ASKING WHY
The murders in Littleton, Colorado, and their grotesque perpetrators, offered a social and political Rorshach test, as legions of commentators rolled out their favorite demons to explain the tragedy.

The most popular cause was guns, with even the NRA scaling back a convention in Denver as if conceding the point. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used semiautomatic weapons, a favorite target of gun controllers, to get off quick shots. But they also relied on shotguns and homemade pipe bombs, built out of propane cylinders and crushed glass. Most important, they relied on the element of surprise, the key advantage of the violent, whether they use fists or firepower.

Runner-up in the field of possible causes was the culture. Critics had trouble deciding which subculture to blame. Early reports described the killers as fans of "Goth" music-songs about death, whose devotees favor black clothes, metal jewelry, and corpse-like makeup. Soon this was refined to industrial music (the lyrics are even more anomic, though the fans eschew makeup). Or maybe the killers were warped by the amount of time they spent online, posting homicidal webpages.

Lawmakers will feel the need to do something to prevent future Littletons. Surely school dress codes are a good idea-not only to damp the self-indulgent angst of trench-coat mafias, but also to restrain the preening of jocks. Cliques there will always be, but they do not have to set a school's tone, visual or otherwise. But good ideas-another would be to encourage production codes in the music industry-would still be good if there were never any Littleton massacres. Vain ideas, such as disarming the American populace, would still be futile even if there were a massacre every month.

Not all violence erupts from cliques. Mass movements can organize murder on a large scale, and broad social conditions can be the breeding grounds of discrete horrors. But until we find new natures, every generation must face its Littletons. Even better than the support of friends and shrinks is the wisdom of the ages, which, though offering slight support, at least will not cheat. When we discuss the problem of evil, wrote Samuel Johnson, we "imagine that we are going forward when we are only turning round. . . . All our effort ends in belief, that for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession, that the reason cannot be found." Bleak; but then, so, all too often, is life.