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Senseless Violence Across the Land Exposes Moral Relativism

by Daniel Mallock

The senseless murder of innocents always shakes our moral foundations. School shootings in particular are shocking and deeply painful. There has been a spate of school murders, mall murders, and of course the ever-present domestic murders where a child kills the parents and siblings, or a parent murders the entire family. These are ugly, senseless, horrible crimes for which there never appears to be any explanation. The killers kill themselves and we as a culture are left with little to learn from these events.

These events undermine our trust in society, in places we had always thought were safe havens-like schools, and builds suspicion where before there may have been a neutrality of feeling.

Most recently Northern Illinois University is the scene. Before that was the massacre at Virginia Tech and the mall shootings in Salt Lake City, and Omaha, Nebraska. Anything can happen in our society now, there are no safe havens - not at study and not in the marketplace.

This most recent horror at NIU involved a young man who has been described by colleagues and teachers as “revered”. Everyone exclaimed shock and bewilderment that the killer could have done such an appalling crime. For them, it seemed to have come from the clear blue sky, without any warnings. In the days following his vicious cowardly attack we learn that this man had a history of mental illness, was given an early discharge from the military for reasons that are still not divulged, refused to take his medication, had been institutionalized for self-destructive behavior (cutting himself), etc. Until recently his facade of normalcy that allowed him to have a long-term relationship, gather awards and respect from his peers, and be seen as a fine student and teacher and functional/normal human was fairly stable so that everyone was fooled.

But there were warning signs. According to CNN the “27-year-old shooter had a history of mental illness and stopped taking antidepressants three weeks ago, making him ‘erratic,’ according to authorities. In the months leading up to the surprise attack, he started covering his body in bizarre tattoos and stockpiling guns.” (CNN, posted 2/19/08) Perhaps we will never know what actions those around him may have taken in the days and weeks prior to the murders to prevent the soon-to-be mass murderer from a total meltdown.

The killer’s girlfriend of two years, now in the national spotlight - has made her choice to talk to the press. Her comments are illustrative of much more than her state of mind in the wake of her boyfriend’s cruelty and violence. They are indicative of a more thorough and widespread moral confusion that seems to permeate our entire culture.

“He wasn’t erratic. He wasn’t delusional. He was Steve; he was normal,” said Baty. She added, “I still love him.”

Can someone “love” someone who has just viciously murdered 5 people? Can someone “love” someone who is a destroyer of life, a berserker? Is Steve worthy of such feelings after his killing spree? Might she have said more accurately, I still love what I thought Steve was? or, I still love the person who I knew as Steve before he did this awful horror, or, I still love the man I thought I knew but never really did. Why couldn’t she have said, “I cannot love someone who did such an appalling thing.” Aren’t there crimes and actions that are unforgivable? I think there are, and this mass murder of innocents at NIU (or VT, or at a mall, etc.) is one of them.

Is this a misconception of what “love” is? Do we need a new definition of “love” to teach our children? Or could this just be some blind loyalty on her part? Does “love” now make us live in a vacuum utterly separated from moral obligation, compassion for others and duty to the wider society?

She clearly struggled with the situation.

“I was with him all the time,” she said. “How could I not have seen this coming? I feel partially responsible because maybe I should have seen something.” The distraught Baty also said her boyfriend was a victim as well on Valentine’s Day. “I feel so bad for the victims. I can’t tell them how sorry I am,” she said.

But then, in just the next breath, it all falls apart.

“But he was a victim too. I know they probably won’t want to hear that, but he was.”

This moral relativity that allows Ms. Baty to compare in her mind the killer with the victims in a way that puts them in the same category seems a complete confusion of priorities and proportion. Feeling bad for the victims ought to have precluded her from describing both the victims and the murderer as victims. It seems a callous, callow, and hollow thing to say. I think that she is correct when she says that the victims and their families “won’t want to hear that.”

