If this is true (and it is): "Most involved young, black or Hispanic gang members shooting one another, a ritual so routine...". Why, then, does the Tribune (and so many politicians) waste so much time and effort in an endless, losing battle against affluent, educated, white men and women living in the suburbs who have no criminal records. We are going to fight the Tribune and other Liberals to the wall over your slanderous claims that WE are the problem. Nope, the problem is, for whatever reason (see last August's Wall Street Journal for the answer), IN the Minneapolis Black Community not in my suburb and certainly not in my home. No amount of beating on me will make the tinyist bit of difference in North Minneapolis. I'm not part of the problem, I can't (and won"t) be part of the solution.

Despite the obligatory remarks blaming guns and gun culture for mass violence in the USA, the article begins down the road of an intriguing discussion. The real issue to investigate, and one that is vexingly resistant to simple fixes, is before us. Why is it that, in a nation and an age of prosperity never before seen in human history, do large numbers of our urban poor population refuse to participate in basic activities like education and the formation of positive family structures that would allow them to share in that bounty? Why is it, in a time where race and gender are no longer major barriers to social and economic mobility, some segments of society are actually regressing into poverty and disfunction far exceeding that of previous generations that were actually denied opportunity by structural racism and sexism? In a word, how do we address the repair of communities which have erected their own social structures and mores, and live as islands apart from the rest of society and its values? Answer these questions, and you'll be on the road to addressing the questions this editorial asks.

Oh, please "gun laws and gun culture accommodate that kind of slaughter." What drivel. Violence is the result of a whole host of causes, from mental illness to gangs, drugs, to a simple lack of self-control and having no moral compass. But to try and blame "gun laws" or some mythical "gun culture" is like blaming drunk driving deaths on "traffic laws" or our (genuine) "car culture". Face it - you hate and fear guns, you hate and fear anyone who owns guns, and want to delude yourselves that banning some particular tool will magically make you "safe" - it won't. It will merely make millions of Americans LESS safe. But you don't really care, do you?

At the Midwest regional gun summit held by two big city Democratic mayors do you suppose there will be a frank discussion of the failure of the modern welfare state? Of how that financed and made possible the 70% illegitimacy rates in some communities? And how that factors into this problem? Hmmm.