September 1, 1939

At the risk of outing myself as a philistine, I must admit that I’m not a fan of poetry. After the forced march through haiku in middle school and learning the naughty delights of dirty limericks, I never developed an appreciation for the poetic form. As with ballet and pop-art, I recognize it takes talent to create it, but it just doesn’t do much for me.
Great prose – with non-fiction ranked above fiction – is to me the pinnacle of the language arts. Writers who can clearly, succinctly, and engagingly communicate fact and opinion are the true masters of communication.
Every generalization has exceptions. While not a fan of poetry, I do value certain poems. One such was referenced in a recent essay at American Thinker. In Blowback and Mass Shootings (August 8th), Taylor Lewis quoted W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939. Auden wrote of the day Germany invaded Poland, setting in motion the Second World War. As we near the eightieth anniversary of that terrible time, we should study the poet’s search for causation. We might find insights applicable to our time.
Auden’s exploration of the event focuses on the psychological state of the German people that brought them to choose war: “Accurate scholarship can / Unearth the whole offence / From Luther until now / That has driven a culture mad, / Find what occurred at Linz, / What huge imago made / A psychopathic god:”
And then comes this warning that we must hear today: “I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.”
In today’s politicized culture, “accurate scholarship” is hard to come by. But divining some truths doesn’t require a PhD. Just as nations that are disconnected from the community of nations can burn with rage at perceived injustices, people disconnected from the community of their fellow citizens can lash out brutally, unpredictably. That, I think, is at the heart of America’s gun violence. We are growing in miniature our own “psychopathic gods.”
What evil was done to young men that turned them into shocking headlines from El Paso, Dayton, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Columbine, that they would do such evil in return? What evil propels the non-headline-grabbing violence that has become the background noise of our inner cities (yet claiming far more lives than mass shootings)?
No matter who they are or what weapons they chose, the most common thread connecting these killers – besides being men – is their detachment from society. Such have always been in our midst, but today we seem to be growing more men who suffer from nihilistic, violent social detachment. What is “the whole offense” behind this trend?
That question should be answered with another question: What else should we have expected when we detached children from the moral laws and traditions that guided mankind for millennia?
A century-old Progressive movement has been trying to replace the foundational truths of human behavior with something artificial and alien. In a social experiment of unparalleled scope and destruction, Progressives have sought to change human nature by force rather than channeling and cultivating the best parts of it. In the process, they’ve despoiled everything they’ve touched. When called out, they attack the messengers, using everything from social media censorship to antifa criminals.
It is by design, not accident, that fifty years after the Sexual Revolution, 40% of America’s children are born out-of-wedlock (up from just 5%). At the same time, the number of children living in single-parent (usually female-headed) homes doubled. Today, a third of our nation’s children are being raised without a father. Our social welfare system has become a “husband and father replacement system.” But a government check can’t be a role model for a boy.
It is by design, not accident, that many of our public schools are violent places where students fail to master even the basics. All students suffer, but the system seems to have been built as a device to alternately bore and torment boys – or turn them into tormentors. The “solution” for boys acting like boys is medication or ineffectual discipline. Many boys tune out and drop out. Since 1982, women have earned 13 million more college degrees than men.
It is by design, not accident, that jobs once available to high school educated men were shifted overseas or undercut by illegal labor. At the beginning of the last recession – dubbed a “mancession” – eighty percent of job losses were among men, according to AEI scholar Christina Hoff Summers. The health / education / government employment sectors grew faster than the rest of the economy; those sectors are the most prevalent in female-dominated occupations.
No role models at home, poor educational preparation, fewer opportunities in the economy: the real wonder isn’t that we have so many violence-prone young men, it’s that we don’t have more.
Our boys are self-destructing because as a society we’ve forgotten how to raise, educate, and prepare them for adulthood. What did we expect would happen?

Ken Gorrell welcomes your comments at kengorrell@gmail.com