Boyz II Men

WHEN middle-class white boys in the South and West began showing up at schools this year with hunting rifles and methodically opening fire on their classmates, there was, strange to say, a bright side to the bloodshed. Liberals lamented the accessibility of the guns, of course. But clearly the kids involved were gripped by a spiritual malady of some kind, and a disease of the soul is like a disease of the body: when a soul or a body gets sick, the symptoms tell you where to seek a cure. Treat the symptoms of cancer and the disease will nonetheless kill its host. Just so, take away the guns, and the morbidity affecting American children will go undetected and worsen. Each eruption of exploding shells at a school is a staccato warning, as if in Morse code, for us to decipher and, if possible, act on.

One noteworthy effort to decode other symptoms of the same illness was completed just before the shootings began. In her new book A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence (Fawcett), a Virginia housewife and journalist may have discovered the heart of the matter.

About the Author

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer, a former literary editor at NR, is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-author of The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, and other books.

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WHEN middle-class white boys in the South and West began showing up at schools this year with hunting rifles and methodically opening fire on their classmates, there was, strange to say, a bright side to the bloodshed. Liberals lamented the accessibility of the guns, of course. But clearly the kids involved were gripped by a spiritual malady of some kind, and a disease of the soul is like a disease of the body: when a soul or a body gets sick, the symptoms tell you where to seek a cure. Treat the symptoms of cancer and the disease will nonetheless kill its host. Just so, take away the guns, and the morbidity affecting American children will go undetected and worsen. Each eruption of exploding shells at a school is a staccato warning, as if in Morse code, for us to decipher and, if possible, act on.

One noteworthy effort to decode other symptoms of the same illness was completed just before the shootings began. In her new book A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence (Fawcett), a Virginia housewife and journalist may have discovered the heart of the matter.

About the Author

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer, a former literary editor at NR, is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-author of The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, and other books.