On Tuesday, Bob Herbert wrote about the 100,000 Americans who have been murdered on our soil since 2001.
On Saturday in Newark, three young friends whose lives and dreams vanished in a nightmarish eruption of gunfire in a rundown schoolyard were buried...
It has been almost six years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the nation’s consciousness of terror was yanked to new heights. In those six years, nearly 100,000 people — an incredible number — have been murdered in the United States.
No heightening of consciousness has accompanied this slaughter, which had nothing to do with terrorism. The news media and most politicians have hardly bothered to notice.
At the same time that we’re diligently confiscating water and toothpaste from air travelers, we’re handing over guns and bullets by the trainload to yahoos bent on blowing others into eternity in armed robberies, drug-dealing, gang violence, domestic assaults and other criminal acts.
Herbert was just on the Early Show describing this phenomenon to Harry Smith. They visited the make-shift memorial in front of the school in Newark where three kids were killed execution style.
Smith asks Herbert how he would explain the new rash of violence crime by urban kids. And Herbert says parenting. He said that the fathers are gone and the mothers are largely gone, as well, working two or three jobs or sucked into their own vortex of drug use. I think that the left and the right are coming together on the importance of parenting.
I wish Smith had asked a follow up question to Herbert about how parenting could be improved.
My answer would be that government should help those single working moms. Provide them with one decent job with health benefits that enable them to come home at a reasonable time to watch the kids. Chase down those deadbeat dads. Teach parenting lessons in high school.