“The person I knew was not the one who went into Cole Hall and did that,” Baty told CNN. “He was anything but a monster. He was probably the … nicest, (most) caring person ever.” (CBS News, 2/19/09)

No. It seems that Ms. Baty did not know her boyfriend at all. He was not all “nice” nor “caring”. He was utterly false, evil. The depths of anger and hatred that some people harbor and hide remain a mystery to us all, almost without context or precedent until they lash out and collapse into depravity and violence. There was a time when such actions would earn nothing but condemnation. Can there be sympathy for such a monster? His false persona is gone, and a re-assessment of him and his life required. We often do not know one another, and with disastrous consequences.

In a related situation a youth pastor in Houston, Texas surrendered himself to authorities for a murder that he committed in 1994. The congregants of his church have forgiven him both for the murder and for his falseness, apparently. His church of almost 1000 people praised the murderer/youth pastor for “taking responsibility” and turning himself in. There didn’t seem to be any discussion of why it took him 14 years to do so. But there is more.

Several congregants are quoted by CNN as describing the pastor/murderer as a “hero”.

“‘He’s a hero, really,’ said Kelley Graham, 24. ‘I don’t know how many people would do what he did.’” (CNN, 02/18). Another impressed church member was even stronger in his appreciations, “I am thrilled my son has a role model to accept responsibility the way Calvin (the murderer) has,” Thac said. “There are way too many men who don’t accept responsibility.”

Acceptance of responsibility has only recently been seen as something heroic. Previously, such admirable conduct was considered a fundamental aspect of maturity, of good citizenship, of respectability.

In time of war, as our soldiers fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and war clouds gather on the horizon at other hotspots around the world, can the “acceptance of responsibility” truly be considered “heroic”? Where is the heroism in the admittance to a crime of violence and cowardice? Is this pastor/murderer as heroic, say, as a soldier who dives on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades in Baghdad? Isn’t the police officer who rushes into a house to save the lives of innocent hostages and dies in the attempt a hero? How can we compare an admitted murderer who finally after 14 years admits his guilt to such people who sacrifice themselves for others? The concept of heroism elevates the hero who has surpassed the requirements of responsibility. Taking out the trash is a responsibility, accepting great risk to help others is heroic.

Do we as a culture no longer know who to raise up in honor, and who to abjure and condemn?

A culture of moral confusion must find it difficult if not impossible to sustain itself when in mortal conflict with an ideology of reactionary absolutism like Islamism so contrary to our own understanding of what is good and evil.

When we have so lost our way so as to be unable to identify evil when it confronts us, (or even shares our homes or classrooms with us), and so clearly identifies itself as such by its actions; when we as a culture can not agree fundamentally that certain crimes and behaviors are utterly unforgivable, and that those who commit such horrors like the massacres at VT and NIU, etc. should be roundly condemned, disdained, and reviled - can we effectively confront a violent ideology whose goal is our destruction?

After the school shootings and mall shootings and shattering intra-family murders of recent years, we are left with little learned and little to learn from. The killers who harbor hatred and nihilism and believe that their greatest aspiration is to destroy innocence have nothing to teach us. They kill themselves or are killed, and we are left with questions having no answers. In response, we install improved security systems and processes, and debate gun ownership rights and gun control as we should.

But there is an emptiness of sorrow and moral confusion that these events leave behind. When someone commits an atrocity like the one at NIU or Virginia Tech how can it be that those close to him, who thought they knew him but did not, in the aftermath say that they continue to love him? Isn’t it so that they continue to love the person they thought they had known, a facade that was fronting the hatred and ugliness underneath rather than the cruel anti-person who committed the crime?

Is it time for a re-examination of “love” and the concept of “hero” in our culture? It would appear that the answer is yes. Can we “love” those who commit horrible crimes against us? We need a better, deeper understanding of how we, each one of us, relate to everyone else in our country. We need to have our standards returned to us, we need our heroes again. We need to rescue them from our past, and elevate them when they appear in our daily lives. These are the men and women who inspire us with their courage, bravery, self-sacrifice, and character. And we need to be able to condemn, without doubt and with compassion, those whose abominable actions put them beyond the pale and outside the family of humanity.